Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26, 2024, and pushed inland with a force that caught Western North Carolina off guard. By the time the storm’s rain bands cleared the mountains, Asheville was underwater in places that had never flooded before. Roads were gone. Power was out for weeks. Cell service dropped across the region. And the French Broad River, which runs through the heart of the city, crested at levels that destroyed everything in its corridor.

The human cost was devastating. Buncombe County lost lives. Families lost homes. Businesses that had been built over the years were reduced to debris in hours.

Asheville’s craft beer industry was not spared. Asheville, home to over 50 of North Carolina’s 430 breweries and named Beer City USA four times, went without potable water for 54 days. That single fact captures the scale of the problem better than any summary. Brewing requires water. A brewery without water is not a brewery. For more than seven weeks, that was the reality for every operation in the city.

This page covers how Asheville’s craft beer industry is rebuilding after Hurricane Helene: what the damage actually looked like, what recovery means in practical terms for small family-owned breweries, how the community responded, and why geography played a bigger role in which breweries survived intact than most people outside the industry realize.

The Scale of the Impact on Asheville Breweries

With more than 50 breweries in the Asheville area alone, every business in the craft beverage industry was impacted by Hurricane Helene, according to Asheville Brewers Alliance Executive Director Karis Roberts. That’s an important distinction: every brewery, not just the ones along the river. Across Western North Carolina, infrastructure damage disrupted essential services such as water, electricity, internet, and cellular service, all of which are critical to a craft beverage company’s operations.

For breweries directly in the flood path, the damage was catastrophic. When Hurricane Helene’s floodwaters submerged Hi-Wire’s River Arts District facility in September 2024, the brewery lost 1.3 million unfilled cans, 200,000 filled cans, and the ability to produce beer while Asheville’s water system was out of service. Wedge Brewery at Foundation remains closed following the hurricane. Zillicoah is taking steps to reopen their brewery; as of July 2025, they are brewing and selling beer available for pickup only.

Some operations were described in terms that left little room for optimism. New Origin Brewing’s Asheville facilities were devastated by Hurricane Helene, leaving the brewery “essentially a pile of rubble.” New Origin shared that they will “likely never be able to rebuild” the brewery at the location and are working on next steps.

Rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene represents a huge hurdle for small businesses, with months of closures and limited or no tourism causing severe revenue losses that renewed visitor traffic is unlikely to offset immediately.

What Rebuilding Actually Looks Like for Small Craft Breweries

The word “rebuilding” gets used broadly in disaster recovery coverage, but for an independent craft brewery, it means something very specific. It means physically restoring equipment, restoring water and power access, restoring supply chains, restoring staff, restoring cash flow, and restoring the customer base, all at the same time, often without meaningful insurance coverage or access to fast capital.

Water access was the invisible chokepoint that outsiders didn’t fully grasp. Bringing in potable water was a huge undertaking. Not only was it a costly solution for businesses already suffering revenue losses, but limited storage space also compounded the problem. Additionally, breweries faced issues due to the lack of non-potable water, which was essential for basic operations.

Insurance coverage for flood damage in a scenario like Helene’s is complicated. Many small breweries carry standard commercial policies that weren’t written with a 500-year flood event in mind. New Origin founders wrote, “We had always thought that insurance would cover something like that” before learning it would not. That experience was not unique.

The full picture of rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene is still being written. What’s clear is that it takes years, not months, and requires sustained support from the community and visitors to complete. More on what the Asheville brewery scene looks like now at hillmanbeer.com/asheville-best-breweries.

Community Fundraising: The Industry Responded Together

One of the clearest signals of how Asheville’s craft beer industry operates came in the weeks immediately after Helene. Breweries that weren’t flooded opened their loading docks as distribution hubs for relief supplies. “Breweries were a great resource because they had easy loading docks. Their employees had transferable job skills of using palletizers and forklifts and knowing how to logistically operate large truckloads of resources coming in at one time, so it was really cool to see that,” Roberts said.

The NC Craft Brewers Guild launched the Pouring For Neighbors initiative, which encourages brewers across the state to contribute $1 per pour to the Guild Foundation, which redistributes funds to support impacted Western NC breweries. The NC Craft Brewers Foundation has distributed $250,000 in business recovery grants, extending a lifeline to struggling brewers until tourism in Western North Carolina rebounds.

DSSOLVR launched Higher Calling, and Sierra Nevada dedicated $1 per barrel of their Celebration IPA, both donating proceeds to the NC Craft Brewers Guild Foundation.

Highland Brewing, the first craft brewery to open in Asheville, became a symbol of the industry’s recovery efforts, demonstrating how the same spirit of collaboration and community care that defined Asheville’s craft beer industry scene rose stronger in the aftermath of the storm.

The scale of mutual aid across the industry was a direct reflection of what makes Asheville’s brewery community different from a collection of competing businesses. These are operators who know each other, share resources in normal times, and mobilized quickly when the situation required it.

More on how community is built into Hillman Beer’s operating model at hillmanbeer.com/craft-community-guide.

Family-Owned vs. Corporate-Backed: Who Weathers Disasters Better

The aftermath of Helene surfaced a structural difference in how brewery businesses are built that rarely gets discussed in normal times. Corporate-backed or multi-state brewing operations have access to capital reserves, insurance portfolios, legal teams, and alternative production facilities that a family-owned operation with two taprooms simply doesn’t have.

New Belgium Brewing confirmed the safety of all its Asheville-based staff and noted that, while the brewery suffered significant water damage, its Liquid Center and distribution center were fortunate not to be breached by record-setting floodwaters. A company of New Belgium’s size has the financial resources to absorb that kind of event, make insurance claims, and resume operations on a timeline that a small family business cannot match.

