Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

I have been very busy with class, firm presentations and, now, job interviews. So, naturally I haven't managed to get a solid post in. I've thought of numerous things I wanted to blog about and have read countless other blogs about beer and homebrewing to get some ideas. I have a couple of ideas and changes I may be trying out with the blog over the next couple of weeks so bear with me.

I told KKW to take this picture so I don't feel bad stealing it from her blog.

Over Labor Day weekend I went with KKW and some of my friends to DC for the long weekend. Since KKW has already dedicated an entire blog post to DC (Our Nation's Capital) I will just mention that while we were there we had the opportunity to visit the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Arlington. If I could I would spend every day in a place such as this alehouse. As KKW mentions in her post, the food was amazing and obviously the beer was too. I had been looking forward to buying the Punkin Ale soon near here only to find out it wasn't (at the time of release anyways which happened to be my birthday) anywhere within 100 miles of Chapel Hill or Charlotte. Luckily, we found this Dogfish Head Alehouse right near our hotel. It was like a sign from God. I could have racked up a pretty hefty bar tab but tried to restrain myself despite being in beer heaven.

There are a number of homebrewing related things I've wanted to try recently, including growing my own hops. The problem is you need a lot of outdoor space unless you grow them in a container and use some pretty crafty tricks to make it work. To learn more about growing hops in containers, check out this blog post at NChomebrewing.com: How to Grow Hops on Trellis.   My apartment lacks a porch entirely and KKW's is fairly small and she has a dog in her house which makes it risky for the dog as hops are poisonous to dogs so that idea is gonna have to sit on the back burner.

I also want to get started brewing on an all-grain system but still lack the money to buy one and/or the knowledge to build one myself. However the itch do to an all-grain batch is getting to be too much so I'm going to have to find a solution sooner rather than later. 

If you have any experiences to share about Punkin Ale or other fall seasonal beers please comment on the post and let me know what they are!

Carolina Brewery and Tyler's Restaurant & Taproom

I have been fortunate to attend the greatest university in the world even though they did not initially want me here in Chapel Hill. I can already foresee quite a few future posts related to UNC in general, especially during basketball season when the Black Falcon takes flight. For now, however, I'm trying to avoid lengthy discussions about the current developments in the Tar Heels football program.

Instead, I feel like I should pay homage to two of my favorite places to eat near me: Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill which I ate at just a few hours ago and Tyler's Restaurant & Taproom in Carrboro. There have been numerous times when KKW and I cannot decide where to eat and end up going to either one of these places. Why? Because both Carolina Brewery and Tyler's R&T both have good beer and good food. I have honestly never had a bad experience at either restaurant and both are usually full of people when I visit. Good Beer + Good Food + Good People = Hard to Beat. It's places like these that make drinking Craft Beer even easier (as if it's not easy enough as it is).

I have been meaning to go to the Pittsboro location of Carolina Brewery where they do most of their brewing nowadays but I have only been to the restaurant on Franklin Street. My favorite things to eat there are the Brunswick Stew, the Barbecue Plate (which you can order with Brunswick Stew and Hushpuppies), and any of their burgers. KKW will almost always get the Buffalo Chicken Pizza. I tried the "RTP" pizza tonight for the first time and it didn't disappoint (never fails). CB is constantly offering various seasonal selections of both food and beers which makes for a fresh experience every few times you go. Their Oatmeal Porter is amazing but is, unfortunately, not on tap currently because it is out of season (gotta take the good with the bad). The Firecracker Pale Ale is my personal favorite which is very easy to drink and makes for a good pairing with all types of meats one may be grilling during the summer months. The Copperline Amber Ale and the Sky Blue Golden Ale are also very worthy of noting.

 Although Tyler's is a chain I have only ever been to the one in Carrboro. However that should not detract from anyone's opinion of the restaurant because whatever they are doing, they are doing well. Last time we went, KKW and I drank Victory Brewing Company's Headwaters Pale Ale and Golden Monkey. I had never really heard about Victory Brewing Co. until a month or two ago but their beer is delicious. At some point in time I'm going to have to drag KKW on an extensive brewery tour up in the northern part of the US. Maybe while I"m there I can check out Victory's brewery and brewpub in PA. But, I digress. Lets just say I  pounded the "2 Beer" burger I ate at Tyler's which features melted Pepper Jack cheese, jalapenos, and 2 beer hot wing sauce.

