4.2 🍺 above average
Putting the Kush Back in Beer
Visitors to the sleepy riverside town of Williamsport, MD, (pop. 2,090) would be surprised to know it was once on the short list of sites for the nation’s capital. (The mouth of the Monocacy and Georgetown were the others.) Situated at the halfway point along the 184-mile Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, between Cumberland and Georgetown, it was a thriving nexus of 19th-century commerce during the golden age of canals. Canal barges loaded with coal were off-loaded at a large basin at the edge of town for transport downstream to D.C. or via rail to Baltimore. Named after Victor Cushwa, a prominent Williamsport industrialist, the Cushwa Basin offered one of the few locations along the canal that was large enough for 90-foot canal barges to turn around. Today, the basin is a tourism site and the inspiration for one of Maryland’s most successful craft brewers.
Cushwa Brewing Co. is the creation of three local homebrewers: Marcus Thomas and Scott Coleman, originally from Greencastle, PA, and Garrett Chambers of Boonsboro, MD. When they opened the brewery in January 2017, only one brewery (Antietam in Hagerstown) existed in Washington County. Williamsport seemed like a good location, and the Cushwa connection offered an ideal branding opportunity.
The Cushwa Warehouse at the edge of the basin is probably the most recognizable structure in Williamsport, a living reminder of the town’s Canal Age legacy. The name itself is a curious Anglicization of the family’s original French surname of Cauchois, but in modern vernacular it calls to mind one of the most recognizable and high-octane strains of Cannabis: Hindu Kush or simply Kush. The brewery’s dank flagship IPA, Cush (6.5% ABV), might have been considered high-octane 20 years ago, but today is merely “crushable.” Hyping hops’ kinship with weed is a long-standing practice among craft brewers, but few have done it as memorably as Cushwa, which also brews Joint (7%), Blunt (8.2%), and Dank Pursuit (8%)—all hazy IPAs.
It was the hazy IPA, after all, that propelled Cushwa to prominence shortly after it opened in 2017, one year after the haze explosion rumbled out of New England and found fertile ground down the East Coast to Florida. In 2016, only one brewery in the D.C.-Baltimore area was consistently producing a cloudy, juicy, hoppy, pillowy beer: Aslin Beer Co. in Herndon, VA. A year later, Adroit Theory in Purcellville, VA, and Cushwa joined the haze parade with their own interpretations.
At a time when breweries everywhere were racing to perfect the new style of hoppy beer, Cushwa got a head start when Coleman made a connection with Chambers on Untappd. Chambers, who had been brewing New England-style IPAs at Four Quarters Brewing Co. in the Burlington, VT, suburb of Winooski, brought a hands-on knowledge of the style to Maryland. After finding affordable rent and ideal infrastructure barely 100 yards from I-81 in the Bowman Business Park, Cushwa was off and running.
The brewery’s initial taproom was modest sized, but always seemed to be packed. Aside from the beer, the thing I remember most vividly was the high energy level of the room. Every conversation seemed enthusiastic and animated with an intensity that was constantly percolating, but never boiled over into shouting or rowdiness. It was the same exhilarating vibe I had encountered wherever juicy, hazy IPAs were on tap in those early years.
With the arrival of covid in 2020, Cushwa was able to weather the epidemic better than most craft breweries. They had installed a new canning line just two weeks before the governor shut everything down and were able to make a quick pivot to retail sales. By May, Cushwa had moved to a much larger warehouse space at the back of the business park that allowed them to increase production, more easily accommodate social distancing demands, and house a new business partner: Rad Pies.
Brick oven pizza has become an increasingly important component of many successful taphouses, but with Rad Pies, Cushwa has taken it to the next level. Rather than starting from scratch, the brewery teamed up Kenneth MacFawn and Chris Hubbard, owners of Frederick’s White Rabbit Gastropub, to create Rad Pies, a separate business entity housed within Cushwa’s expansive warehouse. White Rabbit had already carved out a culinary niche for its Detroit-style pizza, a rectangular-shaped pie featuring a thick, chewy focaccia-like crust. Rad Pies has expanded on that expertise with a couple of deep-dish specialties of its own, including its award-winning “In Crust We Trust,” a pepperoni-topped pie that took first place in 2022 in the pan pizza category at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. Rad Pies’ take on the style includes pepperoni baked into the outer crust and a world-class “frico,” the caramelized cheese wall that builds up around the edge of the pie. Midwesterners will love it, but if you’re more attuned to the thin-crust style that is more the norm in Maryland, Rad Pies has one of the most creative line-ups of traditional pizza I’ve encountered anywhere—not just in taphouses. The 16 varieties on offer during my last visit ranged from the deliciously novel “Big Mac” (a flattened-out version of McDonald’s signature burger) to the gourmet-like “47 East 3rd” (smoked, cured Italian speck ham surrounded by mushrooms, mozzarella, roasted garlic cream and Portovenere truffle cheese, and topped with baby arugula, olive oil, and parmesan).Those with dietary restrictions can opt for vegan cheese for an extra $4.50 or gluten-free dough for $5.50 more.
