Carolina Breweries

I continued my exploration of the mid-Atlantic beer scene when I continued from Washington DC to Greenville, SC.  As Greenville is very close to North Carolina, and specifically Asheville which has a nationally known brewing scene, I wanted to visit breweries in both states.  This also would allow me to say that I visited breweries headquartered in Delaware, Maryland, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  I say headquartered because while I visited a Dogfish Head Ale House, it was in Virginia and Dogfish Head's main brewery is in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  My visits to the breweries in the Carolina area actually took place over a couple of days and we started out with a brewery tour of Thomas Creek Brewery in Greenville, SC.  Thomas Creek is the oldest brewery in the area, starting as a brewpub in downtown Greenville in 1994 and becoming family-owned Thomas Creek in 1998.  They have a pretty big facility that brews their own beer as well as doing some contract brewing for area breweries.  The main entrance put us next to the home brew supply store and close to the small in-house taproom.  Before we started the tour, I happened to notice a couple of their ads, which were pretty unconventional and funny.  The tour entitled us to 4 - 4 oz pours and they generally started everyone off their most popular beer, River Falls Red Ale which was a pretty good red ale.  We then walked around the brewing area and given a short history before returning to the tap room where we were able to talk to the brewer and other members of the family while trying other beers on tap.  They had 12 beers on tap, of which there were many pilsners, pale ales, and IPAs.  They did have some other unusual styles and flavors, of which, I tried one.  Other than the Red, I had the Sour IPA, the Trifecta IPA, and Bing Bong 4/20 Gruit.  As far as color and clarity were concerned, they looked pretty similar, but there were some wide flavor differences.  The Trifecta IPA was a good IPA, using Citra hops.  The Sour IPA, I was uncertain about because I wasn't certain how well a bitter IPA would work with souring.  It worked well because it was neither overwhelmingly bitter or sour. And the Gruit, I had to try because it was a gruit.  As the name indicates (Bing Bang 4/20 Gruit).  It was aiming for the dank flavor of marijuana.  It was really unusual because a gruit is mildly bitter (without hops) and has a salty finish which this did well, but it also had a dank flavor.  It was really good and I'm glad I got to try it, but it looks like it was an experimental batch, so the only place that I might be able to try it would be at the brewery.

I didn't have a strong aim or agenda when we went to Asheville, NC.  I did want to visit some local breweries, so while I am sure that Sierra Nevada and Oskar Blues would have been very good, I saw that there were a few breweries near downtown Asheville, and decided that that would have been a better choice especially since we were traveling an hour to get there, it would be better to have more things to do instead of just one.  I saw that Asheville Brewing seemed to be the biggest place, so it seemed to be as good a place as any to start.  The downtown location of Asheville Brewing, there are three locations, is the original and seems to be in a large former warehouse.  The public space is separated from the brewing area and there are three large rooms, two dining rooms, and the bar/taproom where you could also get a full menu if that is what you desired.  As we were just starting, I did not need food, although I did get pretzels with my flight.  The beer served had a wide range of colors and clarity and they also had a great t-shirt that played right to my chemist geek self.  For my flight, I started with a Lemon Space Dog American Wheat Ale, made with Lemon Zest and Lemondrop Hops.  It was a good wheat ale with a very nice lemony flavor.  From there, I went with a Ninja Latte Coffee Porter, which is brewed with Mountain Air Roasters' Coffee and Lactose to make a nice coffee porter with a creamy finish.  From there I went with a Fire Escape Pale Ale, brewed with Roasted Jalapenos to give a nice smooth pale ale a fiery finish (It was spicy, but it wasn't overwhelming).  In every flight, I will generally choose an IPA if there is one available.  There were a few available when I went, and I decided to explore a little more and picked the one that was likely the most different, Ashvillain Black IPA.  It was a black beer that was as much a stout as it was an IPA and it had a great logo.  I was glad that we started there first because the bartender gave us a lot of suggestions as to where to go next.

