Silver Branch Warrenton Station is open again. The taproom at 56 E. Lee St. in Old Town Warrenton, Va., held its grand reopening on Friday, Oct. 9 (3-10 p.m.) and Saturday, Oct. 10 (11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.), nearly two years after a fire shut it down, FauquierNow and The MoCo Show reported.
Bureau sensors confirm the doors did, in fact, open. “Day one of our Warrenton Station Grand Re-Opening was incredible!” the taproom’s Instagram account posted on Oct. 10, in a post embedded on Silver Branch’s homepage.
Earthlings are stubborn about their gathering places. This one took 21 months to get back.
What closed Silver Branch Warrenton Station
An early-morning blaze on Dec. 23, 2024, caused severe damage to the kitchen and storage areas, per FauquierNow. Investigators eventually traced it to an “accidental catastrophic electrical event” in the ceiling of the adjoining Fletching Building, the outlet reported.
The brewery didn’t vanish completely in between. Silver Branch ran a summer pop-up outside the building this year while renovations continued, and its Warrenton page still thanks everyone “that joined us during the summer pop-up.” That page, as of this transmission, still reads “Re-opening Fall 2026.” Websites are the last organ to heal.
What’s new inside
In an Oct. 8 Instagram post shown on its homepage, the taproom promised “a brand-new kitchen, a new bar area, a refreshed taproom, and a patio that’s looking better than ever.” The reopening weekend paired Silver Branch beer with food from Mosaic Pizza, per The MoCo Show, which describes the lineup as lagers, Belgian-inspired ales, American craft beers and other styles.
The brewery’s Warrenton Station page lists these regular operating hours:
- Sunday-Thursday: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m.
- Friday-Saturday: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.
Several kitchen and front-of-house jobs were still posted on that page this weekend, so check before you trek in for a late pizza.
A short history of the Warrenton outpost
Christian Layke and Brett Robison founded Silver Branch in Maryland in March 2019, according to FauquierNow and the brewery’s own site. The company expanded to Old Town Warrenton in fall 2023, moving into the former Wort Hog Brewing building, per FauquierNow.
So the specimen got a little more than a year of normal life in Warrenton before the fire, then spent longer closed than it had been open. The humans came back anyway.
Where Silver Branch is headed next
Warrenton rejoins a small but growing network:
- Silver Spring, Md.: the original brewery at 8401 Colesville Road (The MoCo Show)
- Rockville, Md.: a taproom at 7301 Calhoun Place, opened last year in the former True Respite Brewing space (The MoCo Show)
- Leesburg, Va.: an outpost at Village at Leesburg, with plans to welcome guests by the end of the year (FauquierNow)
- Wheaton, Md.: in development (The MoCo Show)
The MoCo Show lists Wheaton and Leesburg together as locations in development without giving dates; only FauquierNow gives a year-end target for Leesburg. Neither outlet gives a Wheaton timeline, so this report doesn’t either.
Another comeback story on the Bureau’s radar: The Roadies Brewing’s return to Vista. Earth breweries, it turns out, are hard to keep down.
BEERALIEN.COM | Reporting on Earth’s finest craft beers from a galaxy far, far away.
BeerAlien
