Sons of Cambridge: RAR Brewing

Please welcome Andy MacWilliams back to the site.

Right about the time Bay Bridge traffic has ceased and just before beach traffic into Ocean City starts to pick up, you’ll cross the Choptank River on the Frederick C. Malkus bridge and enter the city of Cambridge, Maryland. Founded in 1684, Cambridge is one of the oldest colonial towns in Maryland. Steeped in history, it is also the birthplace and operating area for Araminta Ross, better known as Harriet Tubman. In the late 19^th century, the city saw a boom, thanks to the Phillips Packing Company and the canning of locally harvested oysters, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes. When the plant closed in the 1960’s, the city started to decline. By the mid-2000’s, Cambridge looked like any number of decaying water towns on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake.

Assistant City Manager Brandon Hesson has worked in and for the city of Cambridge for more than a decade. He grew up in Easton, Maryland just a few miles up Route 50. He fondly remembers the old pool hall in Cambridge, an institution throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s and a multi-generational hang out spot that closed in 2013. That same year, ReAle Revival Brewing (later shortened to RAR) moved into the 4,300 square foot facility.

“Before RAR, you could have laid in the middle of Poplar Street for a nap and not get run over,” Hesson jokes. While there were just a few vacant store fronts in Cambridge at that time, many businesses were small and struggling in a shrinking local economy. “The RAR guys were different. They weren’t retirees opening boutiques. They intended to support young families through this brewery.” In 2014, as foot traffic in Cambridge was declining, Hesson joined the city government as the Executive Director of Cambridge Main Street. “Success caught the RAR team by surprise,” Hesson remembers, “and the city by surprise some too.” The brewery began attracting a younger crowd. Known as Groove City in the middle of the 20th century thanks to a rich history of Black jazz, R&B, and soul performers on Pine Street, that moniker now graces a music and cultural fest, inaugurated in 2018. “RAR [helped create] a new economic ecosystem in Cambridge. They helped make it feel like downtown again,” says Hesson.

RAR owner and founder Chris Brohawn sits down at my table with a pint of very starchy looking IPA. No doubt it’s one of RAR’s hop saturated ales (HSAs) that have been rolling out weekly over the last year. Brohawn is younger than I imagined and sinewy, like a grown up skateboarder. As a kid on Locus Street in Cambridge, Brohawn lived just blocks from the pool hall space at 504 Poplar Street that the brewery occupies today. He fondly recalls stopping by the pool hall, known as the Cambridge Rec Centre, on sunny days for hot dogs and fountain Cokes over crushed ice. As an adult, he got a Mr. Beer homebrew kit, but quickly ditched it for a higher end set up. “I don’t take steps… I go all-in on things,” Brohawn jokes. For a while, he worked on a few recipes with a group on a set up in the back of a local restaurant. Two of the first beers he ever produced on the amateur system were Bucktown Brown and Nanticoke Nectar. Both are still regulars on the RAR menu today.

Brohawn, an electrician by trade, worked up a simple business plan to start a brewery. A family friend read through it, believed in both Brohawn and the initial beers and offered seed capital, used to secure a small business loan from Dorchester County. Quickly ReAle Revival Brewing was ready to move from the plastic Mr. Beer barrel to brick and mortar. “The pool hall was the anchor downtown,” Brohawn recalls. “It was open every single day of the year and everyone would go in. Kids. Plumbers. The mayor.” Opening a brewery in Maryland in the mid 2010’s in a historic building is no small feat though. “Construction and building out in historic Cambridge requires extra work and additional permitting,” Hesson notes. “RAR has done everything the city has ever asked of them.” Brohawn continues, “the city has always gone out of their way to support us too.”

Early commercial batches were contract brewed at DOG brewing and RAR wasn’t able to can until 2015. Often those products were hand labeled. Though Kelly Distributors was an early partner for RAR, most of the early batches were sold over the bar and to locals. Hazy IPA had caught fire across the US market and for RAR, early versions of Pulp, Hyde, and Reaper would sell out in 30 minutes of opening. 

