The earliest documented commercial brewery in North Carolina was in the Moravian town of Bethabara in Wachovia.
[3] The Bethabara brewery operated longer than the Single Brother's Brewery in nearby Salem, NC In 1985, Uli Bennewitz pushed a change in the North Carolina law books.
The next year (1986) Bennewitz opened NC's first brewpub, Weeping Radish Bavarian Restaurant.
On August 13, 2005, House Bill 392 from the NC General Assembly was signed by then-Governor Mike Easley.
HB 392 (commonly known as the "Pop The Cap" Bill[4] ) defined a "malt beverage" as any "beer, lager, malt liquor, ale, porter, and any other brewed or fermented beverage" that contained between .5% and 16% alcohol by volume.