We toasted the trip the night before at my house with a couple of pints of Bearwalker Maple Brown from Jackalope Brewing in Nashville. I had gotten a growler of it at the Mt. Juliet Beer store after trying it at a new local establishment the day before called JB's Pour House over on the east end of Hermitage. I also had a pint of Jackalope's Thunder Ann Pale Ale while at JB's. While it's a nice place overall, and they boast at having 36 beers on tap, other than the Jackalope products, I can't say I was overly impressed with JB's overall selection. That's too bad since I just heard our local WOW Wingery is closing in November 2012 which is very sad. That's the place where my friend Nate and I got our photos on the wall for drinking 50 different beers. The owner and our friend, Brad, took great strides in bringing good craft beer to the area and we are going to miss it. The place is becoming a "Piranhas Bar & Grill" and supposedly Brad will still be a partner and is going to try and keep the good beer vibe going, but we shall see since the Piranhas in downtown Nashville is terrible in terms of beer selection.On to Atlanta....
I got a great rate at the downtown Hilton and it was just a quick cab ride over to the Taco Mac that is built into the Phillips Arena next door to the Georgia Dome where the game was being played for some pregame food...and beer...of course. Taco Mac has an amazing selection of beer on draft and always something new and interesting. On this visit I had the Rogue Yellow Snow IPA (excellent!) and then Atlanta's own Red Brick Brewing offering, the Hoplanta IPA (also very good). I had a sip of Craig's order, the Vanilla Gorilla Smoked Porter also from Red Brick and it was very tasty.
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| They closed off half the Georgia Dome in Atlanta to make a fairly intimate early-season college basketball setting for the State Farm Champions Classic. Tickets were reasonable and we also got to see a great match-up of Kansas vs. Michigan State in the first game for the same price with MSU pulling the upset in a close game down to the wire. |
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| It was cool to see ESPN's College Gameday broadcasting live before, during and after the game. In this shot analysts, Digger Phelps, (left) and Duke's own. Jay Bilas, discuss one of the two games going on. We even got on TV a bit as Craig's family spotted us in the background a couple times during the pregame show. |
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| Our seats were decent at about 50 rows from the court and on the aisle. Except for the one annoying UK fan behind us, it was a nice set-up. |
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| The win was sweet as a Duke fan especially given the fact that the place was overrun with UK fans and the especially-rude one behind us got a nice big serving of "Shut Up" delivered hot and fresh to him. |
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| A little bonus we found on the way home in north Atlanta was the Big Wood Forest Preserve in the suburb of Sandy Springs. We took a great morning hike through this lush and surprisingly large suburban oasis. |
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| Our true reason for being in Sandy Springs was to have an early lunch (and a couple brews) at 5 Seasons Brewing before heading back north. This is a nice brewpub with a large patio and deck that I am sure stay busy in the warmer months. I had their seasonal Pumpkin Head Lager which was pretty good followed by a room-temperature serving (they were having cooler issues this morning) of the Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale which was actually very good. Thanks to Groupon.com for the deal that brought us here as well that got us 4 beers and two appetizers for half price. |
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