In other news, I am heading to the Beer, Bourbon, and Barbecue festival in Cary, NC on August 5th and 6th which will have in attendance "60 beers, 40 bourbons, + lots of barbecue." Yeah, and me. This means I cannot attend the Carolina Panthers training camp in Wofford, SC which I have never made it to, despite planning on it every year. It's amazing how something can come up every time to prevent me from going. I am very excited that the Panthers may actually do work this season and am actually impressed with the moves the front office has made since the lockout ended. I look forward to finding lots of good things to blog about at the festival in Cary and I'm particularly excited about the Saturday seminars in the Tasting Theater where there will be Brewmasters and Pit Masters from the Deep South.

Lastly, I finally had the opportunity to visit the iconic Merritt's Store and Grill in Chapel Hill for lunch today. In order to do the place justice I will refer you to KKW's blog where she has a post dedicated to the restaurant opened during the depression: argyle & paisley. I also just took my final exams for my summer classes and only have a week off before the fall semester begins but I'm hoping to brew sometime this week. Hobby or obsession? Either way, I'm hooked.

Roth Brewing Company

KKW and I just celebrated our second anniversary (of dating) and since I had to take exams this past week we waited to celebrate until this weekend. We went to Frankie's Fun House in Raleigh, NC which reminded me of (former) Celebration Station in Charlotte. Although we had fun playing arcade games and collecting tickets on Skee-Ball which KKW kept dominating at, we left the fun park to finally make use of the Groupon we bought for Roth Brewing Company quite some time ago.

We ended up getting to the brewery around 4 p.m. and wondered whether or not it was actually open as no one was there. However, we found upon entering the brewery that 4 p.m. was the time they opened on Saturdays anyways. After walking inside the brewing area we were directed to the bar where we were offered samples of the three beers on tap. The first beer we tasted was the Raleigh Red American Amber Ale which I must admit, despite my extreme hatred for N.C. State, was amazing. We were also offered tastes of the Mi Mei - Honey Plum Hefeweizen as well as the FoeHammer which is a Barleywine style ale. Roth also offers a Cinnamon Porter which is their winter seasonal but it is not available currently. It will be on tap starting September 24th and they have had a keg aging for an entire year so I encourage everyone in the area to go check it out.

After tasting the three beers they had on tap currently, KKW and I drank two pints of the Raleigh Red each while waiting for the 5 p.m. brewery tour that we got tickets for on Groupon. It was instantly clear that many others were at the brewery for the very same reason and it was nice that the brewery filled up quickly since no one was around when we first arrived.  Our tour guide, James, was both entertaining and informative. He did the usual routine that one can expect on a brewery tour...that is, walk you around each room of the production facility and tell you about the process of making beer. However, he also gave us insight into the relationships between all of the people at the brewery and talked about the common goal they all shared to make the brewery a success--something that can be easily overlooked when giving a tour.

I also had the chance to meet a fellow homebrewer at the tour who is getting ready to launch his own blog about homebrewing by August 1st. After seeing on Twitter that this guy I started to follow literally a day ago was going to be visiting Roth Brewing Co. at the same time I was, KKW and I started to wonder who in the 20-30 people at the brewery was @NChomebrewing. We saw a nice looking fellow in the crowd with a camera (he mentioned on Twitter that he was going to be taking pictures for his upcoming blog) and introduced ourselves. Sure enough he, Chris Creech, confirmed that he was the man behind the Twitter account and we struck up a conversation about homebrewing. KKW and I spoke with Chris and his lovely fiance for a few minutes after the tour and were pleasantly surprised to find out that they graduated from UNC just a year before KKW and myself. Chris told me he hopes his blog will be an asset to homebrewers throughout the surrounding areas and said it will feature many guest posts from brewers like himself.

I would like to say thanks to Roth Brewing Company and to my new acquaintance Chris Creech who I look forward to brewing with in the future. Please check out his blog on August 1st when it launches!

Update--Forgot to mention that Chris' blog will be launching at http://NChomebrewing.com.

