Franklin Main Street Brewfest 2010

Saturday, March 13, 2010 - Franklin, TN

My wife and I and some friends attended the SOLD OUT Franklin Main Street Brewfest tonight and had a great time. I was able try over a dozen new-to-me beers and was pleasantly surprised at most of the results. This event was known last year as Fiele Franklin and we also attended, (see previous blog), but this year the organizers dropped the free activities early in the day and focused on the beer tasting in the evening, and it was a rousing success since all the $30 tickets were gone well before the 6 PM start.

We started our day as we did last year by having a late lunch and a few pints at McCreary's Irish Pub which is right in the middle of the Brew Fest area of downtown Franklin and one of the stops on the tasting tour. Nothing really new was had while I was there although I did try my wife, Ashlee's, Sweetwater Blue, a blueberry infused ale from one of my favorite regional microbrewer's down in Atlanta. The Brew Fest started promptly at 6 PM and had 22 tasting locations serving over 40 beers. Here's a quick rundown of the new-to-me-stuff I tried and what I thought of each:

- Sierra Nevada Kellerweis - not bad, but I am just not a big fan of wheat beer

- Saranac Irish Red - a decent red ale from one of America's oldest independent breweries in upstate New York.

- Point 2012 Black Ale - a dark, roasted ale with the Mayan calendar deadline in mind

- Point Cascade Pale Ale - a good pale ale from Point Brewing in Wisconsin

-Victory Whirlwind Witbier - again not a big fan of wheat bear, but this one was bearable

- Fruli Strawberry Beer - very sweet going in, but mellows quickly to a nice aftertaste. Great product out of Belgium. Definitely the most unique beer of the tasting.

- Jubilee Nut Brown Ale - one of the few nut brown ales available for tasting tonight and it was a good one. Interesting story in that Jubilee is a brand-new Nashville-based beer company that currently has their nut brown ale brewed at the nearby Bluegrass Brewery in Louisville. Half of the proceeds of their beer sales goes to aid a local youth organization.

- BBC Jefferson's Reserve Stout - a nice hearty stout from Bluegrass Brewing. This was a chaser for a shot of Feckin Irish Whiskey as well.

- Fatback Amber Ale - an excellent product from the new and local Cool Springs Brewery

- Pecker Wrecker IPA - best name of the night, best IPA of the night from the "Best in Show" brewery of the night, Cool Springs Brewery

- Cool Springs Oatmeal Stout - yep, three for three. These guys are doing it right here in Williamson County. An excellent addition to the local microbrew scene.

- 1900 Amber Ale - a nice ale out of Colorado's Fort Collins Brewery

- Retro Red - an Irish red ale also from Fort Collins

- O'Fallon Smoked Porter - a decent brew with a nice smokey flavor and finish from the St. Louis area

- Cablera IPA - an excellent India Pale Ale served up in an aluminum can. This one is a real mystery. I can't find any information on it anywhere. Don't know where it is brewed or even if it's available locally. More research is needed because it was excellent and being in a can makes it Bonnaroo noteworthy. EDITOR NOTE: 7/7/10 - Learn to spell, dumbass. It's Caldera IPA out of Oregon. And, yes, it is available in Tennessee.

We ended the evening after the tastings at The Red Pony Restaurant 's bar and I was actually able to try one last new beer to end the night. The name intrigued me, Old Engine Oil, and when it was poured from its bottle I saw the name was accurate. It's a black ale as dark as motor oil. Its from Harvestoun Brewing in Scotland and I did enjoy its smoky delivery and pleasing aftertaste. A great way to end a great evening of beer tasting. Congrats to the city of Franklin for a roaring success to their 7th annual festival. Here's hoping next year's is bigger and even better.

Blinded by the Tiger

My wife and I took a brief long-weekend trip to New York City and one of our activities was a food tour around one of the great neighborhoods in Manhattan, Greenwich Village. During the tour our guide pointed out a local watering hole called The Blind Tiger on Bleecker Street which she said has "lots of good beer on tap." Well enough said!

