It's here. It's really here.

Greensboro, NC. Harris Teeter grocery store. Friendly Center shopping center. Saturday, March 6, 2010. My vision blurs due to tears of joy.

Our long national nightmare is over...

My beloved Great Lakes Brewing Co. is making its introduction into the North Carolina market. O! The joy! (I'll see you in Winston-Salem on March 9th. All the Greensboro locations are sketch.)

Per their Facebook post:

Great Lakes Brewing Company's Notes

GLBC To Enter North Carolina!

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Today at 10:40am

Great Lakes Brewing Company announces its entry into the Charlotte/Greensboro markets of North Carolina starting the week of March 1, 2010! Visit the below locations to meet GLBC reps and sample GLBC's five year round beers: Burning River Pale Ale, Commodore Perry India Pale Ale, Dortmunder Gold Lager, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, Eliot Ness Amber Lager!

CHARLOTTE:

Monday, March 1, 2010
Midtown Sundries University: 5:00 PM
3425 David Cox Rd.
(704) 597-7413

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Liberty: 6:00 PM
1812 South Blvd.
(704) 332-8830


GREENSBORO:

Monday, March 8, 2010
Stumble Stilskins: 5:30 PM
202 W Market St.
(336) 691-1222

The Pour House: 8:00 PM
360 Federal Place
(336) 333-2226

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
First St. Draught House (Winston Salem): 5:00 PM
1500 West First St.
(336) 722-6950

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Coopers Ale House: 5:00 PM
5340 W Market St.
(336) 294-0575

One lonely December 2009 post

Post #601.

Been a while, eh? You still come around here? You still on the edge of your seat waiting for an update? Or have you given up? I wouldn't blame you. Why keep coming back when I don't update anything for over a month. This being said, the muse to type something relevant or witty or newsworthy on these very pages has seemingly disappeared. The urge and wanting to do so is gone. Those who follow my oh-so-interesting (sarcasm) adventures already do so on the interwebs via The Facebook or The Twitter. Here on The Blogger?....I just don't "feel it" at the moment.

So maybe in 2010, there will be an update on a brewday or a movie or something interesting I've done. But for the most part, the urge to share these types of things on this medium has subsided greatly. I guess I'll be around, just not so often. Try not to wait up.

So to recap December 2009 in one fell swoop:

The Fantastic Mr. Fox / Chargers game / Great Lakes beer school / Steelers game / Dave Matthews Band concert film in 3-D / nasty snowstorm that canceled my yearly A Christmas Carol theater excursion / wicked bronchitis.

Here's to an improved 2010. Finally, a vigorous and hearty FUCK YOU to 2009 and the events that threaten to ruin me as the entity you previously knew.

Chicago - Day 2

Woke up Saturday excited and ready to go. My first day in Chicago was a BUSY fun-filled one. Today looks to be another great day out of town for more friendship, more beverage, and more Pixies.

Hopped on the "El" train again and traveled northward to meet up with Jonathan and Robin again. Stopped off at their place to meet Lily and Alice: two chihuahuas of infamous repute. After an interesting and novel display of barking, it was time to lay on the floor and get my ears and nose cleaned out by voracious tongues. Dogs rule.


We walked over to the El through their neighborhood and had lunch at Belly Shack for some Asian/Latin fusion sandwiches. Meatball pita with noodles for me. Appetizers of maple squash and fried plantains. Tasty.

Bellies full, we make our way over to another of the best bars in the land: The Map Room. The Ohio State/Michigan game was on the TV, Great Lakes Brewing's Edmund Fitzgerald Porter was going down the chute, and on a Saturday afternoon the bar became more and more lively with patrons. The place is just so cool. National Geographic magazines line the shelves on the wall. The wallpaper is comprised on (surprise!) maps. Belgian lambic Cantillon Lou Pepe quickly became a winner as more and more goblets of the tart nectar were ordered up.

From here, we walked some blocks over to Piece Brewery & Pizzeria for (surprise!) beer and pizza. The beers here have a decidedly, um, naughty air. I asked for something hoppy, so instead of their Full Frontal pale ale the waitress suggested the Camel Toe IPA. Giggle giggle. Also, some tasters of their Moose Knuckle barleywine were presented. Tee hee hee.

With excellent public transport instructions from my Chicago hosts, I hopped on a bus, then the El, and again arrived at the Aragon Ballroom for my 2nd concert in two nights. Another great set. Now since they're playing their Doolittle CD in its entirety, the bulk of it is the same. However, they ended with my two all-time favorite Pixies songs, making it the best night ever.

1. Dancing The Manta Ray
2. Weird At My School
3. Bailey's Walk
4. Manta Ray
5. Debaser
6. Tame
7. Wave of Mutilation
8. I Bleed
9. Here Comes Your Man
10. Dead
11. Monkey Gone To Heaven
12. Mr. Grieves
13. Crackity Jones
14. La La Love You
15. No. 13 Baby
16. There Goes My Gun
17. Hey
18. Silver
19. Gouge Away
20. Encore:
20. Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21. Into The White
22. Encore 2:
22. Holiday Song
23. Something Against You
24. Vamos
25. Where Is My Mind?
26. Encore 3:
26. Gigantic

Chicago - Day 1

I've been home for a few days now, so I guess it's time to post about my 3-day weekend in Chicago. Why Chicago? The 20th anniversary of the seminal Pixies album Doolittle. The band went on a small tour to celebrate and will play the album in its entirety. The closest town they were coming to for me was Washington, DC. But those dates occur the Monday/Tuesday after Thanksgiving. And as a retail grunt, those dates are virtually impossible to get time off for. So looking at the tour schedule, Chicago fell on my normally-scheduled 3-day weekend off.

