16th Annual Southern Brewers Festival - Chattanooga, TN

My wife and I and some friends attended the 16th Annual Southern Brewers Festival in Chattanooga this past weekend and had a great time. We stayed right near the festival on our friends' (Tiff and Brenda) boat. There was great music by Big Head Todd & the Monsters. And, of course, there was a lot of great beer.

We opted this year for the "Party on the Pier" (photo above) VIP passes that promised us unlimited food, beer as well as beer-garden-style seating at the festival, private restrooms and close access to the music stage. It was a good deal overall. My only hesitation was that the "unlimited beer" was being provided by Gordon Biersch Brewing, the sponsor of the "Party on the Pier." My past dealings with Gordon-Biersch beer have not been too great. What little I have had of their offerings (a lame airport bar, Big River Restaurant brands, Sin City Brewing in Vegas) has been ho-hum at best. But, I figured if their beer selection wasn't great, I still had plenty of microbrewers to choose from at the festival.

We still only got one sample token with our ticket and I spent it quickly on a mug of Sierra Nevada Tumbler Brown Ale. Delicious. The folks at Sierra-Nevada hardly ever disappoint and even though they aren't a "Southern" brewer, I was glad they were there. After that great start, we ambled on to the pier to see what the unlimited beer and food consisted of. The food was impressive with a good spread of eats including grilled brats, Kobe burgers, salad, cookies, etc. As far the beer went, I first thought they only had two offerings which were listed on a tap station near the food - Gordon Biersch Rodenbier and Gordon Biersch Czech-style Pilsner - definitely nothing to get excited about, but I had not had either from G-B, so I give them a try. The pilsner was actually decent, but I didn't car of the Rodenbier at all. Can't find out much about it. It translates "Clear Beer" in German. Beats me. It wasn't clear but it was quite bitter. I asked for another pilsner at a different tap station. I figured I would have one more "freebie" and then go buy some tokens and have some good beer. The lady behind the tap said she didn't have the pilsner. She had a lager and a stout.

"Stout, please!" I replied joyfully.

It seems each of the four tap stations had different beer, but no signs saying what they had except at the first one I went to. The stout was quite decent. The other stations I visited had a CPA (California Pale Ale) and a Roasted Pale Ale. Both were very good. Needless to say, I spent most of my afternoon and evening partaking in the decent, bottomless beers provided by Gordon Biersch.

I was given a token by a friend of ours who isn't a big beer drinker...then why did you come to a BEER festival?? Oh, well, I don't care. More for me! I sampled the Starr Hill Festie with that token. Another excellent brew from the guys from Charlottesville, VA. It's an Oktoberfest-style lager that was smooth going down and finished nicely.

I guess I did miss the opportunity to try a few new beers at the festival (there were only a few I didn't recognize), but bottomless beer at no extra cost is hard to pass up. Another great beer festival in Tennessee. You gotta love it.

The ABCs of A.B.C.

My wife and I went to Atlanta for a concert over the weekend and were able to stop by the Atlanta Brewing Company (ABC) on Saturday afternoon and check out their small tasting room and brewery. ABC touts itself as the "oldest" microbrewery in Atlanta, but this location is actually newer than their competition up the road, Sweetwater Brewing, which I also toured recently (see previous blog). They can claim the "oldest in Atlanta" moniker because they are a rebirth of Red Brick Brewing, an original Atlanta microbrewer that shut down for a while and has now been given rebirth under ABC production.

Their modest operation is also producing rather modest brews as well without much variety in terms of original recipes. I tried their Red Brick Brown Ale, their Red Brick Blonde, their Red Brick Octoberfest (not much variety or originality in beer names either) and their Red Brick Pale Ale. Their only original name (and best beer by the way) is their Laughing Skull Amber Ale which I have also had in the past in a bottle. It's a good American ale with nice body and finish. I didn't have a problem with any of their beers in terms of taste. They just don't happen to be as memorable or bold as some of Sweetwater's concoctions.

B -Double E- Double R- A-N-T...Beer Rant!!

