White Street Brewing Co. planted its flag in downtown Wake Forest with a phrase that reads like a mission statement and a dare: Rediscover Craft. The story behind it is one of the best second acts in town.
How it started: stripping the façade
Founder Dino Radosta was a semi-retired software company owner when he took on a very different project: a 1930s Wake Forest car dealership on South White Street. Radosta meticulously stripped away the building's later façade to uncover and restore the century-old structure's original character — exposed brick, exposed beams, and, deliberately, an exposed brewhouse. No glass walls separate the taproom from the tanks; the brewery wanted you inside the process.
White Street opened its doors in September 2012, conceived from the start as a gathering place for a downtown in the middle of its renaissance — and Radosta has been credited as a driving force in re-energizing the actual White Street the brewery is named for.
Big time beer, small town soul
The beer earned the slogan. White Street's Kölsch took gold-medal honors, and in 2016 its Scottish Ale — a flagship since day one — won the Gold Medal at the Great American Beer Festival, the largest commercial beer competition in the world. “Our goal has never been to worry about winning awards, just to create beers that meet our increasingly high standards,” Radosta said at the time.
Growth followed: from one employee besides Radosta at opening to twenty-five within twenty-six months, and a production facility up the road in Youngsville by late 2014 to handle bottling and volume — while the original downtown system stayed put as what Radosta called a “brewers' playground” for seasonals and one-offs. “We are never leaving downtown Wake Forest,” he told the crowd at the expansion preview. “That building is very near and dear to my heart.”
The taproom today
The taproom remains one of downtown's anchor evenings — darts and shuffleboard under the old beams, Friday Night on White staging out front, and a rotation that runs from the Kölsch and Hoptimist IPA to Belgian tripels and amber ales. Current taps, hours, and events are on their directory listing.