The evolution of the thirst-quenching fruited kettle sours and goses to the uber-filling, one-is-enough smoothie sour, or dessert beer, was craft brewing’s last hurrah of disruption innovation. Characterized by a pulpy abundance of unfermented fruit, confectionary sweeteners like lactose and vanilla, and anything-goes adjuncts, smoothie sours provoked scorn and delight in equal measure. Early adopters here in the mid-Atlantic included such respected breweries as The Answer in Richmond, Tired Hands and Imprint in Pennsylvania, and Burley Oak and RAR on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The rest of Maryland had to wait until 2020, when Cushwa introduced its line of Electrofruit sours.
Thick, heavily fruited, semi-sweet, and intensely flavored, Electrofruit rose to the top of the smoothie sour heap during covid times. At retail outlets, each new release became as enthusiastically received as the brewery’s hazies; at the Cushwa taphouse, rarely were fewer than three or four varieties available at any given time. But their popularity also had a down side: When retailers and consumers didn’t keep the beers sufficiently chilled, the unfermented fruit re-fermented the beer, producing foam volcanoes when opened and the occasional “exploding” can. While many smoothie sour producers soldiered on or began pasteurizing their sours, Cushwa was quick to recall its Electrofruit cans from retailers’ shelves and confine sales to its taphouse, where they could maintain tight control over storage temperatures. Sales of smoothie sours have declined somewhat, but a loyal fan base continues to champion the sweet and sour treats. Taphouse patrons in Williamsport can still depend on one or two Electrofruits on the menu.
With so much history and local landmarks at Cushwa’s doorstep, one might expect the brewery to embrace this heritage with beers like Canal Barge Brown Ale or Potomac Pilsner. But that would seriously underestimate the creativity of the brewery’s brain trust. These guys don’t just come up with names for their beers, they invent concepts. Consider the brewery’s signature imperial IPA, Face Chop (8.2%), which employs can art that suggests the cleaving of a human face with a well-placed karate chop. Or Future You Hates You, named for the self-loathing that often accompanies a hangover.
Millennials are often characterized as embracing irony as a coping mechanism for the anxiety of a post-9/11, late-capitalism world. Few beers reflect this generational angst better than Cushwa’s Thrill of Confusion (a 6% hazy), Broken Resolutions (a 7% NEIPA), and Unintended Consequences (an 8.1% imperial IPA). Paradoxes are also celebrated: Falling Upwards (an 11% imperial stout), Delusions of Virtue (an 8% DIPA), and False Dichotomy (a 6.2% New England IPA).
Non-beer drinkers have plenty of options, including a half dozen classic cocktails, a dozen seasonal cocktails, six Stateside and Cutwater canned cocktails, and a couple of NA mocktails; four wine varietals by the glass or bottle; three Nutrl seltzers; five bourbons by the shot; and two slushies (Cookies & Cream and Pistachio Almond Macaron, when I visited).
Never resting on its laurels, Cushwa continues to grow and adapt to an increasingly competitive environment. While all seasonal and occasional releases continue to be packaged in pint-sized four-packs, Cushwa has repackaged its core beers in 12-oz six-packs and rebranded them with a consistent graphic redesign. Another way to stay competitive was to expand distribution and production to central Maryland. In the summer of 2023, the Cushwa and Rad Pies Taproom opened at the site of the former multi-tap Frisco Grill in Columbia, MD. The facility takes advantage of Frisco’s multi-tap infrastructure by offering 44 taps, including guest beers, but all of the Cushwa beers are brewed in Williamsport and trucked to Columbia. The new Rad Pies kitchen is twice the size of the one in Williamsport and offers a more extensive menu of non-pizza items.
With Cushwa’s expansion to Columbia, some of the best beer brewed in Maryland—fresh on tap—is now less than an hour away for the vast majority of beer drinkers in western and central Maryland.
Fans of apocalyptic horror can look forward to “Project Boozehounds” a 50-60 page graphic novel written by longtime bartender Jordan Smith. Copies should be available at the brewery and other select locations sometime in October, 2025.
CUSHWA BREWING CO.
10210 Governor Lane Blvd.
#2010
Williamsport, MD 21795
OPEN
Monday – Thursday: noon – 9 pm
Friday – Saturday: noon – 10 pm
Sunday: noon – 8 pm
NUMBER OF TAPS
16
AVERAGE ABV
5.9%
CAN & BOTTLE POURS
12
SPECIALTIES
Nitro tap
CANS TO GO
27 selections
OTHER ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
2 slushies
16 specialty house cocktails
6 canned cocktails
2 mocktails
4 wine varietals (by bottle or glass)
3 seltzers (Nutrl)
5 bourbons (by the shot)
1 cider tap
NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
2 specialty house mocktails
Jarritos sodas, Gatorade, root beer
FOOD (Rad Pies)
14 thin-crust pizzas
4 thick-crust Detroit-style pan pizzas
salads, sandwiches, cheesy bread
4 desserts
(opens and closes an hour before taphouse)
PARKING
Ample parking along back of industrial park
CUSHWA & RAD PIES TAPROOM
6695 Dobbin Rd.
Suite G
Columbia, MD 21045
OPEN
Everyday: 11 am — 10 pm
NUMBER OF TAPS
30 Cushwa taps
9 guest taps
AVERAGE ABV
6.2%
NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
3 NA IPAs
FOOD
16 pizzas
salads, sandwiches, cheesy bread
4 desserts
(opens and closes an hour before taphouse)
Soups, salads, sandwiches, small plates, and desserts
PARKING
Ample parking in front and side of building