So my wife and I are in nearby Murfreesboro the other night to pick our car up from the service shop at the Honda dealership there, and we decide to have dinner while in town. I suggest Old Chicago Pasta and Pizza, a new chain-style restaurant that's been getting good reviews from some of my co-workers. I also hear they have "over 100 beers on tap." This, of course, intrigues me greatly and as we pull into the parking lot their large sign out front proudly claims "110 Brews." Now I am really intrigued!

Well, that didn't last long.

They only have about 20 beers on tap and most of those are very common and most mass-produced swill. Even the microbrews they do have on tap and in bottles are run of the mill. I search and search the beer menu for something new. I finally settle on a Brazilian black ale called Xingu. It's in a bottle even though our ditzy waitress asked if I want a glass, a pint or a 22 oz. big gulp. Did I mention it was in a bottle like it says on the menu? Anyway, I am kind of over waitresses who don't have a clue about the beer they are serving - that's a fairly common occurrence. I am even over places claiming they have a "great variety" of beer selection and then finding out they basically have 10 different kinds of Budweiser and four different kinds of Miller. Or, if they do have something interesting on the menu, they are out of it when I order it. That's not what this rant is all about. This rant is about the bone-head who came up with their beer menu. Here's a few of the "WTF?" excerpts from it:

1. The "micro of the month" was Michelob Ultra? Dude, really??

2. The "new brews" were two common Leinenkugel's products. By the way, they are the 7th oldest brewery in America.

3. The "local flavor" was the Boulder Single Track - a decent copper ale that is produced in...Colorado....yeah, not so local.

4. Their "No. 2 World Specialty Bottle" was Sweetwater Blue...you know....from the country of ATLANTA!!

Good grief! What a joke! I hit up their website with my thoughts on their stupid menu and have yet to hear back from them. I will update this blog if I do.

The Xingu was a mass-produced soapy bore. The pizza was OK. I am not a big fan of deep-dish Chicago-style pizza anyway. Let's just say I won't be back...unless I get some freebies for my rant on their moronic menu.

PLEASE BRING A YARD HOUSE TO MIDDLE TENNESSEE!! Great food and one hundred beers actually on tap with great variety. Man, I miss Vegas!

EPILOGUE: 8/8/10 - Got a great response from them. Here it is verbatim:

Dear Mr. Fulfer,

Thanks for taking the time to make us aware of our opportunities with our beer menu. We will take a look at those beers and get them correctly identified with the correct terminology or replace them with beers that fit. I will make this a subject at a General Managers meeting on August 17th to ensure we have beers correctly identified and make beer lovers proud. I would love to send you a GC as a token of my appreciation. I just need your address. Thanks!!

Harold Wallace

Old Chicago (OCI Enterprises, Inc.)

VP of Operations

I was sent a $25 gift certificate a few days later. Thanks OCI! Now get to work on fixing that menu!!

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.

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!

More Vegas, More Brew

Another quick trip to Vegas came up again for me this year. This time it was to celebrate the birthday of me and my wife's friend, Mel, as well as her first visit to the U.S. from New Zealand. Mel's a fan of beer herself although her tastes lean more toward lighter brews.

Before coming to Vegas, my wife, Ashlee, had done a bit of touring in California before meeting Mel in L.A. when she landed from Kiwi-land. While in Cali Ashlee spent some time with her friend, Teri, who happens to work at Port Brewing Company in San Marcos near San Diego. Teri was kind enough to hook us up with a ton of good beer that Ashlee graciously lugged to Vegas for me to begin sampling and then lugged home for more sampling in the near future (more on that later). While in Vegas I did try four of the Port brews. They batted 3 out of 4 with me as I throughly enjoyed the full pints of their Wipeout IPA, Hop-15 Ale and their Inferno Ale from The Lost Abbey line. Their Belgian/French-style seasonal Carnevale Ale (also from The Lost Abbey line) wasn't real pleasing to my palette, but I still do applaud the effort and others do as well since it's a gold medal winner. These guys really know what they are doing in terms of brewing. Thanks to Teri and Ashlee for their help in letting me try these beers since I haven't made it to California recently, plus the fact that these beers are not available in Tennessee. Look for a report soon on the rest of the Port brews that I will be trying.

