Photo by Marcellina

It’s Homer Simpson’s (and any other beer-lover’s) worst nightmare: a massive power outage takes a brewery offline, threatening thousands of gallons of precious, delicious and thirst-quenching beer. Sadly, it’s exactly what Alexandria’s Port City Brewing Company is dealing with today.

The brewery lost power on Friday when the powerful storm that tore across the region felled three power lines behind its production facilities on Wheeler Avenue. At gravest risk was 13,000 gallons of beer sitting in fermentation tanks; brewery owner Bill Butcher told us that if the temperature of the fermentation process isn’t closely monitored, they could end up with anything from a mediocre batch of beer to a “complete waste.”

Thankfully, a large generator procured today means that the brewery can power up its glycol chillers again and keep the tanks at a steady temperature. Still, he said, brewers are checking on the quality of the beer and assessing what to do next—though the generator can power the chillers, the rest of the brewery remains closed.

Butcher said that Dominion Power came by today, but gave no timeline on when power would be restored. And though he may manage to save those 13,000 gallons, Butcher rues the day derecho hit the region: “The whole weekend was shot,” he said.