After our tour concluded we wandered around in Greenwich Village and found ourselves at The Blind Tiger's door. Smaller than it appeared from outside, we stepped into a charming, little pub very reminiscent of some of the great bars we encounted in Ireland last year. Our guide was dead-on with her report that they had "lots of good beer on tap" - 28 very unique choices to be exact - with only a few I had even heard of. We found a couple of seats and placed our order. I started with the first of 4 new-to-me IPAs available - Smutty Nose from New Hampshire. My wife, Ashlee, is a big fan of ginger beer ever since our trip to Australia a couple of years ago and was excited to see Hitachino Ginger Beer on tap as well. I had a few sips of it on the way back from ordering it at the bar and have to say it is pretty good despite my less-than-enthusiastic opinion of ginger beer. This one was not near as overwhelming in ginger taste as some others we have tried. It also had a whopping 7% ABVwhich was even more than the Smutty Nose weighing in at 6.7%. The Smutty Nose was decent although not as hoppy as I really prefer.

Ashlee stuck with her ginger beer on the second round (the girl is loyal) while I opted for Green Flash IPA out of California. Now this is what I was looking for! Good and hoppy with a great opening flavor and pleasing aftertaste. Ashlee was happy to remain seated in the active little bar people-watching and sipping her ginger beer. I, of course, was VERY happy to continue hanging out in The Blind Tiger as the USA and Canada dropped the puck for Olympic Gold and there were two more IPAs on the board calling my name to try them. Number 3 on the IPA hit parade was Moyland's IPA from California. Not bad, but the Green Flash stayed in the lead as my favorite. I finished my IPA tour with Southern Tier out of New York. And the winner by a nose (not a smutty nose) was Green Flash.

I finished the afternoon with a Slyfox O"Reilly Stout from Pennsylvania which was nice and hearty in flavor and weight and at only 3% ABV, a good way to slow down before I was walking out of the place like a blind tiger! We met some really nice locals who obviously enjoyed beer and they were telling us about another place in Brooklyn called Spuyten Duyvil (Spitting Devil) that had an interesting beer menu as well. Definitely something worth checking out the next time we visit The Big Apple, and I sure wouldn't mind coming back to The Blind Tiger.

BY THE BY: On our way to NYC we got stuck in the Philly airport for four hours due to a mechanical problem with our inbound plane. We drowned our sorrows in a fairly cool airport bar there called The Jet Bar (kind of a Hard Rock Cafe-style place) and they had two decent local mircobrews on tap: The Sly Fox Pale Ale had a clean, smooth taste, and the Dock Street Rye IPA wasn't as hoppy as I prefer, but it was an interesting blend and a decent beer overall.

Western CaribBEERean

The wife and I took a week-long cruise to the Western Caribbean recently with stops in Grand Cayman; Cozumel, Mexico; Belize; and Isla Roatan, Honduras. There were a few glitches along with way, but overall we had a good trip. I was able to try new beer in three of the four stops and enjoyed an old favorite in the other.

Caybrew - Grand Cayman Island - This was a local draught lager that I had with lunch served up in a plastic cup. It was kind of soapy tasting and obviously not real good. Good thing the island is beautiful because their beer is pretty ugly.

Our next stop was Cozumel, Mexico, and we spent the day at a beach club with unlimited drinks. Nothing new to me was offered, so I got reacquainted with an old friend, Corona. I haven't had Corona in many years and used to drink nothing but it in my younger days. It was just a good as I remembered and sipping them on a tropical beach straight out of their commercials made it all the better.

Belize was our third stop and our biggest bust of a day tour due to an incompetent tour company and the disappointment of the country we saw being dirty and depressing. The bright spot of Belize actually was their beer, Belikan. We were able to try both varieties, a stout and a premium lager, served up in ice-cold bottles (that's my friend, Amy, goofing around in the photo below "two-fisting" both varieties). The stout was my favorite beer of the trip up to this point.