There are seven breweries within a quarter mile including one right next to Asheville Brewing.  We didn't visit all of them and in fact, our next stop was at a doughnut shop.  Vortex Doughnuts was located in the brewery district and did some very good gourmet doughnuts and coffee.  After the flight it was time for coffee and good coffee can always be found in a good doughnut shop.  Since we were on a brewery crawl, I decided to match my doughnut to it and had a Rotating Tap Cake Doughnut with Beer and Pretzels (I'm not sure what beer was used).  It was sweet, salty, and malty and was very good.  My friend had an Apple Fritter which was apparently very good, but it didn't look as lumpy as a standard apple fritter does.  After the doughnuts, we continued our journey as we had planned.

 

We had actually been looking for a Barbecue joint when we left Asheville Brewery.  We found the doughnut shop first and who can turn down a doughnut?  We found after we left, that Buxton Hall Barbecue, the place we were looking for, was two doors down from Vortex Doughnuts, on the other side of Catawba Brewing.  As there were more breweries to be visited, more food needed to be ingested, to handle the alcohol.  Having said this, since it was going to be a beer day, I decided to try out a beer from an area brewery that we would not be visiting, Fullsteam Brewery's Rocket Science IPA.  It was pretty bitter, but it wasn't just bitter and had both floral and citrusy flavors.  I was not feeling ribs for lunch, though I love barbecue and we were in the heart of Carolina Barbecue country, so I went for the next best thing, pulled pork, which was served with Corn Bread and two sides, Potato Salad and Cole Slaw.  Buxton Hall is an Eastern NC-Style Barbecue joint (despite being in western NC).  The sauce used is a thin, spiced vinegar style served on the side.  Generally, I like my barbecue sauce to be a little stickier, but it was pretty good.  My friend had barbecued chicken which was covered with a tomato based sauce.  He got rice and almonds and green beans under the hog for his sides.  His stuff did look good, but I was perfectly satisfied with mine.

After the lunch stop, we made a stop into the local bottle shop, Tasty Beverage Company, which had some interesting choices, and a taproom as well, but I wasn't sure how I would get any bottles home if I bought them, so I waved off and we went to our next brewery.  Our next brewery had the darkest name, but one of the friendliest atmospheres.  Burial Beer Company was black (of course) and was built into a pole barn on a hill.  The tap room was in the front of the barn with the brewing area behind it.  While there were some seats in the front and adjacent to the brewing area, there was a counter-service dining area in the back with more seating and a large outdoor patio.  There was a small crop of hops to one side and a gutted antique farm truck at the end of the patio that also served as seating.  We shared a picnic table with a couple that were also visiting the area to explore breweries.  Atmospherically, it was very dark, but it was also very farm-like.  It kind of reminded me of Dark Horse Brewing in Marshall, MI.  For my beers, I went with Tiny Beasts Tripel IPA, a collaboration brew with The Other Half Brewing Company from Brooklyn, NY (I will frequently lean toward collaboration brews because they are obviously a limited release), Interstellar Invertebrates IPA, Prayer Belgian Golden Blonde with Apricots, and Keeper's Veil Honey Saison.  All of the beers were pretty good.  Tiny Beasts was interesting because a tripel tends to be malty and slightly sweet which this was.  It also was pretty hoppy which made it pretty interesting.  Interstellar Invertebrates was a fairly standard, but good, IPA.  Prayer had a lot of apricot flavor and aroma, and the honey in the Keeper's Veil limited the funk that a standard saison has.  While all of the beers were good, I think that my favorite was Prayer.

The next brewery, Green Man Brewery, originally started out as a brewpub, Mad Jack's, but has since added a production brewery right next to it. Mad Jack's was not open when when we came by so we drank in the production brewery.  The production brewery has an area that looks like an English Pub with a lot of carved wood, but the area where we drank, in the taproom next to the brewing area looked pretty industrial, with cement floors and garage doors.  There were many Green Man images throughout the drinking area which were pretty cool.  The bar was full when we got there, so we sat at a high top near the bar.  They didn't offer flights, so I had to think hard because being already three beers in and wanting to continue, I needed to limit myself.  They generally do English-style ales and what I picked definitely had an English origin and referenced English Pop culture.  I had a Paranoid Android IPA.  It was a limited release English IPA and was very good.

