Pilots: North Carolina Craft Brewer

What happens when passions for flight, brewing intersect

Mark Doble never intended to become a professional brewer. But then, he never intended to become a pilot, either.

Doble learned to fly when he lived in Tampa, Florida, earning his private certificate in 1998. He went to buy an airplane, “and that’s when I got sticker shock,” he recalled. So he bought a Mustang II kit from Mustang Aeronautics and built the aircraft in half of a two-car garage. The project took three and a half years with the help of his wife, Lianna, and younger brother David.

Just as the aircraft neared completion in 2003, however, Doble and his wife moved to North Carolina. “I had to fly back down there and put the wings on.” Another pilot handled the test flights, and Doble flew it to their new home. To stable the Mustang, he bought a 40-by-50-foot hangar at Triple W Airport south of Raleigh.

Fast forward to 2008. Doble was working at Hewlett-Packard when the economy crashed, and he decided to take a layoff package. “The plane is tiny and that hangar is huge,” he said. “As a temporary thing, I thought I’d brew some beer in the hangar.” A homebrewer since the 1980s, he started brewing 300-gallon batches. Some nights, 500 people would drive down a rough, narrow road to have a beer at the isolated airfield.

Doble was amazed. “I didn’t anticipate the brewery becoming a business—it just went crazy.” In 2010, he moved from the hangar to a 10,000-square-foot building in an industrial park. In 2013, he added 12,000 square feet. In 2015, he began planning a large brewery expansion on a new five-acre site—and ordered a still to make craft liquor.

In 2009, the company opened the Aviator Tap House in an old train station in downtown Fuquay-Varina. Now it, the Aviator SmokeHouse across the street, and the Aviator Beer Shop in an adjoining building are leading a revitalization of the historic downtown. And the new brewery location will include another restaurant.

The former one-man operation today employs 102 people and produces about 15,000 31-gallon barrels of beer annually. Few Aviator beers are aviation-themed—Double Ugly, a rye pale ale that honors the McDonnell-Douglas F–4 Phantom, is an exception—although the brewery’s tap handles are made from 6061 aircraft aluminum.

Doble has other ways to share his love for flight. “We’ve been giving away intro flights on our brewery tours,” he said. “We ask a beer question, and the person who answers gets a certificate. We think it’s the best way to get people into flying. We talk it up on our tours. We need to make people feel as if flying is accessible.”

Logbook

Who | Mark Doble, founder and owner of Aviator Brewing Co.

Hours | About 650

Favorite aircraft | Mustang II. “That was a lot of rivets to smash in!”

Extra | Doble was driving to the state capital to file his corporate paperwork and didn’t have a name for the business. “I just thought Aviator sounded good. I think everyone envisions that flying would be fun.”