food | In the Kitchen
DIFFERENT TASTES ON TAP Eridanus Brewing offers tea, alcohol in Russell Story Dawn Nolan | Photography Shannon Shank
J
ustin and Kristen Matthews are both brewers — just not in the same way. Justin is the beer guy, while Kristen’s specialty is teas. But together, the husband and wife team have opened Eridanus Brewing, a unique combination tea and tap house in a historic train depot in Russell, Kentucky. “I was just thinking one day, and I said to Justin, ‘How funny is it that we’re both brewers? You brew beer, and I brew tea. What do you think about us combining the two things?’” “There are very few places that call themselves tea houses in the United States. How cool would it be to be a tea AND tap house? Because it’s unfortunate if you’re not someone who likes alcohol or beer, and you go to a space, and you’re left with drinking either sweet tea or soda,” Kristen said. “I thought it would be cool to have a handcrafted beverage that was special no matter what you chose. So, everything we pour and every menu item that we have is all handcrafted.”
58 | Tri-StateLiving
Kristen is a native of Ashland, Kentucky. She has a marketing background and had been helping at Dragonfly Outdoor Adventures and Dragonfly Outdoor Cafe, her parents’ business, prior to opening Eridanus. She’s a certified yoga teacher and has had a lifelong interest in holistic remedies, selling her line of herbal products — branded as Appalachian Folkology — locally and on Etsy. Justin, a Bluefield, West Virginia native, works at the Center for Business and Economic Research at Marshall University, his and Kristen’s alma mater. He had been homebrewing for more than a decade before he and Kristen opened Eridanus. While he had dreamed of opening a brewery for a long time, and had even been doing the groundwork of making