Our last stop was the island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. We spent the day at Maya Key, a private island beach club and wildlife rehab and interpretive center. They had a full bar on site and offered three Honduran bottle beers to try. The first was Salva Vida, a pale lager cerveza. Next was Barena, yet another pale lager cerveza that reminded me a lot of Carib Beer which I had on an Eastern Caribbean cruise last year (previous blog). It was a little lighter in body and texture than Salva Vida. Last was Port Royal Export, you guessed it, a pale lager cerveza, also light in body and texture. Salva Vida was my favorite of the three, but Belikan Stout was still the winner of the 2010 Western Caribbean Taste Test.

Addendum: I had a couple of other new-to-me bottled microbrews when we got back to Tampa worth noting as well. I had them both at the fabulous Z Grille which had a beer list almost as good as their food.

This first was actually from the Tampa area called Evander. This is a special commissioned product of The Florida Beer Company to celebrate an eccentric local artist/legend by the name of Evander Preston. The beer wasn't too bad, but not as great as the locals seem to think it is. Not nearly as memorable as the character it is honoring...i.e. he recently got in trouble with local authorities for handing out 100 bottles of bourbon to the homeless.

My second beer and my favorite of the two that night came from Boonville, California. It was Boont Amber Ale from Anderson Valley Brewing - not available in TN, by the way which is too bad because it looks like they are producing some great products including an award-winning IPA that I would like to try. Their website (avbc.com) shows a very cool brewery location in Northern California complete with its own disc golf course (my most loyal reader and sometimes contributor of this blog would appreciate this fact I think.) The amber was smooth and tasty with an excellent finish for a bottled beer.

Virginia Beer Tasting....and beyond

BEFORE... AFTER...

Thanks to my wife, Ashlee, and our friends, Nate and Ginny, for "helping" me with this great tasting.

Virginia is for Lagers

EDITORIAL NOTE: Beer in hand while blogging some of this entry - Backdraft Brown Ale in a bottle - Hook & Ladder Brewing, Wilkes-Barre, PA

While most of this post is about some wonderful beer I found on a road trip with my wife in Virginia over the New Year's holiday, that same road trip started in Atlantic City where I once again found myself at Firewaters Bar (see previous blog about Atlantic City) in the bottom of the Tropicana Casino with an old favorite, Stone IPA (Calif.), draught in hand (photo right). By the way, that Victory Brewing (Penn.) glass it was poured in somehow made it back with me in my suitcase. How odd? At least I am the Robin Hood of beer glass theivery as I plan to give it to my friend, Nate, who is a Victory fan. While I had nothing new while at Firewaters (even though they have 50 taps they were out of one of the few I had not tried), I did have something new at dinner earlier in the evening. It was an interesting German wheat-doppelbock (double-dark) ale called Aventinus from Schneider & Sohn Brewing. It was a little heavy after the great light seafood dinner I had, but still enjoyable and quite different in terms of wheat-based beer. Plus, its ABV of 8% was enjoyable.

Now, on to Virginia which as their tourism catch-phrase says truly "is for lovers"...beer lovers, that is. We stopped in Charlottesville for the night since it was about half way home and because it's the home of Starr Hill Brewing, one of my favorite new microbrewers in the Southern region. We were able to take a tasting and a tour of their modest facilities now housed in a section of a former chicken-processing plant in the nearby hamlet of Crozier, VA. Starr Hill, named after a Charlottesville neighborhood where it was conceived, got its start originally in Charlottesville as a downtown brew-pub and has seen enough success over the last few years to expand to the Crozier location. They now distribute to six states (including Tennessee. Thank you!) and recently signed a distribution contract with Anheiser-Busch which should see further expansion in the near future. Keep in mind this is a distribution-only contract, not a brewing contract. All Starr Hill products are still hand-produced from high quality ingredients (left) as our tour-guide, Shelley, mentions in a minute or so of his spiel in the video below.

