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The restaurant where chef Patrick Allen
works survived a devastating ire and
two Category 5 hurricanes. On some
days, when he arrives to cook up mahi
mahi tacos for a mixed crowd of tour-
ists and locals, he wears a T-shirt with a
severe weather logo and the words: THIS
IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.
“It adds a little levity to the situ-
ation,” he says. Allen works at the
Tap Room, a pub and brewery that’s
now thriving on St. John in the U.S.
Virgin Islands, a territory hard-hit by
Hurricane Irma in September 2017.
But if you want the whole story of the
bar, you have to go back 15 years. It’s a
tale best told over a beer—and one, like
many tales about craft brewing, that
starts in New England.
Tap Room owners Kevin Chipman
and Chirag Vyas met as dormmates at the
University of Vermont. After graduating
in 1999, they headed to opposite coasts:
ILLUSTRATION BY JAN BUCHCZIK
DRINKS
Bloomberg Pursuits
October 8, 2018
For the past year, the Tap Room on hurricane-ravaged St. John
wasn’t just an oasis where islanders could unwind. It was a place
to put the pieces back together.
By Noelle Hancock
Brewing Up a Recovery
Vyas took a position as a support scien-
tist for NASA in Silicon Valley; Chipman
found work in Boston as a physical
therapist. “My warm shower was the
best part of my day,” Chipman, now 41,
recalls of life in Massachusetts. “It was
dark when I left for work and dark when
I got home.”
In 2001 he visited St. John, the small-
est island in the U.S. Virgin Islands at
less than 20 square miles. “I remember
sitting at this bar and thinking, I could
live here,” Chipman says. He persuaded
a buddy to join him: Vyas, known to his
friends as “Cheech.” They bought one-
way tickets and arranged to live on a sail-
boat for $250 a month. “We thought, This
will be cool! We’ll be partying on a boat
in the Caribbean!” Vyas says.
The sailboat had no electricity, run-
ning water, or working bathroom. They
worked as bartenders and busboys, stor-
ing dinner on a block of ice and eating
by lashlight. They enjoyed their sim-
ple, sunny life but missed some aspects
of their frosty college days, most notably
the craft beer. They ordered a $50 brew-
ing kit and spent two years playing with
recipes and giving away samples. When
their tangy mango ale developed a fol-
lowing, the two found a bottling partner,
Shipyard Brewing Co. in Maine.
“It’s a lavor combination that had
never been done before with beer on a
production level,” Chipman says. “It’s
Caribbean meets craft.” The partners
pooled their savings, secured small loans
from friends and family—in the $500
to $5,000 range—and started St. John
Brewers in 2004. They were 27.
During the day, they delivered their
product to local bars and restaurants in
their 1989 Toyota pickup, working the
bars at night. In 2006 they opened their
own watering hole, the Tap Room, in
St. John’s main port, Cruz Bay. The menu