BREWsic City USA

I was finally able to attend the Music City Brewers Festival in downtown Nashville this past Saturday. While this was the festival's 9th year of existence, it was my first opportunity to attend since it usually conflicts with another of my favorite beer-ensconced festivals, Bele Chere in Asheville. The calendar fell right this year with an extra weekend in July allowing me to attend both events on consecutive weekends.

This is a pretty good beer festival. Over 50 microbrewers from all over the country were represented and while most I recognized by name (there were a couple of newbies to me), they all seemed to be carrying new-to-me lines of good beer to try. The $50 ticket price is a good value since you don't have to buy tokens once inside for beer samples like you do at the Southern Brewer's Festival in Chattanooga that I have been to a few times. It's all you can sample at this festival with generous pours at every stop. The festival is split up into two 4-hour sessions with a limited number of tickets being sold to avoid overcrowding. My wife joined me and a couple of our friends, Nate and Ginny. We opted for the night session which helped avoid a lot of the summer heat and humidity. It's held in the downtown Walk of Fame Park and the layout of the beer tents encircling the park was great for easy access and very little standing in line. No one ran out of beer while we there either (at least of what I wanted to try). They also had live music and food for sale.

On to the beer!

Here's a quick list of the new-to-me beers I tried. I can't think of one I didn't like.

Ghost River Glacial Pale Ale - these guys are out of Memphis and new to me and to microbrewing - a good pale ale using Glacial hops

Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout - North Coast Brewing out of California. A first-class stout.

Snake Handler Double IPA - Good People Brewing out of Birmingham - first double IPA I have seen attempted in the South. Good effort, but the folks up north and out west are still the best at it right now.

Hoptober Golden Ale - New Belgium Brewing out of Colorado - probably my favorite of the festival. A great hoppy infusion into a malty Octoberfest beer. A beautiful combination.

Hopsecutioner American IPA - Terrapin Brewing out of Athens, GA - great hoppy beer from what is fast becoming one of my favorite microbreweries. They never disappoint.

Lazy Magnolia Jefferson Stout - Lazy Magnolia Brewing out of Mississippi. A good, good stout.

Abita Restoration Pale Ale - Louisiana - The pioneers of microbrewing just keep on keeping on.

Brown Ale - Atlanta/Red Brick Brewing - A decent brown ale, but I like Sweetwater's better which is also out of Atlanta. I might try to tour this brewery when we are in Atlanta in a couple of weeks.

Citra IPA - Nashville Homebrewer's Club. This wasn't bad. Give it up for the homies!

Some old favs I also had were: Sweetwater IPA, Bourbon Barrel Ale from Kentucky Brewing and a Jubilee Nut Brown Ale from Nashville. There were more I wanted to try but ran out of...uhhh...fortitude...yeah, that's a good word for it. Did I mention the pours were very generous?

EPILOGUE: On Sunday evening, Nate and Ginny came over and we had a little "hair o' the dog that bit us the night before." They had recently been to Seattle and found a couple of Japanese beers in a large Asian market there and brought them back to share. In return we cracked open a couple of stouts from Port Brewing that Ashlee had brought back a few weeks ago from her trip to California (thanks again to her friend, Terri, for hooking us up with a ton of great beer from the brewery there where she works).

In order of consumption we had:

Coedo Brewing Shikkoku (Black Lager)- Saitama, Japan - this came in a dark glass bottle and we were expecting it to be the lightest of the bunch, but it poured very dark for a "malt" beer. It was not heavy in taste or body and was an excellent beer overall.

Echigo Stout - Echigo Beer Company - Niigata, Japan - OK, this one was what we were expecting - a stout, and a pretty good one.

Port Brewing's Old Viscosity Ale - this extremely dark beer is aged 6 months in oak bourbon barrels. It is heavy in aroma, taste and body. In the words of Nate, "definitely a sippin' beer." There is no gulping this stuff down.

Port Brewing's Older Viscosity - yep, aged even longer and thus stronger in aroma and taste. A bit strong for me, but drinkable. Ashlee said Terri mentioned that they sear raisins for this beer's brewing process and you could definitely smell and taste their presence.