As for the tasting my wife and I tried seven different brews. The Jomo Lager which I had already tried and had incidentally bought for our Christmas party and decorated my Beer Tree with (see previous blog). The Amber Ale which I had not tried but found to be good. The Love which was new to me. It's their wheat beer and I have to say was one of the best I have had and I am admittedly not the biggest wheat fan. Dave, who was pouring for us, shared a great hint with us to hold our nose before taking a sip, then swish it around and swallow whle releasing your nostrils. What happens? A wonderful taste of cloves and a hint of bananas. Are either of those tastes added to The Love? Heck, no!! Amazing! Next up was The Gift, a limited-edition holiday German bock.

Delcious. Next up was the reason I started to love Starr Hill, their Northern Lights IPA. This is one of my favorite regional IPAs holding a very close second in my heart to Sweetwater IPA out of Atlanta. Incredibly hoppy without being overly bitter. A true masterpiece. Fnally was the Dark Star Porter which I had before and thought was OK, but it was just a sample from a bottle. This sample I got on draught was much, much better. Not overly smokey like a lot of porters and actually quite light in body. Even my wife, Ashlee, was impressed with this one and dark beers are not her thing. Finally, after learning how far we had driven and still had to drive, our new friend and pourer, Dave, let us in on a little secret. From a tap with no handle on it he gave us two pours of their Tripel - a Belgium-style beer that is lightly sweet and sweetly light. What a great, great beer. Well done, Starr Hill, well done.

After our tour and tasting and hitting the sales counter pretty hard for ourselves and our friends back home - a growler of the Tripel, three pint bottles of The Gift and a six-pack of The Love -it was time for some lunch. From some literature available at Starr Hill we quickly learned that the area was rich with microbrewing and we settled on one nearby that also boasted a restaurant, Blue Mountain Brewing.

To see Blue Mountain Brewing from the outside you might not be impressed. It's a simple looking one-story structure with a beautiful view towards...you guessed it...a blue-hazed mountain. Our expectations weren't too high, but we were hungry. When we stepped in our expectations grew a bit because the place was packed! Lots of eating and lots of beer sampling going on in every nook and cranny of the place. We felt fortunate when we were offered a couch and armchair and a corner of a coffee table to have our lunch. Sure beats waiting who knows how long on a real table! I immediately ordered the little 6-beer sampler (below) they offered as we looked over the food menu. As with the restaurant, my expectations weren't high about their beer and again I was grossly mistaken. This was some great beer! The menu and the beer were heavily German-influenced. From light to dark I had The Blue Mountain Lager, The Rockfish Wheat, The Full Nelson Pale Ale, MacHaydens, The Wee Scotch Ale and The Dark Hollow. I don't have a bad word to say about any of them. I immediately ordered a pint of The Full Nelson which was their hoppiest concotion, and we ordered a 750ml bottle of The Dark Hollow which I can easily say is my favorite stout of all time. No, seriously, this stuff is excellent. The big difference is that this Imperial Stout has been aged in fresh bourbon barrels and the taste payoff is amazing. Very unique and inventive. Another reason I like this place is the fact that they are also operating their own hop farm which is extremely rare (and a risk of time and money) in this part of the country. But as their website factually states, Virginia was the leading hop-grower in the United States when the nation got its start, so why not bring some of that tradition back. Plus, there are successful wineries all over the place here, so hops should do well. I will definitely keep up to date on this guys and their progress in hop production as well as excellent beer craftsmanship.

In a nutshell, this roadtrip showed me that central Virginia is not only a beautiful and surprisingly undeveloped area of culture and history, but also makes a lot of good damn beer and I cannot wait to get back and do more exploring.

Holiday Cheers

The wife asked me to decorate her SIXTH Christmas tree in our house which is located out on our sun-porch. She said I could decorate it anyway I wanted to. So be it.! I give you the Beer Tree! The surprising thing was she actually liked it! So I guess this will become a holiday tradition and will change yearly as it will reflect what I am currently partaking of during the holiday season. Plus, I got an idea for tinsel made of beer caps that has the potential of being pretty darn cool.