Lexington Avenue Brewery and Asheville, NC

During 4th of July weekend I went with my girlfriend (KKW) and the rest of her family to visit one of her uncles that lives on top of Black Mountain, NC near Asheville. One of my favorite things about North Carolina and growing up in Charlotte is that it only takes a few hours driving west to get to the mountains and a few hours east to get to the beach. Anyways, I couldn't have thought of a better way to start off 4th of July weekend than drinking beer on a mountain house porch while counting the number of ridges I could see off in the distance.

After spending Friday night on top of Black Mountain, we woke up early on Saturday morning to watch the sun come up over the mountains. After eating breakfast we ventured into close-by downtown Asheville. Let me back up a little bit. I have been to Asheville three times in the past year and a half and every visit deserves mentioning for different reasons.

The first of these three visits was during the Christmas season in 2009. KKW got me tickets to visit the Biltmore Estate while it was decorated for the holidays. The Biltmore Estate is impressive in itself as it contains acres upon acres of land and the biggest house in the country nestled between the mountains. Visiting the Biltmore would have been cool during any part of the year but my girlfriend got me tickets to see the mansion during Christmas because Christmas is awesome.  It is the best time of the year and the decorations and lights can and should improve most people's moods even in the dreariest of winter days. In order to appreciate just how awesome it is to see the decorations inside the Biltmore during the Christmas season I have posted a picture for your viewing pleasure. You are welcome.

The next visit I took to Asheville was to see the Avett Brothers New Year's Eve show at the Civic Center. I had heard some of the Avett Brothers' songs before I started dating KKW but she introduced me to much of their music that I was unaware of and now I can't get enough. The Avett Brothers themselves, Seth and Scott, hail from Concord, NC and have become increasingly popular in recent years as the band added members Bob Crawford, Joe Kwon, and Jacob Edwards and joining up with producer Rick Rubin. This year they got a chance to feature their folk/bluegrass/country/rock sound (no way to describe their music and do it justice...you have to experience it yourself) at the Grammy Award ceremony alongside Mumford and Sons and Bob Dylan. This particular occasion marked the second time I got to see the Avett Bros. in concert and the ninth time for KKW.  I'll be seeing them again in October in Greensboro as well thanks to a graduation gift from my girlfriend's parents.

Thirsty Monk

Two other places are worth noting in this post and they are within a stones throw of each other. One night over New Years weekend we went to The Thirsty Monk which has a very impressive beer list that does not include a single mass produced beer but rather many tasty, high gravity beers. Drink one beer in The Thirsty Monk and it's easy to see why Asheville was named Beer City, USA the past three years in a row--even beating out Portland, OR in the process.  The second place is award-winning Tupelo Honey Cafe which has some of the most delicious southern food I've ever eaten (second only to probably Paula Deen's Lady & Sons restaurant in Savannah, GA).

Lexington Avenue Brewery

The third and most recent trip I've taken to Asheville, as I said previously, was the Saturday during 4th of July weekend after sleeping on top of Black Mountain the night before. This time we were there we went to Lexington Avenue Brewery--also known as "the LAB."  It turned out to be one of the better decisions of the weekend. We got a chance to try the Kobe Beef Sliders, Truffled Pommes Frites, the Old World Pretzels, and the Chorizo Chili Rellenos. All of the food was delicious and I honestly cannot pick out one bad thing to say about anything we had. On top of having amazing food, L.A.B. has good beer. I had a pint of the LAB IPA but we got a flight of some of the other beers so we could taste them as well. The beers we ended up liking the best were the Chocolate Stout, the American Pale Ale, and the Belgian White Ale.

Thus, if you haven't been to Asheville or the North Carolina mountains, you should go. By not going you are simply depriving yourself of an area that offers amazing beer and food and is tremendously rich in Western NC culture.

Fullsteam Brewery

It was inevitable that I would eventually get bogged down studying and working towards my Masters degree once classes started during the summer. However, I made it a point to come up with a few different blogging topics so that when I had enough time to devote to a post it would be easy to get the ideas flowing. Having said that, you can expect a few more posts than usual within the next few days.

