#4 Cacapon Mountain Brewing

0.5 🍺 above average

George Washington bathed here. And slept here. And spent many happy summers here.

The small town known as both Bath (municipal name) and Berkeley Springs (postal name) was America’s first spa town, renowned for its medicinal warm springs (constant temperature 74.3 degrees) and scenic setting in the Appalachian Mountains. It was recently named one of America’s Top 10 Historic Small Towns by USA Today (2020) and features six full-service spas.

The idyllic town’s potential was not lost on homebrewer Karl Wagenbrenner, who lived just across the Potomac in Warfordsburg, PA. In 2012, he rented a small space in Berkeley Springs where he began selling homebrew supplies and giving lessons to aspiring brewers. Students, enamored with his liquid creations, urged him to go pro. And in 2015 he did, opening the Berkeley Springs Brewing Co. and Bath Water Brew Pub on the south side of town. Within two years, Wagenbrenner outgrew the cramped 1,800-square foot facility and its three-barrel brewhouse and began searching for a larger space that would accommodate more seating, greater production and storage space, a canning line, full-service kitchen, and outdoor seating. In 2018, he found what looked like the ideal location in the recently restored Coolfont Resort.

Located about five miles south of town at the foot of Cacapon Mountain, Coolfont was a 1,200-acre wooded resort and popular retreat for Washington politicians, such as Al Gore and his wife Tipper, who famously got lost on one of its hiking trails a few days after he was elected vice president 1992. Following the death of Coolfont’s owner, the resort lay dormant from 2005 until 2016, when it was resurrected by local businessman Larry Omps. In 2018, Wagenbrenner leased one of the resort’s existing buildings and built it out into a new and expanded brewery and lodge-style pub. The beer was nothing to write home about, but the pub attracted considerable acclaim for its apple-butter barbeque and was featured on an episode of America’s Best Restaurants. As the renovation of Coolfont inched along, Wagenbrenner’s pub packed ‘em in on weekends.

When veteran brewer Shane Mills returned to his hometown in 2020 to open a brewery of his own, the names Berkeley Springs—and Bath—were already taken. So Mills renovated a former sock factory on the north side of town and named it Cacapon Mountain Brewing Co.

Mills had paid his dues, you could say. He had worked at several celebrated breweries in California, including the Russian River, Kern River, and Marin Brewing Cos. He returned to the mid-Atlantic for stints as brewer at Bluejacket and quality control consultant for Cushwa, and helped develop best sellers The Truth Imperial IPA and Easy IPA at Flying Dog. None of that experience could have prepared him for dealing with Covid. And yet he still managed to serve the first pints of Cacapon Mountain beer by Thanksgiving weekend of 2020.

Mills wasted little time making his mark on the West Virginia brewing scene. His Stella Splendida helles-style lager won the top prize at the 2021 Mountaineer Brewfest in Wheeling. Crisp and light (4.4% ABV), it’s the kind of nuanced beer that requires a deft touch in the brewhouse.

It would have been easy for Mills to churn out more of the top-shelf IPAs that had delighted beer lovers in his previous postings in Frederick, Hagerstown, and D.C. But Berkeley Springs (2020 population: 758) is no country for old haze bros, and most of Cacapon Mountain’s business, Mills knew, would come from weekend visitors from Philly, Baltimore, and D.C.

Accordingly, Mills limited service to four days a week (Thursday–Sunday) and brewed a wide variety of easy-drinking styles, supplemented by some of his personal favorites like barrel-fermented Belgian ales and English malt bombs. Poor Tom (5.2%), an English-style pub ale with a touch of toffee, soon became his flagship brew and was available in a 6-pack of cans for $15 when I visited.

Still, hoppy beers remained Mills’ true passion. In 2021 he brewed the first in a series of 13 hoppy beers called Nose Noise that explored new varieties and combinations of hops. They comprised pale ales, West Coast IPAs and hazies, but all conformed to his philosophy of keeping ABVs moderate; none was stronger than 7%, though many were affectionately described as a “batch of stink.”

Mills’ affinity for the little green cones goes much deeper than the typical brewer’s fixation on juice and bitterness. About 20 miles outside of Berkeley Springs, Mills maintains an experimental hop-growing station where he is crossbreeding a native West Virginia strain with versions of the neomexicanus subspecies native to New Mexico. His goal is to produce a hop cultivar with commercial brewing potential that he can use at his brewery.

When I visited Cacapon Mountain Brewing in February of 2026, there were still small mounds of snow around the taphouse and the half-dozen picnic tables in front of it. Several were occupied by hardy beer lovers and their delighted dogs basking in the warm winter sun.