This year I went by the Mt. Juliet Beer Company Store and bought four six-packs to serve at our Christmas party. After popping the bottles in the ice bin for serving, it justed seemed appropriate to use the colorful, empty cartons as ornaments. From top to bottom there is the Backdraft Brown out of Pennsylvania, the Starr Hill Juno Lager out of Virginia, the Magic Hat Winter Ale out of Vermont and the Rogue Santa's Reserve Ale out of Oregon.

I also got a growler of Southern Pecan Brown Ale from Lazy Magnolia Brewing in Mississippi (don't let the Yazoo label on it fool you). I also placed a couple of other high-alcohol beers underneath which were bought in Chattanooga earlier this season. They were the Acme IPA (small bottle) out of California, and a pint oif Delirium Noel from Belgium (big bottle on the floor on the far right). Speaking of high-alcohol beer, I also received a four-pack of 10% ABV Dogfish Head 120-Minute IPA from my friend at work, Joy. My wife and I got a 12-pack containing six varieties of Flying Dog brews from our friends, John and Dorie. Then, my brother-in-law, Andy, got me two IPA growlers as well. One was Sierra Nevada and the other...he can't remember, but he will be investigating it again next week to get the name. Thank you so much, everybody!!

I will follow up this post in the next few weeks with a quick run-down of what I thought of all this beer. Gonna be a busy holiday season!!

A Lone Star but A Lot of Beer

During a recent weekend trip to Austin, Texas, I had a chance to sample a few local and non-local craft beers that were pretty good. When my wife and I arrived on Friday night to the house of our friends, Dianna and Johan, I was greeted with a cold bottle of Fireman's 4 Blond Ale from Real Ale Brewing there in Austin. A nice beer overall with good flavor and finish.

Saturday afternoon Johan took us out to Central Market which had an incredible beer section. Austinites are very lucky to be on the cutting edge of large supermarkets (they are the original home of Whole Foods which is now nationwide) that specialize in organic, fresh and unique products at reasonable prices... including beer. I selected two individual pint bottles to purchase with plans on having one later that afternoon and one on Sunday afternoon. The first one I picked up was Hop Stoopid from Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma, California. I cracked it when we got back to the house and shared it with Johan. Incredible hoppy flavor as the name might imply and smooth finish and no bitter taste at all. A very, very good beer. After some research I found that this wonderful beer is considered a Double IPA - make that an "award-winning Double IPA" - which is by far my favorite sytle of beer.

We all attended a concert later that evening and dined at a local chain eatery beforehand called Opal Divine's. I was delighted to see that they carried a great beer selection including several products from Austin's own, Live Oak Brewing. I chose their IPA, of course, and it wasn't bad. I may have liked it more if I didn't still have the smooth taste of the Hop Stoopid Ale still in mind. The folks at Live Oak do a tour of their small microbrewery as well which I would like to check out next time I am down this way. The beer selection at the music venue was typical and boring, but I did get a kick out of having one my favorite "mass-produced" beers, Shiner Bock, for the first time in a can. All four of us actually toured the Shiner Brewery (in nearby Shiner, Texas) the last time we visited Austin and it was a great tour. Shiner is a great success story in terms a small brewery producing great products and gaining some amazing national success.

Sunday afternoon before our flight home I popped the cap on the second pint bottle I had bought at Central Market. This was was called Small Batch 471 Double IPA from Breckenridge Brewing in Colorado. Double IPAs as I mentioned above are my favorite style of beer and this was the first one I had gotten in a bottle and I have to say I was fairly disappointed. It wasn't a bad brew overall, but it really lacked the pure hoppiness of double IPAs I had tried in the past, and still had the coarse bitterness of an English-style IPA - totally different from American IPAs.


Thanks to Johan and Dianna for showing us such a great time and thanks to Austin for providing great opportunities to try really good beer in a great American city.