Two Villes and a lot of beer

My wife and I took our annual trip to Asheville, North Carolina, last weekend to attend the Bele Chere Music and Arts Festival. About half-way we stopped in Knoxville and had lunch at the Downtown Pub & Brewery which as the name implies is right downtown in a great restored area of the old part of the city.

I started with their Woodruff IPA, of course, and it was pretty good. Not super hoppy, but good enough. My wife, Ashlee, had the Downtown Nut Brown Ale and I had a few sips of it, and thought it was adequate as well. My second full beer was the White Mule Pale Ale. This was probably my favorite of the visit. Smooth, clean taste with good balance of hops and barley. They make all their beer on site. I even saw them dumping used barley out of one of the tanks while we were there. I finished with their Alt Bier wihch was a pleasant brew. Overall, the place is pretty good. They have a blonde, a stout and a porter that I didn't get to but will next time I visit. And there will be another visit. They are only two doors down from the Bijou Theatre which always gets a lot of good music there. The food was a little lackluster but not awful. It's definitely not my favorite Tennessee brewpub, but it's good to see Knoxvegas joining the craft brewing revolution.

We headed east another two hours and arrived in Asheville for the festival. The sun was relentless and grabbing a few beers while walking around was a main objective. The first new-to-me beer I had was in Tallgary's Pub which we ducked into to escape the heat for a bit. It's called Toubab Brewe and it's a German-style lager with a nice hoppy flavor. I loved it. After some research I found out that it's a local microbrew being put out by Craggie Brewing Company. I had never heard of them but by my count that is EIGHT microbreweries in the Asheville area now. Did I mention I REALLY like Asheville? The next new-to-me beer I had was a bottle of Fuller's London Pride. I got this at the Weinhouse Liquor and Wine Store which always sells beer during Bele Chere for only $2 and usually it's pretty good beer. But not this time. Yuck! This stuff sucked. Not much to be proud of in London if you ask me. Way too bitter and overdone. My palette continues to not appreciate English-style beers for the most part. I couldn't even finish it. Luckily, we went to dinner at The Laughing Seed Cafe where they have the excellent Asheville-made Green Man Brewing on tap and I ordered their wonderful IPA to get that taste out of my mouth.

We finished the night with some great music from The Dirty Guv'nahs and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals and afterwards found a great little wine bar called 5 Walnut which also happened to have a great beer in bottles and on tap. I started with a Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA in a bottle and then ended the evening with another Toubab draught. Thanks again, Asheville, for once again proving you are the best beer town in the world (per my somewhat limited research). Just to finalize that thought and this theory of Asheville being a great beer town I give you the fact that the next morning on our way out of town we stopped at a small gas station/convenience store and they had an amazing beer selection inside that would rival some "beer stores" in Tennessee, including pint bottles of New Belgium's high-gravity Ranger IPA for two bucks. In comparison, I recently paid $6 at a bar in Nashville for one of these in a 12 oz. bottle. So long, Asheville, I am sure gonna miss ya.

Here's a great link by the way for beer research:

beer.wikia.com

It's Wikipedia for beer!