Trophy Brewing bets on beer and pizza with expanded Morgan Street location
Trophy Brewing is turning up the funk on Morgan Street.
The popular Raleigh brewery opened its expanded Morgan Street taproom and pizzeria this week, after 18 months of construction. The new space means more sour and farmhouse beer, more pizza and more patio.
“We needed more seating, that’s one of the things we heard from our guests,” said Trophy co-owner Chris Powers, who opened the brewery in 2012 with partners David “Woody” Lockwood and David Meeker. “We started pretty conservatively and really grew pretty fast.”
Trophy has grown into one of the Triangle’s more popular breweries, spread over four different locations in downtown Raleigh. Beyond the pizzeria is the production brewery on Maywood Avenue, plus restaurants Trophy Tap & Table on Wilmington and State of Beer bottle shop on Hillsborough St. With the expansion, all of Trophy’s sour and wild ales will be brewed on Morgan Street.
“We wanted to bring fermentation back to Morgan Street,” Powers said. “We missed having brewing there. We always want to experiment and try new things and really the separation was necessary. With sours, you can end up infecting clean beers. The yeasts and bacteria are pretty aggressive. So you could have a clean barrel next to a sour one and eventually they’ll both be sour.”
The expansion adds three double decker pizza ovens to Trophy’s kitchen, and seating increases from around 100 to 132, with more patio seating on the way. Beyond beer, they’re adding wine on tap from smaller natural winemakers, as well as Spanish vermouth.
In the past year, Trophy has led the local Detroit-style rectangular pizza trend, but only sells the pies on Monday. Powers said that could expand in the future, but in the short-term said Trophy will run them as a special on Black Friday.