At the request of my brother who lives in Charlotte, my girlfriend and I went to Fullsteam Brewery in Durham to pick up some growlers of their beer for him and to check the place out. Now, I'm not going to pretend that I was ecstatic about heading into Durham during the evening hours because it's the last kind of place you want to get stranded. Venturing over into enemy territory (Go Heels!) with Carolina stickers all over my car was risky but in this case I was willing to take the risk for a few reasons:

1) Fullsteam has delicious beer. If you haven't had it, you should try it. Most of their beer offerings are delicious. I've tasted/had the El Toro Cream Ale, the Southern Lager, the Carver Sweet Potato, and the Hogwash Hickory Smoked Porter and I wasn't disappointed with any. Although I doubt I could drink more than one or two of the Porter.

2) It is summertime which means days are longer and I don't have to worry about unsavory characters coming out of creepy alleyways in downtown Durham quite as early on in the day. Arriving at the brewery around 5:30 or 6:00 p.m. leaves plenty of time for anyone wanting to check out the brewery after work, grab a few beers and get back to safety--basically anywhere other than Durham. If you're lucky you might cross paths with the food trucks that frequent the area and park near the brewery on many days. I'm actually quite jealous about this actually and hope that the laws in downtown Charlotte will soon change to allow food trucks. Many major cities have been featured on the TV show Eat Street showing off the cultural variety of the food offered by the trucks with unusual and tasty creations.

3) I want to open up a brewery. What better way is there to learn about the things I can expect in the future than talking to people who have recently had that experience?

In the next few posts I will talk about my visit to Lexington Avenue Brewery in Asheville, NC, Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill, NC, as well as Tyler's Restaurant and Taproom in Carrboro, NC so please check back soon for those updates.

Bottling Day

It took a few hours to sanitize all of the equipment I would need to bottle my beer after two weeks of fermentation. However, I managed to get the beer bottled and capped fairly quickly doing it by myself. Of course I could not have done any of this without consulting "The Complete Joy of Home Brewing" a.k.a. "The Homebrewer's Bible" by Charlie Papazian (side note: not sure if homebrewing is one word or two but I like it better as one). If anyone is thinking about venturing into homebrewing then this book should be one of your first purchases. It educates you on how to make your own beer with detailed instructions throughout the whole process all the while keeping you calm and collected by reminding you "Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew!"

It is an interesting time to be a beer lover and enthusiast. Restrictions are being lifted on what and how people can brew across the nation and it is leading America into a sort of beer renaissance. Craft breweries are starting up at a crazy rate and are slowly but surely stealing away market share from the major breweries that produce cheap, tasteless, light beers and that put more effort into marketing their beers than they do into making them. For someone that has dreams of opening up a brewery themselves (like me), these facts can be both encouraging and alarming. Since there are now more than 1,700 breweries in the U.S. and more than 600 in planning, it can be a little overwhelming wondering how the hell someone is supposed to create a profitable business with all of that competition. Luckily, most craft beer drinkers do not only like one type of beer or even one brand of beer regardless of how good it may be. People like variety and that's what craft brewing is all about--delivering tasty and unique beers with fresh and, sometimes, unusual ingredients.

After ten days of aging the bottled Honey Wheat Ale in a dark corner of my living room it should be ready to drink. In the meantime I will continue to read (I recommend "Brewing Up a Business" by Sam Calagione, Founder of Dogfish Head) and educate myself as much as I can about the beer world. Oh, and have a homebrew from a previous batch of course!

Winging It

After deliberating for several days on how to start this blog off on the right foot I came to the conclusion that I would begin in true American fashion by using a time-tested approach that has served me well in my 21 years of life--by winging it.

Like every man that enjoys drinking beer has probably thought about at one time or another, I want to start my own brewery. While pursuing a Masters degree I am currently researching, planning, and dreaming all things beer during much of my spare time. This obsession has led to a new hobby I have adopted over the past year which will hopefully help me in my quest to open a brewery: Homebrewing. Two weeks ago I started brewing a Honey Wheat Ale recipe that I got from Alternative Beverage in Charlotte.

Tomorrow is bottling day and after a few days of aging and letting the priming sugar carbonate the beer it should be ready to drink. As you can see in the picture, the beer is currently still sitting in the glass carboy in a dark corner of my living room (I turned the flash on my BlackBerry for the picture).

I will provide an update hopefully tomorrow once the bottling is complete. Until then I encourage everyone who does not already brew their own beer to do so. It is a fun, educational experience and hobby that has tangible and delicious results.