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.