The Friendly Fermenter is getting ready to open its doors in downtown Harrisonburg. This nanobrewery and homebrew shop will be the first Harrisonburg brewery that is open for lunch during the week. Located at 20 S. Mason Street, Suite B10 on the corner of Route 33 and Mason Street, next to Rocktown Bicycles and near Urban Exchange, Friendly Fermenter will be on the basement level of a three-story, newly renovated building which will also house LAFAH Café, a middle-eastern based restaurant, directly above. The third level will offer loft apartments which will also be ready soon. more
On the evening of Tuesday, April 11, every barstool, patio chair, and indoor table is occupied. There’s a friendliness in the air—the kind in which a stranger will scoot over so that you can have your own space at the bar, and the bartenders ask how your day was before taking an order. As bustling as the taproom is, it feels more like a community’s living room, filled with the laughter and chatter that you hear during a distant family’s holiday get-together. In front of most of the patrons is a pint glass; many ordering at the bar request Arrant (Pale Fire’s newest IPA), with it’s name descending from Shakespeare’s writing. In fact, even the establishment’s name derives from one of the founder’s favorite books, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov and an excerpt of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, “[t]he moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.” more