Proctorsville’s Outer Limits Brewery: Flood has Brought out the Best

By Layla Kalinen EAGLE TIMES STAFF
PROCTORSVILLE, Vt. — In the aftermath of the catastrophic destruction in Ludlow, Proctorsville and Cavendish, Taylor Shaw and Wesley Tice, owners of the Outer Limits Brewery, are reeling in a tug of war between devastation and gratitude.

Shaw and Tice, who opened the business in 2019, managed to survive the COVID-19 pandemic and flourish. But they now face massive losses at their popular Proctorsville brewery and tap room.

“When I woke up, at like 5 in the morning, and realized everything that was going on, I checked on my downtown neighbors,” Shaw said. “During the first surge, we got a little bit of water into the brewery, but it was nothing really… So, in our head we were like, ‘oh we’re in the clear,’ we’re going to be fine.

“My manager lives right down the road and, because we couldn’t get there, he walked over, took some videos, took some pics and was actually able to get in the building. So, it was a little bit of false hope, because we were in the clear and thinking, even with this next surge, it probably won’t be as bad. It will be fine.

“We watched on our video cameras as the brewery just continued to fill with water. And then our cameras, of course, cut out and we couldn’t see anything anymore. But, at that point, there was already like two- to three-feet of water. Sitting and watching it was torture,” she lamented.

“I had another good friend, who’s also worked for us in the past, who lives there, and she walked down there after the second surge had already taken hold. She contacted us saying, ‘I’m down here. Do you want videos?’ and I said, ‘Sure.’ And that’s when we got the full reality of what we were facing. But, in my mind, it still hasn’t even set in yet,” Shaw said.

The couple waited through the night and into the morning for the storm to subside.

“We knew that it was not good but there was nothing we could do about it. Tuesday morning, I was able to get up early and drive over there and it was a disaster. There were cement paddings out of the back and ripped up. Our dumpsters were gone. All of our picnic tables were gone. Our woodshed was completely destroyed. The ground was dug out underneath the cement footings of our machines that we have out back. We have a lot of exterior equipment, like our glycol chiller, air compressor and propane tanks. The water had pushed open our bay garage door, so that was open halfway, and the water ripped the door off of the beer cooler, and it was a pretty hefty door. Everything we had on pallets, all of our grains, hops, yeast, canned beer, kegs of beer, everything was strewn across the place.”

Tice’s entire laboratory, the brewing facility, outside storage and patio were also destroyed.

“My husband had a pilot system that he did his test pilots on that’s completely gone and all of his recipes are gone. We’re hoping that the desktop we have is still functioning because he had his recipes on there, too, but all of his hard paper copies are gone and his entire lab where he checked the health of his yeast, all his microscopes, everything is gone,” Shaw said. “Luckily, our tanks look to be okay. Our fermentation tanks and our brewhouse are still to be determined.”

Shaw said their next step is to wait for a determination from the electrician on the extent of the damage.

“The town made us cut the power because they were afraid an electrical fire might start, so we’re sort of on hold until we get an electrician in there to figure out the real extent of the damage, and we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that all of the biggies are fine, because it’s something that’ll really kind of make or break us,” Shaw said.

Shaw said the biggies are costly and she isn’t sure how long it will take to assess the damage.

“Our pumps that pump all the beer from the brew tanks, the fermentation tanks and our keg cleaner I think are completely destroyed,” Shaw said. “Luckily, our tap room in the restaurant, everything up there is fine. But our propane-fueled brew tank, where the beer goes in and we heat it up, is a necessity.”

Shaw said their brewery is “old school.”

“We use propane. A lot of people do it electrically now. We’re kind of old school. We use a rugged, old system but the state of that equipment is also to be determined, if that is toast or not,” Shaw said. “The same questions sits with us about our glycol chiller; it’s basically what cools down the beer and brings it to the temperature you want, which is a big piece of production equipment, and all of our air compressors outside.”

Tice will have to restock the complete loss of ingredients for the brewery.

“We lost all of our ingredients, hard and raw material, and the extra cans we had for canning runs are gone.” he said.

Power loss is a top concern.

“A lot of our electrical panels are outside and water made it up to them,” Shaw said. “We had power when we showed up on Tuesday. That was a good sign but, again, just kind of to be determined on the extent of any of the electrical and structural damage,” Shaw said. “We basically rebuilt the whole building before we opened and that building is a tank, but there is one side of the building where some like ground has been dug up and some bricks have popped out of the building.”

They’re hoping their elevator survived.

“Our elevator wasn’t on when we got there, so that’s a biggie…that might be completely destroyed. We lost a lot of merchandise, but we’ve got local businesses housing a lot of our canned beer for us,” Shaw said.

Tice and Shaw found a way to make their loss benefit the Ludlow area.

“We donated all of our food…to Gamebird in Ludlow and they’ve been putting together grocery bundles for free for people and they’ve been cooking food for free so they used some of our food; some of the fresh produce for people to take as like grocery items and then I think some of it they were going to cook and hand out for free. It’s obviously better to help the community than watch all that stuff just go to waste,” Shaw said.

The flood has forced them to pull the emergency brake on a myriad of different items.

“We cancelled all of our reoccurring accounts. We have had to pull out of all of the beer festivals that we were we were signed up for, so many beer festivals this month, next month into September,” Shaw said.

Despite the devastation, Shaw and Tice are already thinking of ways to recover.

“I’m hopeful that we can have the tap room up and running within three months again, just with like limited options in terms of beer. Maybe we could bring in some other local breweries’ beers and serve those as options,” she said. “Hopefully, just at least have some limited options, just so we can get the doors open and have a place for people to go, because so many places here are done.”

Their family home remains intact, which Shaw said is a miracle.

“Our house is totally fine. We’re on Pleasant Street, which is just set back from Main Street, which was flooded and down, I don’t know, like half a block from us. Pleasant Street was flooded,” Shaw explained. “They recommended we evacuate but our house never saw any water so, luckily, on that front, we’re good. But downtown was a mess. I’ve never seen anything like it — cars coming down the river, trailers, hot tubs and then propane tanks were going off in the middle of Main Street and just like billowing with gas everywhere.”

Shaw said the Ludlow community has set a direction for healing for her family.

“It’s restoring my faith in humanity and the way people are stepping up, showing up, like strangers, people we’ve never met, coming to the brewery asking, ‘how can I help?’ and literally just picking up things without even asking. People are walking from business to business with handmade sandwiches and, you know, bottles of water and Gatorade and it really is a beautiful thing, very heartwarming, and it lessens the burden and just makes everything a little more bearable for sure,” Shaw said.