The story of Virgin Islands Pale Ale begins when two college buddies quit their jobs to live on the island of St. John.
Chirag Vyas, who grew up in North Providence, R.I., had been living in California and working as a scientist at NASA. A friend from the University of Vermont, Kevin Chipman, was working as a physical therapist in Boston.
Their first month on the island, Vyas and Chipman bused tables and paid someone $250 to sleep on an old sailboat. The boat had no electricity, so they ate by flashlight and stored food on a block of ice.
The two soon found a cheap apartment to rent and worked their way up to bartending. But boredom set in _ not with island life, but with island beer.
So, like any inventive 20-somethings marooned in vacation paradise, Vyas and Chipman headed over to the public library in Cruz Bay and logged on to the Internet.
If breweries can make beer, why couldn't they? A few clicks later, they had ordered a $50 beer-making kit.
"We'd do our best work between 1 and 3 at night," Chipman says.
"We still do," says Vyas.
Last month, Vyas and Chipman, co-owners of St. John Brewers, were in Rhode Island canvassing liquor stores to visit customers and drum up more business. They strolled through downtown Providence looking like two guys who, well, just hopped off an island: baggy shorts, T-shirts, rubber sandals slapping against the pavement. They stopped in at Gasbarro's Wines and made a beeline for the refrigerated cases.
Vyas stood in front of the cold glass and stared. Amid the packs of Heineken and Budweiser and Corona he spotted the familiar label featuring a sandy beach, their own Virgin Islands Pale Ale, selling for $5.99.
"Last six-pack," Vyas said, flatly.
The owner, Mark Gasbarro, spotted the two.
"Hey, good to see ya," Gasbarro said. "I think we're out of your beer. People been asking for it."
The store, which sells mostly wine, originally ordered a few cases from the beer company's Portland, Maine, distributor, Shipyard Brewing Co. The cases sold, so the store's owner agreed to order eight more.
After just a few days of visiting Providence, Vyas and Chipman had been to 20 to 30 liquor stores.
During a break from their work, they stopped at a Mexican restaurant, ordered beers _ imported Negra Modelo _ and recounted for a reporter their five-year journey from brewing and bottling in their apartment (where they built "beer beds" and "beer chairs") to building a "craft" beer company.
A craft beer is generally a domestic, all-malt beer made by a regional, small or "microbrewery," according to the Brewers Association Web site. A microbrewery, the association says, is one that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer per year.
Vyas and Chipman's beer-making venture didn't really take off until several years after the two first begun brewing beer in their apartment in 2001.
The next year, Vyas left to get his graduate degree in international affairs at George Washington University; Chipman stayed on St. John, tending bar and photographing landscapes. After graduate school, Vyas was exploring jobs in the Washington area, but working in an office didn't appeal to him. So he called his college buddy. "We started talking about this beer idea," Vyas said.
By mid-2004, they had perfected their recipe for a pale ale with a hint of mango (extract, that is; the fruit was too strong), and later that year Vyas moved back to St. John.
"We knew that we were filling a void" in the island's beer market, Chipman said.
"To have a locally created beer," Vyas added, "is something that we thought would go over well."
Their "test market" amounted to their friends who drank their beer.
At first, they had no bottling company, so they sterilized large, glass water bottles. They later hired a bottling company, but didn't have a distributor. (They used to buy blank cardboard cases for six-packs and pack up the bottles themselves, often after a full shift tending bar.)
"There's nothing easy about starting a business in the islands," Vyas said. "Everything's slower."
Their first batch of more than 1,300 cases of Virgin Island Pale Ale arrived on a 40-foot container from Portland, Maine, in June of last year. Chipman and Vyas boarded a ferry from St. John to St. Thomas to pick up their load and hauled it to the warehouse in their 1989 Toyota pickup.
During their last run, it began to rain, the roads became slick with oil and their pickup began to slide backward down a hill. They had to get out of the truck and unload 50 cases into someone's driveway until the truck was light enough to make it up the hill. Then they drove back to pick up the rest of the load.
Were they ready to quit?
"We were ready to get a distribution company," said Chipman.
They immersed themselves in every detail of the business, right down to the label, which a friend designed. ("I was a little upset about one of the wheat stalks," Vyas said, poking fun at himself. "The grain was a little bit off.")
They researched the business on the Internet and sought the advice of a lawyer friend.
The two declined to say how much, precisely, they have invested in the company so far, citing competition. But their money plus money they borrowed from family and friends came to "under $100,000," said Vyas.
They expect to start selling in California soon, and this winter they plan to open a brewpub in a local shopping plaza in Cruz Bay, where they can test market and promote their beers. They also hope to have a new beer out by next year. They're thinking of some type of "summer ale," Vyas said, adding, "we're still playing with it."
Expanding beyond their island market, no doubt, will present its own challenges. There are currently more than 1,400 breweries operating in the United States, and more than 30 of the top 50 breweries are craft breweries. Domestic craft beer sales last year grew 9 percent, faster than any other segment of the beverage alcohol business, including wine, spirits and imported beer, according to the Brewers Association.
"We're all fighting for shelf space," Vyas said, "but we try to spread the word about craft beers, because we're all in the same boat."
Their driving ethos seems to be to enjoy life; to have fun.
After delivery runs, Vyas said, they'd often run down to the beach and jump in the water.
"We don't want to make it like a job," he said. "So we try not to forget that we live in paradise."
