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reads like the fever dream of a Jimmy
Buffett fan ordering his last meal on
Earth: jalapeño poppers with pineapple
cream cheese, a pulled pork sandwich
with mango BBQ sauce, and, of course,
beer cheese.
The Virgin Islands is haunted by the
ghosts of failed restaurants, brought to
you by stateside interlopers trying to sell
a cheeseburger in paradise. But the Tap
Room developed a solid following among
tourists and locals. St. John Brewers has
created 8 bottled and 18 draught beers;
they play with local lavors such as star-
fruit and have convivial names like Pale
Tourist pale ale and Island Hoppin’ IPA.
Vyas and Chipman have turned down
distribution companies urging them to
expand or sell. “We never looked at St.
John Brewers as a short-term business
with a buyout strategy,” Chipman says.
In
2015, at 38, Vyas was diagnosed
with avascular necrosis, a degenerative
corroding of the bones, which required a
an arduous double hip replacement and
prolonged recovery. That same year the
business next door caught ire and incin-
erated the Tap Room. Only the kitchen
and oice survived. They relocated the
bar into the oice space and spent the
next two years rebuilding.
Just as renovations were winding
down, the island began buzzing about
Hurricane Irma barreling toward it.
St. John hadn’t seen a storm anywhere
near that size since Category 3 Hurricane
Marilyn in 1995.
Vyas and Chipman, along
with bar manager Nick
Rinaldi, operations manager
TimHanley, and Vyas’s wife,
sandbagged the bar. The
group rode out the storm’s
185-mph winds—with gusts
as high as 225 mph—in a
concrete seaside condo with
two hairless cats, Freddy
and Frankie. “We made
dams with sheets and tow-
els and just bailed water for
hours,” Rinaldi says.
The group ventured
out at dawn. The once-
lush island was startlingly
brown, as though it had
been set alame. Utility poles slumped
into the streets, dangling from their
powerlines like marionettes. Sailboats
lay in repose on the beach. There was a
school in the road.
Knowing there would be no means
to communicate, the staf had pledged
to meet at the Tap Room after the
storm. Word spread by the “coconut
telegraph,” as islanders call it, and
what was supposed to be a staf meet-
ing of 15 turned into a community
gathering of 100 people searching for
friends and information.
“Normally you ask people, ‘How are
you doing?’” says Hanley, the opera-
tions manager. “Instead the question
was, ‘Do you have a roof?’”
The bar staf handed out cold brews
when things wrapped up. “It was so hot
out,” Vyas says. “It seemed like everyone
could use a cold beer.”
Two weeks later, Category 5
Hurricane Maria dumped an additional
35 inches of rain on the island. The Tap
Room, tucked in a stone-and-mahogany
shopping complex, escaped with mostly
water damage. Vyas maintained a posi-
tive outlook. “We’d already been through
a ire,” he says. “So when the hurricanes
happened, we said, ‘We’ll clean it up and
move on.’”
When they weren’t working on the
bar, the owners were helping others
clear out homes and driveways. Because
the Tap Room couldn’t open, they
decided to give back what they could:
cold beer. Every Friday
for four weeks, St. John
Brewers gave away its arse-
nal of 2,400 surplus bottles.
“Why let it sit there when
people could be enjoying
it?” Chipman says.
Ryan West, adminis-
trator for the Love City
Strong foundation, found
out at the ferry dock,
where he and his crew had
just dispatched a group
of evacuees, about Free
Beer Fridays. (The non-
proit was created after the
storms to assist in recovery
and has received support
from Bloomberg Philanthropies.)
“We were standing out in the sun,
and everyone was emotionally fragile,”
Ryan recalls. “Someone said, ‘The Tap
Room is giving away free beer!’” The
group shot for the bar. “You got to feel
normal for a few moments. Not think
about the people that left the island that
day that you might never see again, or
the tough decisions.”
Over at the Cruz Bay Landing restau-
rant, owner Todd Beaty and his staf
were serving up 1,000 free meals a day
with the support of the Red Cross. They
looked forward to Free Beer Friday all
week. “We’d go racing down there,”
Beaty says. “Just to be able to have a
cold beer and talk to everyone. It was
absolutely precious to us.”
Crowds swelled to 200 people. One
Friday a DJ arrived packing his own gen-
erator. Someone brought bongos. “Then
it started to rain, and people just danced
in the middle of it,” Vyas says. “No one
talked about the storm,” says Allen, the
Tap Room chef. “It was almost like being
at a normal happy hour.”
It took two months to restore
power to Cruz Bay and six to get the
whole island running. The Tap Room
resumed business in November 2017,
still operating out of the converted
oice. This summer—three-and-a-half
years after the ire—the Tap Room 2.0
was inally unveiled.
The brewpub that started with just
four taps in 2006 now has 24. The
space is four times larger, with seat-
ing for 120 people, and a second loor
with a cathedral ceiling. Production has
increased from 5 kegs a week to 20. It’s
one of the only restaurants on St. John
with air-conditioning. There’s a beauti-
ful stretch of mahogany below the new
bar counter: some of the wood Chipman
and Vyas salvaged from the old Tap
Room after the ire.
“It feels very well-deserved,” says
West, the nonproit administrator, of
the airy new digs. “Tap Room stepped
up and threw morale-boosting par-
ties once a week. They weren’t look-
ing for praise and didn’t make money.”
He adds: “People don’t forget that kind
of thing.”
DRINKS
Bloomberg Pursuits
October 8, 2018
BOTTLES OF NOTE
Pale Tourist
A hoppy pale ale with
a light body and a dry,
clean finish
Liquid Sunshine
A Belgian-style ale that
tastes of Caribbean
orange and coriander
Cofee stout VI
(Massive Series)
A stout made with cold-
brew cofee featuring
notes of chocolate
Green Flash
A nonalcoholic energy
drink that’s not too
saccharine