Beer Church
The Hophead
Coffee shop and bar owner Allen Tyndall stands behind the counter ready to serve both hot and cold delights with Cafe Manager AJ Jones. By DaViD C. Bailey PhotograPh By Cassie Butler
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t’s a sunny Sunday morning, so clear and bright that the tops of the gray, wintry oaks look etched against the blue sky. And yet Hunter Church and I are sitting in the dim light of Sessions doing something I said I’d never do: having a beer for breakfast. “I saw the Beer Church sign and said, ‘I’m there,’” says my fellow congregate, who had, unlike myself, just come from a real church, Hope Chapel across Spring Garden Street. “I usually go to Emma Key’s and have burgers and a beer after the service,” he says, but the concept of Beer Church got his attention, as it did mine. So here we are, sharing in the communion of beer lovers, drinking our first libation, a crystal chalice of draft barley wine, brewed in the Netherlands by Emilisse brewery. And, oh yes, in the realm of things spiritual, it weighs in at 10.5 percent. Pontificating about the subtleties of barley wine is Sessions’s owner Allen Tyndall, who explains how Emilisse was aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels. Cloudy, burnt-orange, this Sunday’s offering is a lot like sipping carbonated bourbon. With zero advertising and little fanfare, Tyndall opened Sessions on New Year’s Eve in the same space Coffee Break had occupied. His concept? A combination coffeehouse, wine bar and craft-beer hall. For beer geeks like the Hophead, the fact that Sessions serves draft rather than bottled beers is huge. Often unfiltered, sometimes unpasteurized and occasionally live (which means it’s getting stronger and stronger), draft has the advantage over bottled beer of being fresher. Tyndall’s 20-some taps gush with an everThe Art & Soul of Greensboro
rotating choice of unheard-of brands of imported and domestic craft beers and ale. From Belgium alone he’s featured a palate-tingling Gulden Drak, a hop-intensive Popering’s Hommel ale and “quadruppel” strong La Trappe abbey ale. Yes, many of the names are Flemish and prone to tie your tongue in knots before you’ve had beer one, but think of Tyndall as your intermediary on the way to discovering how a higher power can alter your consciousness — sometimes quite literally — with the majority of his beers weighing in at over 8 percent. Beer and Belgium, ales and abbeys have a long and shared historical connection, Tyndall points out. “Think about the ale and beer styles that we’re accustomed to now,” he says. “Ninety percent of the beer that I get originated in a monastery or abbey. All of your Belgium styles, even the sour mash and the farmhouse styles from outlying areas, were originally Catholic-based.” Not that the originator of Beer Church in Greensboro is particularly religious: “My only exposure was Catholic Mass, twice a year when we visited my father’s parents,” he says. But that doesn’t stop him from prosthelytizing on the heavenly nature of little-known beverages made by celibate monks: “If you’ve never had a Belgium golden, try Stella. If you’ve never had a monastery ale, try Chimay. But for the love of God try something else too.” Tyndall, 34, opened Sessions after a sort of post-divorce life crisis. “It was a big game changer,” he says. “It made me revaluate where I was in the world and how to handle the next ten years.” Tyndall first came to Greensboro in 1996 to attend art school at UNCG. Recounting memories of Red Oak growlers and home brewing at an April/May 2012
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