We were also able to check out Vegas' own Tenaya Creek Brewery while we were in town. It was established in 1999 and while small in stature, they are big in taste and quality. This was some good, quality beer and eons better than Sin City Brewing over on The Strip which is just over-priced soapy swill aimed strictly at the tourists. I tried the Tenaya Creek Brown Ale, their Hop Ride IPA, their Ringtale Pale Ale and their Hefeweizen. Mel said their pilsner was good as well.

We also visited my favorite 100-beers-on-tap restaurant, the Yard House, but I didn't have anything new and stayed with my beloved Double Daddy IPA instead. Thanks, Vegas, see you again in October maybe?

Connecting with some good beer in Connecticut

My wife was on a trip with some girlfriends over the 4th of July holiday, so I decided to burn some Southwest Airlines credit I had and zip up to Hartford, Connecticut, to play some poker over the long weekend at the nearby Foxwoods Casino. In between tournaments and coming and going to the airport, I also sought out some fairly good craft beer in the area.

After getting knocked out of my first tournament by an 83-year-old geezer who chased his flush and hit it on the river over my flopped set of sevens, I decided to head west about a half-hour from my hotel to the pretty little town of Willimantic, CT, and check out the Willimantic Brewing Company brewpub and restaurant. These guys are brewing some great beer here on site in what looked to me to be an old federal building of some sort....in fact it was an old post office building I have now learned that was abandoned by the government and lay vacant for almost thirty years. They have done a beautiful restoration/reinvention process here. Their 60' mahogany bar (photo below) in the pub is truly a thing a beauty. I have to say this is one of the most unique brewpubs I have ever visited - and there have been a lot. Not to mention their beer is outstanding!

I started with the Most Wanted IPA and it was deliciously hoppy and smooth. My second choice was the Downtown Willi India Dark Ale (IDA), an extremely inventive and well-crafted dark beer that maintains a nice hoppy aroma and flavor despite it's appearance. I have only seen this style of beer done one other time and that is from Terrapin Brewing in Athens, GA, which they call their India Brown Ale. This IDA wasn't as nutty at the Terrapin, so definitely not an exact replica. I would have liked to sample more of their nice selection of beers including another IPA that had on tap, but I just couldn't and drive back to my hotel because this is real beer being produced here that packs a real wallop.

Day 2 found me at the nearby Mohegan Sun Casino after another unispiring run on the Fozwoods poker tables. The Mohegan is a newer casino and is quite beautiful, and while they do have a nice poker room, they weren't running any tournaments that caught my interest that day, but they did boast a brewpub on the premesis. Before I sought it out I sat down at a great burger bar for lunch called Bobby's Burger Palace. Yummo! The Italian-style burger I had was delicous and the double bonus was they had a couple of microbrews on tap as well. I tried the Ten Penny Ale from East Hartford's Olde Burnside Brewing. It was a dynamite Scotch Ale strong in body and taste.

After lunch I located the Mohegan Sun Brewpub. It's located in the casino's race book area, so you have to navigate around old gamblers hacking up their lungs between cigarette drags while squinting at horses racing on a TV screen...I just don't get it, but, hey, to each his own. The beer is actually brewed on site and while their two meager selections available - a lager and an ale - weren't anything real inventive, they weren't half bad in terms of taste. And that was an opinion I formed before I found out the generous tastings I had been given were free and included a small complimentary tasting glass. You gotta love casinos giving away baubles hoping to get bullion in return. They call their lager Thunder Moon. The ale was called Sachem Ale. Weirdest thing was that the bartender showed me a letter from the brewer stating that both of these beers had been changed fairly drastically in style. The Sachem went from a cream ale to a pale ale, and Thunder Moon went from lager characteristics to pilsner? Well, why keep the same name? Might be a casino copyright thing, who knows. I do appreciate the effort of Mohegan to create and endorse craft beer ( a site more than Foxwoods which had nothing available that I saw other than the mass produced beers of the "sheeple").

