Archive for the “Festivals” Category

What a weekend! I was more tired and delirious on the ride home Sunday than I remember being in a long time. The trip was well worth it and I had some ridiculously tasty brews and made new friends. Let me get to the good stuff.

Friday, the wife and I left the Tri-Cities about 11AM and stopped in Johnson City for lunch and because my wife said “I just need to see if they have any tank tops for tomorrow.” An hour later, she hadn’t bought any of the tank tops I had imagined she might, but had an arm full of stuff.  Thank God she has her own bank account.    After the shopping extravaganza, we headed to Asheville. Where we are located geographically is nothing short of a miracle, to be honest. I can get to Nashville, Atlanta and Charlotte in about 4 hours each way. I am also within day trip distance of Louisville and several other cool cities. The great thing about where we live, tho, is that we can hit Asheville, NC in about an hour. Asheville is a beer drinker’s dream come true and is always a stop when we head to the Hops festival.

We stopped in at Bruisin Ales to buy some things I had on my shopping list. I picked up some Stone Levitation, The Bruery’s Hottenroth, an Oskar Blues Gubna and a couple others. I wasn’t sure what time I would come back through on Sunday, so I wanted to be sure to make my purchases during business hours. We loaded up my bounty and headed East to Hickory, NC. Upon our arrival, we got settled and after running into some friends from Knoxville, decided to head to a local restaurant/bar named Amos Howard’s. I was due to meet up with someone from Olde Hickory Brewery there as well, so it worked out. We had a great dinner and several tasty brews from Olde Hickory. The list goes something like this 1. Tavern Ale 2. ESB 3. Doppelbock 4. Imperial Stout.  The Wife had the Ruby Lager, Hefeweizen and the Nut Brown. I sampled hers as well and quite honestly there is not a bad beer in the bunch!

We met up with Nikol from Olde Hickory and had a great time talking about beer and then what has to be the oddest combination of topics for a tweetup ever. It was interesting and my wife and I both feel we made a friend, so it was a win/win for us. Shortly after some random dude played Purple Rain for me on the jukebox (I crap you not), we headed downtown to the Olde Hickory Taproom to meet up with some other friends from Knoxville. Our drinking was limited at this fine venue, but we had a great time with friends before we retired to the Park Inn for some rest.

Saturday morning I woke up early and rested and ready to go. My buddy Clint, his wife and our friend Ima got into town a bit later and we headed over to the festival. The line wasn’t too bad and the staff (including Nikol) was on top of things handing out bracelets and checking ID’s to make sure we all got into the area quickly…which we did. After setting up camp, I realized that I hadn’t gotten a “program”, so I went to get one and stopped by a distributor’s booth who had New Belgium and Oskar Blues. My first beer of the day was Mama’s Little Yella Pils from Oskar Blues. To demonstrate how much I love this beer, I bought some before I left NC the next day.

The next 6 hours are a blur of meeting friends from the local homebrewer’s club, talking to old friends and chatting with brewers. I hope to do a more detailed post on the grades I gave some of the beers, but here are the highlights for me:

Beer of the day: Natty Greene’s Cask Aged Sour Ale – perfect blend of aging with lacto and talent in brewing. The beer was sour in all the right ways and was one I went back for seconds of.

Brewer of the day: Mother Earth Brewing – I had 3 of their beers AND a special bourbon barrel aged version of their Tripel that was incredibly tasty. Their Kolsch is a perfect and refeshing example of the style. My wife also likes their hippy imagery and shirts…

The beer I hoped would be there and was: Foothills Sexual Chocolate – If it were not for the 2 sours I had, this would have easily claimed the beer of the day crown for me. Perfectly malty and bitter and a pleasure to drink. I hit it early to make sure I got to it before the crowds sucked the tap dry, and that may have caused some slight inebriation on my part. 

Biggest Surprise – Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery:I had eaten at this place in Myrtle Beach SC a few years back and was not pleased with the beer. It was OK at best for me. I passed their booth and noticed they had an odd Belgian/French type name to a beer that was described as a sour wheat. I had it and loved it! I am trying to find the exact name, so that if you are in SC, you can ask for it. More on that later.

We ended the night at the Hickory Taproom for dinner and after having half of a 6″ pizza that was delicious, I headed to the hotel for bed.

I made a stop in Asheville on the way back looking for Mother Earth beer and couldn’t find it where we stopped…I know they have it in Asheville, so I will grab it next time. I picked up the Yella Pils and some Raging Bitch from Flying Dog. I will review those as time and diet (I gotta cleanse after this weekend!) allows.