Trail News

Dragon Run Brewing Opens on the Middle Peninsula

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January 15, 2020

Beer. Waterways. Middle Peninsula. Need we say more?

Dragon Run Brewing opened their doors to the Middle Peninsula in early December 2019, adding to the region’s growing craft beverage makers.

Located in Shacklefords, Virginia, this brewery is pitcher perfect (pun intended) for the region.

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Co-founders, siblings and Shacklefords natives, Tommy and Lindsay Adkins channeled their love for beer and the Dragon Run into a local brewery that allows them to connect their passions with the community.

The Dragon Run wilderness is a unique ecosystem which has been ranked second in ecological significance among 232 areas investigated in a Smithsonian Institution study which covered 12,600 square miles of the Chesapeake Bay region.

Tommy and Lindsay grew up on the Dragon Run and it always held a special place in their hearts.

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In 2012 Tommy, an avid homebrewer for nearly a decade, started to brand his own homebrew as Dragon Run Brewing. That Christmas, his sisters gifted him with a pint glass branded “Dragon Run Brewing, King and Queen, VA EST: 2018.” They picked 2018 thinking it would be a realistic goal.

Years later, Lindsay, a chemist by trade, asked Tommy if the idea of opening up a real brewery was on the table.

It was.

Today, Lindsay, and her background in chemistry, serves as the head brewer.

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The brewery’s menu changes frequently, allowing them to offer six beers at a time.

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Want to visit?

Dragon Run Brewery is located at 1401 Centerville Road in Shacklefords, Virginia. Visit their web site here to see the latest brews on tap.

Want to learn more about the Dragon Run, which inspired it all? Learn more here with the Friends of Dragon Run. Friends of Dragon Run is a non-profit corporation organized in 1985 by a group of Virginia’s Middle Peninsula citizens who generously donated funds to purchase and preserve a 203 acre tract of Dragon swampland, near Churchview in Middlesex County. With assistance from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation staff and an affiliation with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, the purchase was made possible with tax deductible contributions.