Jim Fair
The Southern Growl has its grand opening today at noon - 11 p.m. on South Buncombe Road.
Jim Fair
Seth Kuhn and his wife, Dorinda, visited The Southern Growl last week for its flight and craft beers.
Jim Fair
Matt Bowes owns The Southern Growl and has constructed all the furniture, bar and shuffleboard game.
Jim Fair
Beth Stone and Joe Lauder are becoming more frequent visitors for its craft bears.
There is one big difference in owner Matt Bowes’ pub – all 60 brews sold are craft beers only.
“There’s nothing like this in Greer,” said Matt Nations. “This is the difference between a bar and restaurant.”
The grand opening event is noon to 11 p.m. at 6 S. Buncombe Road with the Dark Corner Diner food truck on site from 6-9 p.m. There is no food sold at Southern Growl but Bowes encourages patrons to bring their own.
“All beers will be discounted on the grand opening,” Bowles said.
Beers featured come from six distributors that do not overlap brands and flavors. Bowes features local and national craft beers with a generous mix from Europe, Belgium and Germany.
Honeywell sits just down the road from Southern Growl and one night a week a craft beer club from that company will stop by to taste individual growlers – 32 and 64 ounces – or a flight of beer, five 5-ounce glasses.
BMW employees have found Southern Growl to its liking frequenting it because of the European offerings of beer.
“The whole idea of this place is to want to come here and hang out,” Bowes said. And that’s what got Portia Stone interested in the self-described beer joint. “It’s homey said Stone. “The simplicity of it makes me feel comfortable.”
Seth Kuhn had visited Southern Growl previously and brought his wife, Dorinda, for the first time last week. “I like to try a bunch of different beers and this place allows that,” Sean said.
Bowes, from Columbus, Ohio, came to Greer as a result of his wife, Anna, getting a job in the Upstate. Bowes, with carpentry part of his vocation – he and Anna flipped a house in Ohio – and a chiropractor's assistant, had always wanted to own a bar featuring craft beers.
All the tables, stools, bar and walls were built out of pallets and refinished. The bar features a stone center with the bottoms of bottles jutting out. The shuffleboard, checkers board with beer caps as the playing pieces, and the digital screen describing each of the 60 available craft beers were crafted by Bowes.
The nerve center is a specially designed refrigerated room where the hundreds of yards of tubing goes from the kegs to the taps that are vertically displayed on the back wall. The description of each craft beer is on the digital board.