The Little Microbrewery That Could

Saturday, November 29th, 20,08

Since we were in Chattanooga for the Thanksgiving weekend, I was happy to find out that a relatively new microbrewery was giving tours during a holiday festival in the St. Elmo area. Moccasin Bend Brewing Company started a couple of years ago as a dream of a few local guys who shared a love of beer and developed an interest in home-brewing as well. The results are definitely coming to fruition as their product is being served regularly on tap at a few local restaurants already and in bottles in a local grocery store. The "tour" of their "facility" wound up being about a dozen people huddled into their 400 sq. feet of warehouse space that looked more like a boys-club than a business. Despite their meager set-up and lack of space including this make-shift Igloo cooler-tap (photo above), their products were pretty darn good. We tried samples of six brews they had going including a smooth porter, a pumpkinseed ale, a hoppy pale ale they called Centennial, a very interesting ale made with juniper berries and a pumpkin-flavored seasonal ale. I got three pints with my $6 tour price and chose the juniper berry and two pours of the Centennial. Good luck to these guys and their little microbrewery that could. I hope to see and drink more of their success in the future. Check out their website for more information:
http://bendbrewingbeer.com/index.htm

Detroit BOCK City

My friend, Wayne, and I had a great little trip to Detroit over the Thanksgiving holiday to see the Titans hammer on the woeful Lions at beautiful Ford Field and after the game (and after a bit of searching) we found the Detroit Beer Company, a downtown microbrewery with a good reputation. It's a great little restaurant/bar built around the microbrewery itself. They had several brews on tap and I started with...what else...the IPA. The "Local 1529 IPA" to be exact. Excellent aroma, hoppy taste and finish. I moved on to "The Detroit Dwarf" next which they tout as their house special and it has a medal from The Great American Beer Festival to prove it. It's an interesting combination of lager and ale that I found light and refreshing, but the overall taste didn't blow me away. A good beer nonetheless. Third was the "People Mover Porter" (see photo above courtesy of Wayne's Blackberry) which was as dark as some of the scary alleys Wayne and I stayed away from while walking in downtown Detroit. It was much lighter than I was expecting and had a satisfying finish. I finished with...what else...another IPA which was a good as the first one and ranks high on my list of favorite microbrews I have encountered up until now.

Let's Go Krogering...again

Another snoop down the beer aisle of the Mt. Juliet Kroger revealed a couple more "ales of interest" to me and I made the purchase. The first was Moe's Backroom Amber Ale from Tap Room No. 21. Brewing (what an annoyingly long name). This brewery name seems to be complete BS and is actually brewed by City Brewing in Wisconsin. While their website says they are a quality regional brewery, the "plain brown wrapper" labeling and title with personalization (i.e. who the hell is Moe?) seems to be a clever ruse to trick the buyer into thinking it's a true microbrew...which it most certainly is not. The beer as well was lackluster and not worth a second look. Weak aroma and taste leads me to believe this is definitely a mass-produced bilge-water of a beer that you can get for a buck less a six-pack with a much shorter and more recognizable name called Bud.

And now for something on the positive side -- I give you Red Brick Peachtree Pale Ale (another long-named brew) from Atlanta Brewing in Charlotte, North Carolina (ha, ha - just making sure you are paying attention). Of course it's brewed in Atlanta, GA, and it's an actual microbrewery and Red Brick is a very good beer. Good body and nice aftertaste. Ashlee and I are headed to Atlanta next weekend for a concert and it would have been great to visit this little brewery, but they only run tours during the week (?). Goes the same with Sweetwater Brewing, another pretty good microbrewery in the Atlanta area that I have had a few swigs of in the past....what up, folks? don't you want tourists checking out your facilities and buying stuff on the weekends? Oh well, maybe they are spending their weekends perfecting their brews. If so, keep up the good work!