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Bend-based Deschutes Brewery—home to Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond and the Abyss and such—will build an East Coast brewery in Roanoke, Va., the brewery announced Tuesday.
In a live feed from Roanoke, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe sang Deschutes' praises—and the 108 jobs it's reportedly bringing with it.
Deschutes had long planned an East Coast brewery. Since 2012 at least four Southern cities were in intense competition to lure in the Deschutes brewery location—but competition was especially strong between Asheville, N.C., and Roanoke.
Beer lovers started multiple social-media campaigns to entice Deschutes to come to Roanoke—including a #deschutes2Rke Twitter hashtag and a Facebook page called "Deschutes 2 Roanoke".
Amid jabs at other states upon announcing Roanoke's victory in nabbing Deschutes, McAuliffe declared, "Virginia is for beer lovers, folks."
Roanoke had recently lost out on being the site of the East Coast Sierra Nevada brewery site to Asheville, which is a more established brewery town. That taproom and brewery opened in 2015.
"We appreciate that they will make way more of an impact in Roanoke than they would have here," Mike Rangel, a former president of the Asheville Brewers Alliance told the Asheville Citizen-Times. "Losing a big brewery doesn't diminish us as a beer city."
But we all know it does. It totally does.
Willamette Week