The last brewery we hit in Asheville was the Wicked Weed Funkatorium which focused solely on sour beers.  The front of the place kind of reminded me of a western saloon (without the swinging doors).  It had a very nice and long bar that ran deep into the space.  Behind was a brewery and barrel aging warehouse.  The space used a lot of dark wood in the design and referenced barrel design.  For their flight, they had 4 set beers, two of which were Barrel Aged Sours and two that were Brett Farmhouse Ales.  While they were all sour, they were very different.  Bretticent, a Brett Farmhouse Ale, was a very sour golden farmhouse ale. Bombodile, the other Brett Farmhouse, was brewed with Strawberries, so it tasted like sour strawberries.  Khatta Masala was a Barrel Aged Sour brewed with Mango and Spices and had an Indian accent.  Medora, the other barrel aged sour, had a reddish cast to it.  It was pretty sour, but it was brewed with Blackberries and Raspberries, which moderated it somewhat.  Of the four that I tried, I liked the Bombadile best, though they were all pretty good.

After we left the Funkatorium, I thought we were done.  We had explored many breweries, and I had had and enjoyed many beers.  We did leave Asheville and returned to Greenville where we stopped at a place that my friend noticed the week that I arrived.  Located on the first floor of an office building, there seemed to be a patio with picnic tables, games (bags, connect four, and jenga), and many people drinking flights.  We discovered that it was indeed a Nanobrewery as well as a homebrew shop and a spot where homebrewers could come to brew on the premises.  They had a 20 tap system pouring beers from all over.  I decided to choose beers that specifically had the Upstate name all of which were brewed in house with a local brewer.  The beers I chose, Heliocentric IPA, Interdimensional Beings Kolsch, Super Belgian Blonde, and Coffee Blonde, were all pretty good, I liked the coffee blonde best, but I think the biggest draw to the place was the fact that it had such a great patio.  It was dog friendly and I made friends with a young Great Dane while we were sitting there.  Overall, it was a good and fun couple of days exploring the area beer scene and it gives me an idea of some of the beers if if I encounter them elsewhere.      

        

Sugar Shack/Capt. Gregory's - Alexandria, Va.

After a day of running around and then getting dinner at a pretty good tapas place (La Tasca in Alexandria), my friend mentioned that we had one more stop to make.  When asked where we might be going, he simply replied, "Doughnuts."  I like doughnuts, but generally, for me, it seems to be a morning thing.  It was a bit surprising, but I decided to go along with it thinking that these must be really good doughnuts.  We left and yes, we went to a donut shop, the Sugar Shack.  We walked in though, and stopped at the entrance.  There was a chalkboard wall in front of us and a wooden wall with a small red and blue flag hanging to one side.  I will come back to this in a minute, but first I want to talk about the doughnuts.  The place is small and looks like a pretty good donut/coffee shop.  Their donuts are mostly of the Yeast type (like Krispy Kreme) topped with a variety of glazes, but they also have a Fritter and some Old Fashioneds.  They all looked very good and creative, but while we were standing in a donut shop, we did not actually come for donuts.  We did stop for donuts a couple of days later and they were very good.  I would compare them to Stan's Donuts, but back to the wall.

 

As I said we were standing inside the entrance in front of a chalkboard wall and next to a wooden wall.  I said that there was a small red and blue flag hanging to the right side.  I will note that the flag is not pictured because I took the picture when we returned for donuts.  My friend grabbed the flag and pulled which rang a bell.  The wall, it seems, was a sliding door which someone from the inside opened shortly after her rang the bell.  My friend gave him his name and said we had a reservation and we walked through the door.

