Amazing beer, delicious food and beautiful mountain landscapes...Asheville is one of my absolute favorite places! The people are incredibly friendly and there is just such an overall great vibe in the air! My wife is from Charlotte so we try to get up to Asheville (around a 2 hour drive) at least once or twice a year during our family visits down south.
I've been to Asheville quite a few times before but never hit this many breweries in a single day. We usually pick out one or two places, but during this trip we managed to visit five breweries - Green Man, Wedge, Asheville Pizza & Brewing, Highland, and Pisgah. Oh yes, what a wonderful day!!
After eating a rack of the best ribs ever at my favorite BBQ spot, 12 Bones Smokehouse, we drove over to Green Man. They are one of NC's oldest breweries (est. 1997) and specialize in traditional English styled ales. I started off with a hand-pumped ESB and then had an IPA. Both were extremely solid beers that are almost too easy to drink. I've had the IPA before at Jack of the Wood, a Celtic style pub that was the original home of Green Man Brewing, and it was as good as I remebered. Yep, I could drink this all day long!
Next, my wife's friend who lives right outside of Asheville suggested we go to Wedge Brewing Company in the River Arts District. Wedge had a cool and spacious patio area where we hung out enjoying some of their beers. Not sure why I started with a glass of Golem (9% Belgian strong golden ale) in 90 degree heat but it really hit the spot. The high temps combined with the tastiness of this ale made me drink it way too fast. I had to keep reminding myself this was a marathon, not a sprint. Slow and steady sipping wins the race...or at least allows you to keep standing. It seems that the IPA, Iron Rail, is the most popular beer at Wedge and it was served at a completely separate window with a constant flow of glasses being filled. I found it to be good but definitely not great. Nonetheless, a solid and enjoyable brew to quench my thirst while steadily dripping sweat under the relentless NC sun. I read on the Wedge website that their current brewmaster started his first head brewing position at the Bullfrog Brewery in Williamsport, PA. Pretty cool semi-local connection.
Our next destination was Asheville Pizza & Brewing which was just a couple minutes away from Wedge. Another great thing about Asheville is that everything is relatively close in proximity. We grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a pint of the wet-hopped Fire Escape. "The brew is a blend of Asheville Brewing's Escape Artist Ale, with 127 pounds of smoked jalapeno peppers added." I really like hot pepper beers but this one seemed a bit too much. It started out as very enjoyable but then lost me toward the middle of the glass. It's not that it was too hot but the flavor of the jalapeno peppers was just too dominating. Nice effort for an experimental beer but a smaller pour or half pint would've been a good amount to sample. I followed it up with a glass of Ninja Porter. The prominent roasted chocolate flavor was an inviting contrast to the peppery heat of the previous brew. While Fire Escape wasn't my favorite, I'll gladly support any brewery that offers a weekly experiment to their customers. I wish more breweries would do something like this to keep their tap list fresh and unpredictable. On a side note, I did purchase what is one of the coolest brewery t-shirts I've ever seen....
The next stop on our list was Highland Brewing Company. I've loved their beers for a long time and was happy to see that they now offered Saturday hours for the taproom...Woohoo! My favorite brew of the day was possibly, Thunderstruck Coffee Porter. The Highland website describes, "This robust porter has a full body with some hints of chocolate from the Chocolate Malt and Midnight Wheat. The mild hop aroma showcases the roasted flavors and subtle fruit and spice notes of the artisan fair-trade, organic coffee, roasted in the neighboring town of Black Mountain at Dynamite Roasting Company." This great porter totally captured the roasted essence of the coffee, bringing the rich taste to the forefront in a non-overpowering manner. On the other end of the spectrum, our next choice was the most refeshing beer of the day - Razor Wit, a Belgian witbier brewed with bitter orange peels, grains of paradise and ginger. Just a great summer beer! Right before we left I ordered a glass of Kashmir IPA. I've had it a bunch of times in the past but wanted to try it fresh from the source. Ahhhh!
A trip to Ashville is incomplete without driving up to the town of Black Mountain and checking out Pisgah brewery. Not only my favorite brewery in NC, but one of my favorite breweries ever! Pisgah is a certified organic brewery and you can taste the freshness of the ingredients combined with crisp, mountain spring water in every sip. From their palest ales to their darkest stouts, everything here is spectacular! Two beers I hadn't tried before were the Wet Hop and Blueberry Wheat - both were really good! After a long day of drinking I tried to keep things pretty light but I couldn't resist a glass of Solstice, a 9% tripel. I rounded things out with some Summer Ale and an IPA or two....who's counting? I certainly wasn't by that point of the night.
Asheville is a paradise for beer lovers, food lovers, music lovers, hikers, campers, and just about anyone and everyone you'll ever meet. I had a fantastic day enjoying a wide variety of brews and can't wait until our next trip to this western NC mecca of awesomeness! Cheers!
http://www.12bones.com/
http://greenmanbrewery.com/
http://www.wedgebrewing.com/
http://ashevillebrewing.com
http://www.highlandbrewing.com/
http://pisgahbrewing.com/
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