- When best friends Bubba Summerlin and Tim Jackson retired from their demanding jobs, they quickly grew restless, and when they looked around their hometown of Washington, they realized it needed something too.

And so was born Two Rivers Alehouse, a brewery with a friendly vibe, great food, and of course, craft beer.

[bright upbeat music] - Number one, friendly people, the waterfront, you know, it's a boating community and just the downtown businesses, everybody is so super nice.

When we opened, we got gift baskets from other businesses here on Main Street.

You know, welcome us to the family, basically.

- You know, everybody speaks to you, you know, when you're walking down the street and just friendly folks.

- You know, if you want to fish or go crabbing or do some boating and some water activities.

It's just a really cool town.

It's just fun.

[upbeat music continues] - Tim and I met, we were probably 11, 12 years old.

We grew up in a small town and we've been friends ever since.

And we kept watching the downtown area and we wanted to be a part of this development.

And so we didn't want to open a type of business that was already here.

So we decided on a brewery.

- We started going around the different craft brewers and we tasted different beers and kind of felt like this is something that we do enjoy.

And then we just decided to pull the trigger and here we are.

- Well, in 2021, everything was shut down with COVID and Washington had the whole Main Street area here shut down.

They were doing a new street-scape.

And so when they opened up the street-scape, it was about the same time that all the bars and restaurants were allowed back to full capacity.

And we opened about 30 days after that.

And so from that time forward, people have just come and come and come and they're like, "We're so thankful y'all opened when you did.

There was nothing like this in Washington."

And Washington is on a rise.

It's just so many people moving here from across the state.

- It's a great vibe.

You know, they did a great job renovating it.

- We put the floors in ourself.

The light fixtures came from a remodeled building in DC.

We are very similar to the lights on the White House.

We got a clock hanging on the wall.

That's a 1890s Lenzkirch, along with the collection of antique steins.

[lively music] We are the only brewery here in Washington that brews here on site.

- Obviously with our name being Alehouse, you know, with some ales, you know, red ales, brown ales, blonde ales, then some IPAs.

- Oh, the Castle Island IPA, it's a pineapple made with citrus.

It's been one of our most popular beers since Tim brewed it probably six months ago.

And it's just a hit.

- So today I've got the Melon on Main.

It's a watermelon puree.

It's just a white refreshing, it's a wheat beer, you know, it just really helps you just enjoy the day.

- I've got one in my mind that I want to create, and get Tim to brew for me.

But we'll see.

I may have to pay for the ingredients because in case it's not great, so we'll see.

- We sell our craft beers for $4.95 and we have people coming in across the state from other breweries that's visiting Washington saying, "Y'all need to raise your prices."

But we feel like $4.95 is a good price for customers.

And it works for us.

It works for them.

- Look, if you're looking at a microbrew and you want to pay under eight bucks, I mean it's like $4.95, you can't beat it.

[upbeat music continues] - [Bubba] We do six different slushies at a time.

We have six different machines that vary in flavors.

We make 'em from wine, from Prosecco, Seltzer.

So it's a varied flavor profile in our slushes as well.

- And the food's amazing.

I mean, we just finished a flatbread pizza and the pretzel basket.

- We do charcuterie board.

You get a choice of meats and cheeses, you know, your mustards, your jams, crackers, nuts, things like that.

We do a crabby pretzel, which is pretzel sticks with the crab dip that we use on top of it, we do what we call big dippers, which is a bread bowl filled with any one of our six dips that you can put in it from, you know, lobster to a buffalo dip.

- The pretzels, ginormous.

- We've had people that's come in and say, "Hey, I'm gonna get a beer."

We got reservations at a restaurant and they eat an appetizer here and they stay.

They say, "We're cool.

We can't go eat anywhere else."

♪ Oh oh oh oh ♪ - We have a good crowd of locals, of loyal customers who love coming in here.

And then we get people from out of town that are coming in to stay in an Airbnb for the weekend.

And we've had people come in saying, "Hey, we've seen articles about you guys.

We've seen y'all featured places, and we come to town to check out Two Rivers."

- [Deborah] Two Rivers Alehouse is at 186 West Main Street in Washington and they're open Wednesday through Sunday.

Get in touch by calling [252] 339-5245 or check out their menu at tworiversalehouse.com.