Harris and Cheri Stewart started TrimTab Brewing in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2012 and officially opened the doors in 2014. They had lived in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by some of the finest craft beer in the country and a clientele that was loyal to local and excited about the regular beer happenings. When they moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for law school, it was a different scene.
“I was an avid homebrewer, but I hated life,” Harris Stewart says. “There was nothing to do in the city, and I didn’t know my place in life or have something to create and be inspired by. So we moved to Birmingham and started building things from there.” A devotee of the futurist and inventor Buckminster Fuller, Stewart took a famous quote from the man involving the trim tab, the small rudder that is a part of the larger rudder on massive ocean-going ships. This small piece is responsible for moving the big piece and therefore the whole thing.
“For me, seeing the craft-beer renaissance fifteen years ago affected me on a personal level,” Stewart says. “It’s amazing, the power that craft beer has. You get a real cross section of a community gathering for a common thing.”