The thirst is over for Craft and Draft Irmo patrons

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The thirst has been quenched in Irmo.

Popular downtown tap room and bottle shop Craft and Draft is now open for business at its second location at 7583 St. Andrews Road in the Irmo Village Shopping Center. The shop held a soft opening on Jan. 11, and the buzz quickly spread.

Patrons packed 7,000-square-foot space, roughly quadruple the size of Craft and Draft’s original Devine Street home, for two days of weekend business. Customers bellied up to the bar for snapshots to share on Instagram and beer-drinking app Untappd, especially on Saturday, said co-owner Andrew Johnson.

“People just kept coming in the door,” he said.

Johnson was back at the shop on Sunday afternoon, checking that a strong thunderstorm that blew through the area the previous night did no damage. (Everything, including the massive chandelier in the large event space at the back of the bar, was intact.)

Craft and Draft Irmo will be open Tuesday through Saturday to start, Johnson said, with Sunday hours kicking off with a Super Bowl party Feb. 2.

While relieved that Craft and Draft’s second location is finally open, Johnson said he and co-owner Kellan Monroe haven’t had much time to celebrate. While construction had been ongoing at the Irmo location since this summer and its opening was a frequent topic of conversation among Devine Street customers, electrical and plumbing complications delayed the debut.

“My children had kind of forgotten what I look like,” Johnson said.

In addition to rotating taps of beer, the second location features a kitchen serving light items such as paninis and wraps. The menu was intentionally scaled down to begin with, Johnson said, to allow customers time to adjust to the Irmo vibe — which, because of the food service, will not feature the four-legged patrons who often lollygag about on Devine Street.

Johnson and Monroe, who met during an engineering class at the University of South Carolina, celebrated the five-year anniversary of their 2706 Devine St. shop last summer. A “Zero-Year Anniversary” grand opening party is planned at Craft and Draft Irmo on Saturday.