Fullsteam Stopped Brewing in Durham. It Brought the Taps to the Smokestack.

"That's Officer Big Mac," Sean Lilly Wilson told The News & Observer, pointing up at a giant hamburger head hanging from the ceiling of his new taproom. "We had to have that."

The hamburger hangs over a room that would have been hard to picture on Rigsbee Avenue. Fullsteam began pouring beer at its American Tobacco Campus location on Tuesday, Sept. 29, and the kitchen opened the next day. The space fills the campus's old power plant, between the water tower and the Lucky Strike smokestack. The boiler room's original machinery is still there, held together by bolts the size of a palm. A wall of pinball machines and jars of toasted North Carolina malt share the room with dirt-worn baseballs.

One machine is absent: a brewhouse. The Fullsteam that reopened in Durham doesn't make beer here, and that single change explains almost everything else about the new place.

The beer now arrives from an hour east

At Rigsbee, the beer was made on site. At ATC, the brewery is only a taproom. Fullsteam brews its beers at a facility in Rocky Mount and contract brews at the NoDa brewery in Charlotte. The company's FAQ is plain about why. "We couldn't figure out a logical place to brew beer in the space," it says. The small-batch beverages are made at the Rocky Mount facility, about an hour east of Durham.

The reasons for leaving Rigsbee came out more than two years ago. In July 2024, Wilson told WRAL that production and distribution had outgrown the building. He also cited shortcomings in the HVAC, parking, kitchen, private-event space and outdoor seating, plus a landlord-proposed rent increase he called untenable for a manufacturing business. The Rigsbee kitchen served its last food on July 31, 2024. The taproom's final public day was Halloween that year, and the building was kept for production until the lease ran out in June 2025.

Something did make the trip across downtown. The 22-tap bar system from Rigsbee is now at ATC. It pours Fullsteam's core and small-batch beers alongside a new cider line called Wyndfall Grove, wine, non-alcoholic options and a full bar of local and North Carolina spirits.

Freed from the brewhouse, the building became a different kind of room

If you went to Rigsbee in summer, you remember the barn door pushed open and a giant fan stirring the heat. The N&O put it this way: "only the beer could beat the heat." The ATC space has air conditioning, a dining room and tile-backed draft pulls. It also has Lucky's Lounge, a back room with low ceilings and neon lightning bolts that looks like a 1970s basement bar.

Behind that is a room Durham already knows. Fullsteam has taken over the 100-seat theater once run by Duke's Center for Documentary Studies. The FAQ lists screenings, live performances, readings and sports as the plan for it. The theater has also been available to rent for panels, rehearsals and meetings.

The fall calendar is already using it. Astronomy on Tap is set for the theater on Tuesday, Oct. 6, and again on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Weekly Trivia with Arturo starts Thursday, Oct. 8, in the Public House instead of the theater. No movie-night titles or sports watch parties have been announced yet.

Wilson has called the site Fullsteam's "Durham forever home." He has tied the move to the brewery's connection with the Durham Bulls and to the idea of a community gathering spot on what he calls Durham's "front porch." WRAL's Sean Lennard used the same phrase in his opening-week column, describing the place as "the unofficial front porch for the city of Durham."

A kitchen built around Phoebe Lawless

The new kitchen may matter most to anyone who has been eating in Durham for a while. Fullsteam hired Phoebe Lawless as Director of Food, Beverage & Hospitality. Her history here goes back years. She started by selling pies at the Durham Farmers Market and opened Scratch Bakery downtown in 2010. Scratch and her later restaurant, The Lakewood, both closed in 2018. This is her new kitchen in the city where she made her name.

"Fullsteam definitely has a Southern sensibility with the scope and style of its beers," Lawless told the N&O. The FAQ describes the food as classic American pub fare with seasonal Southern touches and more pickling and fermentation. It also says there's no pizza at ATC. That lives at Fullsteam's Boxyard RTP location.

Fullsteam's website now posts a "current" ATC menu, and these dishes are on it:

• Pub House Burger with Ashe County cheddar, raw onion, pickle chips and Stoker Sauce
• Crispy fried trout
• Collard melt
• Apple-muscadine pie, a likely nod to the pie stand where Lawless got her start

The site lists tavern hours of noon to 11 p.m. daily and kitchen hours of 4 to 9 p.m., seven days a week. It notes that kitchen hours may expand, so check before planning a late lunch.

The beer itself is moving toward lagers

Fullsteam reopens while craft beer is contracting. The N&O notes closures and falling consumption and production, with several Triangle breweries shutting down. Wilson sees drinkers moving away from double IPAs and imperial stouts and toward classic styles, especially lagers.

"I call it returning to Earth. When we first opened, half of our beers were lagers. I think there's a lot of people who are going away from extreme flavors into lagers and traditional styles. We're sort of waving our hands and saying, 'Hey, like, we're over here, been doing that for 16 years.'"

Moving production to Rocky Mount hasn't changed where the grain comes from. Wilson says almost every beer brewed there uses 100% North Carolina barley, and Fullsteam's Oktoberfest recently won a Good Food Award as the first "regenerative" beer. The brewing left Durham. The sourcing is the same.

A taproom at the base of the smokestack sits on the fall calendar

A Rigsbee taproom was somewhere you went on purpose. A taproom in the middle of the American Tobacco Campus, beside the stream and between the two main buildings, sits next to some of downtown's busiest fall events. Here's what's coming within walking distance of the smokestack:

1. Bull City Race Fest + Expo, Oct. 17–18. The expo opens at 8 a.m. Saturday at The Patio, 705 Willard St. On Sunday, the half marathon starts at 7:25 a.m. and the 5K at 7:40 a.m., both starting and finishing on Blackwell Street. A party follows and wraps up at noon. Expect a crowded campus on Sunday morning, long before the tavern opens at noon.
2. Durham FRINGE Festival, Oct. 29–Nov. 8. Opening night is Oct. 29. The festival then runs Oct. 30 through Nov. 8 at more than 20 downtown venues.
3. Astronomy on Tap, Nov. 3. The second fall session in Fullsteam's theater.
4. FestiBull of Lights, Nov. 19–Jan. 2. Durham Bulls Athletic Park becomes a light display with music, Santa, the NC by Train Holiday Express and s'mores. It's open 5:30 to 9 p.m. nightly except Nov. 26, Nov. 30, Dec. 7, Dec. 14 and Dec. 25.

The kitchen's 9 p.m. close lines up with FestiBull's 9 p.m. close. A December evening can include dinner from the Lawless menu before the lights, then a lager in Lucky's Lounge after the stadium empties, without moving the car.

That's the real change on the map. Durham's best-known brewery gave up brewing in Durham and got a power plant, a theater, a chef with deep local roots, and a spot a short walk from the ballpark. Beer still comes out of the same 22 taps.

If the new Fullsteam has you thinking about which parts of Durham put the American Tobacco Campus within an easy walk, Brooke Gelhaus knows the streets between the smokestack and the rest of the Triangle and is glad to talk them through with you. Let's Connect.