Toby Donovan, RAR’s Director of Marketing joins us. Donovan and Brohawn graduated high school together and have plenty of shared history. “We have fun doing this,” Donovan explains, “but we didn’t want to just ride our success. It was always foot on the pedal.” In the beginning, the brewery had no kitchen to speak of. Most of the food was something that could be prepared in a walk-in closet just to the side of the bar including the pool hall dogs, still on the menu today. “When we first moved in, we found the old hotdog steamer abandoned in the back,” Brohawn tells me. “I rebuilt it by hand, and it’s been making dogs for us ever since.”

Over the ensuing decade, RAR continued to build out on Poplar Street. The success of their limited releases, including the popular Out of Order series, made it possible to open the LabRARatory in the space immediately adjacent to the brewery at 502 Poplar in November of 2021. “Nobody comes to Cambridge just for beer, which forces us to focus on service,” Brohawn notes. Chessie Burger at 506 Poplar Street opened in 2022 with a commercial kitchen. Whether it’s the food, or the beer, or the innovative cocktail menu (which includes non-alcoholic options), Brohawn says, “we always want the customer to be surprised.” The hospitality still maintains a local focus too. As Brohawn tells it, the burger buns are custom made by a bakery out on Route 50 where, as an electrician, he would buy donuts for a job site.

Surprised is certainly what a beer drinker will be the first time they crack a can from RAR’s Out of Order series. Crowlers from Richmond’s The Answer were the inspiration for the series, though the idea for the initial recipe came from another source. “I first thought up Blue Milk while at Disney waiting for a Star Wars ride,” Brohawn remembers. Blue Milk, also known as Bantha Milk, is a beloved beverage in the Star Wars canon. Since then, the recipe book has remained personal. “Now, I get to lay out an idea for the three guys I’m friends with and produce it,” Brohawn adds. Donovan quickly jumps in, “and we’re really in stride right now.” The worst Out of Order ever made? Brohawn and Donovan think for a second and smile at each other, “that bacon one” they say together.

But why Out of Order? Because it’s a homage to Cambridge. As Brohawn tells it, he spent afternoons and weekends outside playing on the Cambridge playgrounds as a kid. After a physical game of basketball or football or capture the flag, they would cross the street to the convenience store to buy Slush Puppies. The kids’ favorite flavors would always be sold out and marked with a yellow stick note that said, “Out of Order.” The RAR team has given the iconic puppy logo their own spin over the many batches, but often you’ll notice the puppy has a black eye, bloody nose or fat lip since that’s how Brohawn remembers he and his friends would look after their time on the courts.

Brohawn, Donovan, and Hesson have stories for days. There were raucous music festivals. Countless holiday markets. The ice cream truck that did impromptu beer drops. There was the 2015 IRONMAN that got rained out where nearly all the athletes took refuge at the bar. There was the tricycle race to secure a tap line for 12 months at Max’s in Baltimore (Brohawn trained extensively and won). “We’ll get back to the festivals,” Brohawn says with a smile, “I miss winging it.”

Nowadays, RAR predates nearly all of the businesses downtown and is the biggest employer on the strip. One hundred and fifteen employees serving burgers and cocktails and beer. 22,000 barrels are produced annually and given the size of the brewing system, that often requires four mashes in a single day. There is a Chessie Burger and RAR taproom in Annapolis now. A university-inspired tap room opened in Salisbury, Maryland, home of University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, earlier this summer. There’s The Dive Club at 501 Poplar, a tiki-inspired lounge, immediately across the street. RAR is opening a crab house with their branding in the old Snapper’s in 2027 a few blocks away on Cambridge Creek. “The spotlight is inching closer and closer,” Donovan says. When asked about moving into a larger space and expanding into other markets, Brohawn takes a sip of his RAR Lite with a lime wedge and says, “there is not enough time in my lifetime to blanket even Maryland. Sure, we could do this anywhere, but you couldn’t drag me out of Cambridge.”

Brohawn and RAR are getting back to the festivals, but they won’t be winging it, nor will you need to drag them. Groove City Hefeweizen might not be at Snallygaster on Oct 10, 2026, but an Out of Order smoothie sour and a hazy IPA will be.