Cheers

Beloved by students and families alike, Circle and Square microbrewery is at home in Oxford.

Written by Eugene Stockstill | Photographed by Joe Worthem

The beer is flowing at Ole Miss and across Oxford, and some of the busiest taps are at Circle and Square Brewing. The first microbrewery in Oxford and one of only three in north Mississippi, Circle and Square opened last August, days before the first football game of the season.

“There’s always room to grow,” managing partner Taylor Webb said, but on an average day, hundreds cross the brewery’s threshold. “Most of the people that come in are repeat customers.”

The groovy-looking place, located at 100 Depot Street, opens at 7 a.m. every day except for Sunday (when it opens at 9 a.m.) and closes at 7 p.m. Sunday, at 9 p.m. Monday-Wednesday and at 10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday.

Inside, there’s plenty of fresh red and blue paint, along with a weathered appearance that gives the premises a lived-in look.

Webb and fellow Ole Miss grad Sumner Abraham (two friends who happen to be married to sisters) hatched the whole idea before the COVID-19 pandemic. Webb and his family would visit the Abrahams in Charlottesville, Virginia, a city that’s chockablock with local breweries, and the friends started noticing the large number of young families that frequented them.

“It’s easy to fit a bunch of people with strollers” into a brewery, Webb said, and the friends started wondering about the obvious: “Why does Oxford not have a brewery?”

(Note: the reason has something to do with the long and complicated history of alcohol laws in the state, county and city; see page 46 for a brief history on that.)

Fast-forward beyond Webb and Abraham’s simple query. The two teamed up with another Oxford graduate (John Adrian) and a professor at the university’s Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence (Rick Hollander), then made contact with Joel Weyenberg, a brewer at one of the biggest breweries in the country, Summit Brewing in St. Paul, Minnesota.

After Weyenberg’s visits to the Deep South and the purchase of some property near the city’s walking trail (part of which Ole Miss used to own), the team began overseeing construction in February 2023 and opened the new brewery’s doors six months later. Along the way, they cold-called yet another Ole Miss alum (Micah Whitson), a graphic designer who has created everything from the company’s website to the design of the beer cans.

Once things started to fall into place, Webb said, “it all moved lightning fast.”

The building that houses Circle and Square used to be the home of Better Brands, a beer distributor. It went up for auction once, did not sell, then went up for sale again, and the creative minds behind the idea of a local brewery snatched it up. The university later sold to the business a small piece of land connected to it.

The team points to Oxford itself for answering another important question: Why would a brewer at one of the nation’s largest breweries relocate to Lafayette County? The answer, Webb said, may have something to do with the fact that the first time Weyenberg visited Oxford, Texas A&M was in town for a football game.

“The atmosphere that day was unbelievable,” Webb said. “The city does a really good job selling itself to people.”

Weyenberg was also likely attracted by the prospect of being something of a pioneer in craft brewing in a place that was just beginning to catch up with a trend that started decades ago in much of the country.

A microbrewery is legally defined as an establishment that brews up to 3,000 barrels of beer on-site and sells up to 80% of the stuff in the shop. Mississippi doesn’t have many microbreweries. In north Mississippi, there’s also 1817 Brewery in Okolona and Mississippi Ale Hale in Olive Branch.

So, it seems the founders of Circle and Square have reason to be proud.

Beer connoisseurs who have yet to visit Circle and Square can expect “your simple, classic beer styles, traditional German stuff,” according to Webb. He said they weren’t looking to create brews with swanky flavors and spices, rather the focus was on this: “How do we make something that satisfies us but is also palatable for 65,000 fans?”

Currently, there are at least seven different varieties of home brew to choose from (including Hill Country Cream Ale and Heated Debate Bock Beer). And yet, beer is not the only thing patrons are flocking to Circle and Square to try.

Also on tap are: full breakfast and lunch/dinner menus developed by Corban Evans of Oxford Canteen fame; craft cocktails provided by Bar Muse at The Lyric Oxford; and coffee ground in Laurel at Manuscript Coffee Roasters (a friend of Webb’s wife started the business). Coffee and breakfast are hits among students throughout the week, Webb said.

In fact, the biggest shock since opening? “It was a surprise how much of our business is food sales,” Webb said.

Alcohol in Mississippi

There’s no better place to begin a brief history of alcohol in Mississippi than with an extended quote from that astonishing piece of oratory, “The Whiskey Speech,” given in April 1952 by a young state legislator named Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat Jr.

“If when you say ‘whiskey’ you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children ... then certainly I am against it. But if when you say ‘whiskey’ you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips ... if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars. ... then certainly I am for it.”

In previous generations, that sort of thinking was considered abnormal in the Magnolia State. But research Mississippi’s history of alcohol and you’ll also find a curious mishmash of bootlegging, socially accepted refreshment, teetotalism, imprisonment and effigy-burning. (Consider the irony that in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” everybody swills during an era when alcohol was 100% illegal in Mississippi.)

This state’s official hatred of all things related to alcohol dates to at least the early 1800s, when temperance movements first surfaced. One 19th-century preacher referred to alcohol as the “public and dreaded evil.” Mississippi passed dozens of temperance laws in the 1800s and in 1908 became the first state to pass some form of prohibition, a decade before the 18th Amendment became the law of the land.

Here is a quick timeline of some of the things that had to happen in order for Circle and Square Brewing, Oxford’s first and only microbrewery, to open last year.

1966: A big change takes place, as Mississippi becomes the last state in the country to repeal Prohibition.

1973: Oxford passes a referendum permitting the sale of light wine and beer (no more than 4% alcohol by weight) in the city, as recorded in the City of Oxford’s Minute Book No. 27.

2007: The University of Mississippi lifts its official no-alcohol policy, though with restrictions related to substance abuse.

2012: Beer with more than 5% alcohol by weight (that’s 6.335% by volume) becomes legal in the state. The beer made at Circle and Square is 8% alcohol by weight (10.136% by volume).

2021: A state law goes into effect that allows alcohol possession throughout Mississippi. The law, however, does not legalize sales across the state. That decision must be made by voters from county to county. That same year, another state law passes that includes microbreweries as a separate manufacturing category.

In Mississippi, the Department of Revenue tends to beer, light wine and light spirits, while the Department of Alcohol Beverage Control oversees all other liquor. If you consult the Department of Revenue’s website, you will find a map that identifies wet and dry counties and municipalities. Hard liquor is legal in Lafayette County, according to the map, but beer is illegal, while all alcohol is legal in Oxford.

Also of note, Mississippi does not allow self-distribution of alcohol. Clark Beverage Group Inc. in New Albany is Circle and Square Brewing’s distributor.