Inside was a small Speakeasy called Captain Gregory's.  It was a small space and very rustic space that probably seated 20 people.  The walls were all wood, the bar looked handmade and a lot of the lighting was from candles and small white Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling.  There were a lot of nautical artifacts including a dory hanging upside down from the ceiling and a long and humorous story on one wall near the entrance telling how Captain Gregory had invented the doughnut (He was at the wheel during a storm, his doughy dinner was brought to him, but he couldn't immediately eat it, so he speared it on one of the hand holds on the wheel.  His bread now had a hole in it and thus was the doughnut born.) They serve some creative small plates and cocktails in which they make everything from scratch, though since we had already eaten, we were just there for the very inventive drinks.

We both started with Gin-based cocktails.  I had Master of None which included Citradelle Gin, Housemade Five Flower Tonic, Lemon, Cucumber, and Kuhler Absinthe served in a Collins Glass.  My friend had Abandoned Apartment in Paris which also started with Citradelle Gin, and added Housemade Rose Liqueur, Lemon and Egg White and was served in a small goblet.  Both drinks had floral and botanical flavors, but mine, with the cucumber, had a vegetal flavor and a slight licorice finish (from the absinthe).  I will note, at this point, that the bar also had an absinthe fountain from which absinthe was served from at the turn of the 20th century.  The other cocktail, while also floral and botanical, had a bit of a tart finish and a fluffy feel from the egg white.  They were both very good and we enjoyed both.

For our next drinks, I decided to continue exploring the menu, while my friend decided to go for a classic.  Unfortunately, the classic that he ordered was not the classic that he was actually looking for.  I ordered what was called 1000 Swords and my friend ordered a Manhattan.  1000 Swords was made with Holy Basil Infused White Rum, Smoked Pineapple, Garam Masala Tincture, Fennel, Cardamom, and Chili.  Reading the ingredient list, I thought that I was going to get a Tiki drink and with the rum and pineapple hitting first, that's what it tasted like at first, albeit a very interestingly spiced Tiki drink with the Smoke, Basil, Garam Masala, Fennel, and Cardamom.  Then the Chili Pepper hit.  It was very spicy with a pretty intense burn, so I had to take a break after every drink.  It was drink, break, drink, break, drink, break, but I did really enjoy it, despite having to slowly sip it.  My friends Manhattan was the standard Whiskey, Sweet Vermouth, and Bitters, and it was very smooth and well made, however when you're aiming for an Old Fashioned (Whiskey, Angostura Bitters muddled with Sugar, and Water, garnished with a citrus peel), it would be a bit more bitter and boozy than you were aiming for.

At this point, we were done drinking so our bill was brought to us.  This also played with the nautical theme, being a message in a bottle.  The entire experience was a lot of fun.  It has been said that speakeasies are becoming passe', but if they are done as well as Captain Gregory's, I would highly recommend the experience.   

Bohemian House - Chicago Restaurant Week Brunch

Bohemian House has been a restaurant on my radar since shortly after it opened about a year and a half ago but I had never made any firm plans to dine there.  I had tried some of their food at various benefits and really liked what I had, but I had not experienced the restaurant.  A friend, though, invited me out for brunch during Chicago Restaurant Week so I decided to see what it was about.  As it's name suggests, Bohemian House, or Boho, focuses on the food of Bohemia (a region of the Czech Republic) and Eastern Europe in general.  While there is a sign outside on the awning, the restaurant is in an old office building and is not exceptionally obvious.  The alcove leading to the door has some really ornate tile along one edge, so that can also be used as a marker as well.  Entering the modern glass door in the alcove, there is a stair leading to the right, at the top of which is a big, heavy, wooden door behind which is the restaurant.  The space is very open with unfinished ceilings and large wooden beams supporting the ceiling.  There is a large, long, and heavy-looking wooden bar opposite the door with a nice liquor selection as well as some antiques on the bar shelves for decoration.  The floor of the dining room was hardwood as were the tables, a combination of high two tops, four tops, and communal tables.  The seats were padded with leather.  Also along the same wall as the entrance was a line of booths with soft leather padded seats, padded pillows, and a half-round table.  This is where we sat.  The kitchen was in the back behind a large arched window and tiled wall.  It's a beautiful space that reminded me of the European-inspired beer halls of The Publican and The Radler. 