Inside is one of the prettiest taprooms anywhere. Banks of large window grids and a matrix of skylights carved from the wood-paneled ceiling flood the room with natural light. A variety of small and large tables line the outer wall opposite a 12-seat, L-shaped bar. Combined with the high ceiling, the room feels spacious yet cozy—and very green. Skeins of lush vines descend the walls and merge with leafy tropical plants along the floor. A stylish mix of angsty 90s alt rock offered a bracing counterpoint to the room’s “almost heaven” vibe.

The taphouse’s modest kitchen does an efficient job of filling bellies: four variations on the smash-burger theme, including one with goat cheese and a vegetarian option made from black beans. Their signature food choice is “T-Dawg’s Dawgs,” served either “classic” with mustard, ketchup, and chopped onions or “dirty” with sauteed onions, pickled jalapenos, and grilled cheddar.

A quick inspection of the nine available taps revealed six house beers and three guest taps. Poor Tom, grainy and earthy with nice toasted-malt character, lived up to its status as the brewery’s signature beer. Dark Star (4.6%) confirmed Mills’ skill with clean, tasty lagers. Sound of Silence (6.2%) was a flavorful coffeeish milk stout. The grapefruit saison Toranja (6%) was lightly tart and estery. Silver Spoon, an unflavored gose, was pleasantly dry and even more sour. The lone IPA, Wandering Pine (6.5%), delivered a satisfying burst of West Coast-style grassiness and resin.

As for the guest taps, it’s hard to top Fat Head’s iconic Head Hunter IPA (7.5%) and Sierra Nevada’s Narwhal imperial stout (10.2%). Throw in Sierra’s Hazy Little Thing (6.7%), and there’s something for everyone on this concise tap list.

What was not available was any barrel-aged beers or mixed fermentation ales. The brewery maintains two barrel rooms, one for mixed fermentations and the other for “clean” ales brewed with standard yeasts. Mills had begun his sour program while the brewery was under construction, propagating blends from commercial cultures and from the dregs of some of his favorite wild ales for later blending. A barrel-aged version of the brewery’s Sandman imperial stout received rave reviews when first released. None of these, however, was available when I visited.

Meanwhile, on the south side of town at the other Cacapon Mountain, the Berkeley Springs Brewing Co. and Bath Water Brew Pub was struggling. Wagenbrenner had inherited a dysfunctional sewage system from Coolfont that he finally replaced “on my dime” with covid loan money. Efforts to expand off-premise production stalled when Wagenbrenner was unable to get the town to extend electricity to his warehouse site. Plus he was getting little support from the resort, which didn’t fully open until the end of 2021.

Perhaps the most devastating blow was not beer-related but food. “[For] about 6 yrs we had the best BBQ in this area. Then the cook got sick,” Wagenbrenner posted on the brewery’s Facebook page. “All [the] others couldn’t manage, couldn’t discipline or downright just couldn’t cook. Reviews showed it.”

Social media was also unkind to the pub’s beer. Of the 32 breweries operating in the state in 2026, Berkeley Springs’ beer ranked 31st on Untappd and dead last on BeerAdvocate. Wagenbrenner conceded as much: “85% of our beers were top notch and true to style. But sadly there were some that went WAY off the mark.”

The final nail was hammered home in January 2025 when a fire destroyed Coolfont’s Treetop House & Restaurant. By the time it reopened, in late March, 2026, Wagenbrenner had had enough.

“Shitty distributors, shitty landlords, shitty covid, shitty govt loans,” Wagenbrenner posted. He saved his greatest vitriol for developer Omps (“shitty sawed-off piece-of-shit landlord”) and Coolfont (“shitty lipstick on a pig resort”).

On May 30, 2026, after a ten-year run, Berkeley Springs served its last pint. “Closing this chapter allows us to live life again,” said Wagenbrenner. “We are just too old for this shit anymore.”

Berkeley Springs’ remaining brewery, Cacapon Mountain, also faces challenges. Founding brewer Shane Mills left the brewery in April 2025 following a dispute with a business partner. At the time of my visit in February 2026, only six house beers were on tap, all of them contract-brewed, according to Mills, in D.C. and Florida. There have also been issues with staffing and food sourcing.

Mills is still growing and cross-breeding a variety of Humulus lupulus subspecies at his home outside of Berkeley Springs. He has about 150 seedlings growing this year and hopes to harvest the hardiest and most oi-rich candidates to brew test batches this winter.

—Butch Smith, updated 8/22/26

CACAPON MOUNTAIN BREWING — BERKELEY SPRINGS
42 Williams St.
Berkeley Springs, WV 25411

OPEN
Thursday: 4 pm — 8 pm
Friday & Saturday: noon — 8 pm
Sunday: noon — 6 pm

NUMBER OF TAPS
9

AVERAGE ABV
6.3 %

OTHER ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
7 varietal wines by glass or bottle
2 wine cocktails
2 ciders

FOOD
Burgers, sandwiches, “dawgs,” nachos, chips

PARKING
Ample parking in front and around taphouse