Day 3 of the short trip saw me packing up and heading back west to Hartford for my afternoon flight. My plan was to stop at a brewpub near the airport called The Cambridge House for lunch and have a few beers before my flight, but that was halted by the fact that the place is closed on Mondays. It was Monday, July 5th, of course, and I feel very forturnate to have found the City Steam Cafe and Brewery in downtown Hartford thanks to a speedy internet search and even more lucky to see that it was open on this federal holiday because basically the rest of Hartford was closed up tight. Man, it was like the biggest ghost town in the world. Even most other restaurants were closed. I was the first one in the door at 11:30 AM, but before long a few others drifted in for lunch and a brew or two as well. City Steam went from being a hasty substitute to actually being a great find on my beer journeys. A beautiful non-chain pub in the bottom floor of a historic building with a beer and food menu that was very, very good. I did a five-sample of draughts (photo below) and have nothing bad to say about any of them. They were as follows: The Naughty Nurse Amber Ale, The Alcapulco Gold Summer IPA, The Innocent Ale, The Careless Love Ale and their Summer Stout. I absolutely loved the Innocent Ale (front row, left) which was bascially a nice, hoppy pale ale, and would usually have ordered that as my full pint, but the Alcapulco Gold Summer IPA was so unique that I just had to try more. This was an IPA almost gold in color like a pilsner (back row, middle) and light to the taste yet still holding on to that hoppy flavor that IPA's are known for. This is beautiful, creative brewing in my opinion. I was very impressed. The Summer Stout was similar in fashion by being light to the taste (still dark in color - hey, it's a stout) but still retaining that smokey flavor you are looking for in a stout. My barkeep, Justin, was very knowledgeable in beer and we traded favorite microbrew brands. He drives to Florida about once a year he said and I gave him some southern brews to be on the lookout for while he was down our way. He gave me my pint for free "for coming so far to try our beer" but I just turned around and gave it back to him in a tip. Again, what a lucky and great find.

I expected the lines in the Hartford Airport check-in and security to be worse than they were for the end of a holiday weekend, so I had plenty of time to kill waiting on my flight to take off. Right past security is the Black Bear Tavern, so I ambled up to see if they had anything interesting on tap. Bingo! An excellent selection for a airport bar with several regional brews on tap like Harpoon IPA out of Boston which is in my Top Ten List. They had three brews I had not had before and I knocked them off one after the other followed by a big plate of "Irish nachos" - these were quite similar to the "durty fries" I used to have at my beloved (and now sadly defunct) Durty Nelly's Irish Pub in Chattanooga. The first beer was Wolaver's Organic Oatmeal Stout - good the last dark organic drop! This product is from Otter Creek Brewing in Vermont. That brewery name reminded me of my last trip up this way involving me, the Providence, Rhode Island airport, a long layover, Otter Creek Beer and a slurred call to my wife telling her that I only had to have two more to get a free glass! Yep, I still got the glass!

Next was my biggest disappointment, beer-wise, of the trip. It was Blue Point Brewing's Toasted Lager which is a medal-winning beer from this New York brewery, and a favorite among the bartenders there, but I thought it tasted like soap. Just not for my palette I guess. Yuck! I had to chase that bad taste away with a blonde hooker...no wait, check that, it was a Hooker Blonde...whew, that was close! Hooker Brewing is a Connecticut-based brewery that I had heard about and even considered trying to tour while in the area but the limited tour times conflicted with my poker playing - tsk, tsk. The blonde, of course, is a summer wheat which was as good as can be for a wheat beer in my opinion since it isn't my favorite style of brewing. I asked for and added an orange slice to it more to help kill the taste of the previous beer than to aid the taste of this one. Speaking of airports, I also had an Obrycki's Amber Lager during a layover at BWI on the up. Nothing great, but not a bad brew for a place known for their crabs, not their beer.

Overall, a good beer trip to Connecticut. Definitely better than the poker where I had no success at all. But such is that game and now that I know it's an easy drive to Foxwoods and Mohegan from the Hartford Airport and that there is good beer around to sooth me if need be, I will more than likely return someday to this area and get re-connected again with the poker and the beer.