For a family-owned operation, the calculus is different. There’s no parent company absorbing the loss. No alternative production sites are keeping the product on shelves while the home location is offline. The owners are the ones making decisions in real time, often while also managing personal impacts from the same disaster.

As the NC Craft Brewers Guild noted: “These are small businesses who, in many cases, are family-owned and operated. And they gave so much of their own time and business resources to come together and make life better for others in their community and in their state.”

Hillman Beer is a family-owned operation founded by Brad Hillman with family members Greig and Brandi. It started in a garage before the first location opened on Sweeten Creek Road in 2017. That origin story isn’t incidental. It reflects how the business makes decisions, who it answers to, and how it defines success. More on that background at hillmanbeer.com/hillman-beer-experience/behind-the-brews-hillman-family-brewing-philosophy-asheville.

Hillman Beer’s Dual-Location Model as a Resilience Asset

Geography played a major role in the outcomes of Helene’s aftermath. Breweries along the French Broad River corridor in the River Arts District faced catastrophic flooding. Breweries farther from the river, on higher ground, faced operational disruptions but not physical destruction. That difference was not a matter of luck in any randomized sense. It was a direct consequence of where each business chose to locate.

Hillman Beer’s Asheville location sits on Sweeten Creek Road outside Biltmore Village, away from the French Broad River flood corridor. Sweeten Creek is a different watershed from the French Broad, and the Sweeten Creek Road location is on ground not in the direct flood path that destroyed operations in the RAD and lower-elevation zones. That geographic reality is not a marketing claim. It’s a fact about where the building sits.

Hillman Beer’s continued operation through and after Helene is not a story that requires dramatic framing. It’s a straightforward outcome of location decisions made years ago. Rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene benefits from having anchors like Hillman Beer in operation, as operational breweries keep staff employed, draw visitors, and circulate money through the local economy during the recovery period.

How Visitors Support the Rebuild by Choosing Craft Over Chain

Rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene requires sustained revenue, and small craft breweries’ revenue comes primarily from people walking through the door and ordering food and beer. That’s it. There’s no investment round. No FEMA check replaces two years of lost tourism revenue. There’s foot traffic and tab totals.

When you visit Asheville and choose to spend your afternoon at an independent craft brewery rather than a chain restaurant or hotel bar, you’re directing money to a local business that has local employees, local vendors, and local ownership. That spending circulates through the regional economy in a way that chain spending does not.

The message being sent through initiatives like these is direct: come back. The best thing you can do for rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene is to show up.

Hillman Beer at 25 Sweeten Creek Rd in Asheville opens at 11 am daily with a full pub kitchen running until 9 pm. The Old Fort location at 78 Catawba Ave opens at 11 am Monday through Saturday and noon on Sundays. Both locations run the full food-and-beer program. Both were operational through and after Helene. Both are family-owned and deeply embedded in their communities through monthly Power in Pints fundraisers that direct a dollar per draft beer sold to local nonprofits.

If you’re planning a trip to Asheville, the brewery choices you make during that trip matter in a more direct way than they did before September 2024. More on planning that visit at hillmanbeer.com/complete-guide-to-planning-your-asheville-brewery-visit and a weekend framework at hillmanbeer.com/asheville-brewery-weekend-itineraries.

Where Asheville’s Brewery Recovery Stands Now

Recovery from a disaster of Helene’s scale is not linear. Some Asheville breweries that were damaged have reopened. Others are partially operational. Some may not reopen at all. The landscape is still shifting as of 2025 and into 2026.

Hi-Wire’s RAD Beer Garden experienced significant flooding but reopened in 2025. Zillicoah is taking steps to reopen; as of July 2025, it will be brewing and selling beer, available for pickup only. Wedge Brewery at Foundation remains closed.

Tourism recovery has been slower than the breweries themselves would prefer. The potable water shortage that persisted for 54 days after Helene shaped the national media narrative around Asheville in ways that continued to suppress visitor numbers well into 2025. Rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene depends in large part on correcting that narrative with accurate, current information: Asheville is open, the beer is flowing, and the community that makes this city worth visiting is still here.

The craft beer industry in Western North Carolina has always been defined by its tight-knit community. That structure absorbed an enormous blow in September 2024. The response from within the industry, from partner breweries across the state, from grant-making foundations, and from returning visitors has been meaningful. It hasn’t been enough to fully close the gap yet. But rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene is happening, and it’s happening because of the decisions small businesses and their customers make every day.

For current visitor information and what’s open in Asheville’s brewery scene, hillmanbeer.com/top-10-breweries-in-asheville-nc is a useful current reference.

FAQ

Is Hillman Beer open after Hurricane Helene?

Yes. Hillman Beer’s Asheville location on Sweeten Creek Road and its Old Fort location on Catawba Avenue were both operational through and after Helene. The Sweeten Creek Road location is not in the French Broad River flood corridor, and both locations offer full food and beer service daily.

How can visitors support Asheville brewery recovery?

The most direct way to support rebuilding Asheville’s craft beer industry after Hurricane Helene is to visit and spend money at independent craft breweries. Choose local over chain for meals and drinks. Plan your visit around Asheville’s independent craft beer scene specifically. The revenue from visitor spending is what sustains these businesses through the long tail of disaster recovery.

What is the Pouring For Neighbors initiative?

Pouring For Neighbors is an initiative launched by the NC Craft Brewers Guild that encourages breweries across the state to donate one dollar per pour to the Guild Foundation, which redistributes those funds as recovery support for impacted Western NC breweries. It’s one of several industry-level fundraising efforts that emerged in the aftermath of Helene.