As this was a Chicago Restaurant Week menu, we were able to order three courses for $22 (plus drinks, tax and tip) which, having looked at the menu previously, was kind of a huge deal.  I started things off with Deviled Eggs with Spicy Pepper Relish and Crispy Shallots.  The egg whites were firm and the yolks were perfectly whipped.  The Pepper Relish and Paprika provided a nice addition of spice and the Crispy Shallots added a nice crunch to what would have otherwise been a toothless dish.  It was a nice start and I looked forward to my next dishes.

I generally don't go sweet for my main course, but my other choice was a Weinerschnitzel Sandwich and while I am sure that it would have been good, I wasn't feeling it.  I decided to go with the Bavarian Pancakes with Brandied Prunes, Apples, Pecans, Farmers Cheese, and Powdered Sugar.This was very good and I'm glad I choosed it.  The pancakes were thin, like crepes.  The Apples and Prunes were sweet, tender, juicy, and boozy, and the sugar and juice/syrup added more sweetness.  The Farmer's Cheese, a housemade cheese similar to a mild ricotta added some creaminess to the dish and the pecans added a nutty flavor and a crunchy variety to the dish.

I would have been happy to finish here, but there was one dish to go.  I had a choice of Doughnuts or Kolacky and I decided to go with the Doughnuts.  They were deep fried Doughnut Balls served on  a thin layer of Bavarian Cream (basically the Bavarian version of Panna Cotta) and a dish of Currant Marmalade for dipping or spreading on the doughnuts.  The doughnuts were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside and were rolled in granulated sugar.  The doughnuts were good on their own (although admittedly, I have other doughnuts that I have liked much more), but the Bavarian Cream and the Marmalade added to the doughnuts separately or combined which was the best.

I am glad my friend invited me out for brunch so I could actually see the place.  I really liked brunch and would return again for brunch or dinner.       

endgrain - Brunch

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Doughnut Vault

When there is a big trend, people are always ready to call it over and start looking for the next trend. Cupcakes have been declared over for years. A few higher end doughnut shops have opened recently and the trend spotters are starting to say that doughnuts are the new cupcake. I will not necessarily say that because while doughnuts are very good, I don't know if you can be as creative with a doughnut as you can with a cupcake. This is not to say that cupcakes can't be very good but I don't think that you will see an independent doughnut shop on every corner like you do with cupcakes. I do think though, that there is a definite niche for artisanal doughnuts. On Friday morning, I went to the Doughnut Vault, an independent artisanal doughnut shop attached to the Gilt Bar. It had gotten a lot of hype and I had heard that it was kind of small and that there was always a long line when it's open. I got there early because of the long lines and the fact that they only made a certain number of doughnuts a day and stay open until they sell out. I was the second person there but the line grew quickly. The outside of the store looked very nice. Everything was a washed-out blue color. There was a menu on the wall and a long table beside the entrance. From the prices on the menu, the doughnuts looked kind of expensive. I would find out whether the prices were warranted soon enough. The shop opened and I saw how tiny it was. There was room for a person to stand in front of the counter and one person to stand behind them. Behind the counter, there was room for one person, two doughnut racks, a coffee pot and a cash register. When I got to the counter, I ordered two doughnuts, the Gingerbread Stack and the Chocolate Glazed Doughnut.The doughnuts are enormous which accounted for some of the price. I left the shop and found a place to enjoy my doughnuts. Unfortunately, they didn't travel so well and got a little smooshed and a lot of the chocolate glaze got stuck to the bag. They still tasted really good though. The Gingerbread Stack was actually 3 gingerbread doughnuts stacked on one another and the glazed doughnut was about twice the size of a Krispy Kreme. The doughnuts were very good, and I would pay a premium for them over Dunkin Donuts. Because of their hours and location though, they won't be a place I will be visiting often but give the opportunity, I would come again.