HELLO CHICAGO!!!

I was supposed to fly out of Raleigh Thursday night (an hour away but super cheap Southwest fares), but that FAA computer glitch from that morning rolled along and affected later flights. I thought I'd be out of the woods with my 6:30pm flight, but it ended up delayed 4 hours...making me miss my connection. Soooo....EARLY Friday morning it was. In bed by 10pm, up at 3:45am to have enough to time to drive over to make the flight.

By 8:30am Friday I am in Chicago. And by 10:00am I am here:

103 floors up and 4 feet out. "The Ledge" on the Sears, er, the Willis Tower. Took a cab from the airport, dropped off my bags at the hotel, then walked the 2 blocks from hotel to the tallest building in the U.S. Incredible views. Ears popped constantly on the elevator rides up and down. Unbelievable structure.


Chicago is a great beer town. Fellow beer geeks Jonathan and Robin moved from Chapel Hill to Chicago a few years ago. Since I was in town, we planned to meet up and do some pubcrawling together. First stop for lunch? The Lincoln Park neighborhood and Goose Island - Clybourn. A tasty burger with bacon of course was my fare. Delicious Belgian-inspired Matilda, offered a sample taste of their new altbier, then their dark Belgian Noire, Imperial Brown Goose, and finally a Black Cat Espresso Stout. (Wow, we went through a bunch of beverages didn't we?)

From here, it's to a divey bar with plenty of taps called Local Option. Just had a couple here, most notably the hoppy sensation from Three Floyds Brewing Co., Dreadnaught. On tap. Hear that Bones? Dreadnaught on tap. It was quite delicious.

From here, it was to one off the better beer bars in the country let alone Chicago: Hopleaf. Surly Brewing's Bender and a Stone/BrewDog collaboration called Bashah were the hits. Robin got some sort of muddy silty creation from Belgian brewer Wostyntje: Mustard Beer. Looked absolutely disgusting, but was actually pretty tasty. Looks nasty. I mean, look at it:

For dinner, I did have a delicious sammich: a CB&J. Cashew butter, fig jam, and gruyere cheese. Serve it with mac-n-cheese? Sold! YUM!!!

From here, we parted ways as I had a PIXIES concert to go to. They performed at the beautiful Aragon Ballroom. It was so sweet to see them live!!! People were cramming to get centerstage, but I was interested on hanging around towards the right of the stage in front of uber-cool bassist Kim Deal. Got it. Right up front. Leaning against the barrier. NICE!!!! The concert was a dandy. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

1. Dancing The Manta Ray
2. Weird At My School
3. Bailey's Walk
4. Manta Ray
5. Debaser
6. Tame
7. Wave Of Mutilation
8. I Bleed
9. Here Comes Your Man
10. Dead
11. Monkey Gone To Heaven
12. Mr. Grieves
13. Crackity Jones
14. La La Love You
15. No. 13 Baby
16. There Goes My Gun
17. Hey
18. Silver
19. Gouge Away
20. Encore:
20. Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21. Into The White
22. Encore 2:
22. Isla De Encanta
23. Nimrod's Son
24. U-Mass
25. Velouria

2009 Great American Beer Festival winners

Two North Carolina brewers bring home some medals. Woo-HOO!!!!!!

The entire list of winners can be found here. But more importantly, here are the winners from NC:

Category: 18 Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer, 110 Entries
Bronze: Duck-Rabbit Barrel Aged Baltic Porter, The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Inc., Farmville, NC

Category: 39 Baltic-Style Porter, 16 Entries
Gold: Duck-Rabbit Baltic Porter, The Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery, Inc., Farmville, NC

Category: 75 Imperial Stout, 56 Entries
Bronze: Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout, Foothills Brewing, Winston-Salem, NC

Congratulations to Paul and Jamie! You've done NC quite proud.

Red Oak brewery tour

To help shake out the cobwebs of a rather nauseating week, and to help get my mind back on track, I decided to do something fun and head over to Red Oak Brewery in Whitsett for their weekly Friday 3:00pm tour. It didn't really completely reset the brainwaves, but it kept my mind free from otherwise shitty thoughts and moodiness for an hour.

Your basic brewery tour, complete with shiny stainless steel and a re-hash of the brewing process for my umpteenth time. But for as many tours as I go on, as many stainless tanks I see, as many speeches about the brewing process I hear, they're all enjoyable regardless.

The different aspect from this tour however is that Red Oak is strictly a LAGER brewery. No ales. So the brewmaster tainted his speech to the wondrous beer that is a lager and frankly poo-poo'd many aspects of the ale.

- They abide by the German Purity Law of 1516 (the Reinheitsgebot) and only use malted barley, water, hops, and yeast. There are over FOUR HUNDRED possible additives and preservatives in those ale bastards! Oh the horror! What poisons! What crap! Quick, someone inform the Belgians!!!!

- Lagers ferment at a cooler temperature, resulting in less characteristics like the warm-temperature ale's fusels and esters. And hangovers and that "blah" feeling are a result of the ale by-products. Really? Seriously? Ale fusels and esters? Not from dehydration? Really?

- Never mind that in 1516 not ALL beers were lagers. There were certainly some ales brewed at warmer temps back then, but you would think that the cold-fermented lager has been around for 500 years.

Aside from the "yay lager / boo ale" rubbish, it was a neat tour. I always marvel at the brewery when driving past at night with those tanks lit up behind the enormous glass wall. Their beers are "meh" to me, but the process and their commitment to all-lager brewing is commendable. And the new bottling line was neat to see. Red Oak had up to now been strictly keg/draft sales only. Now they are reaching out to the bottled market in only 12-packs to cut down on paper use. Also, the bottles will be UV-inked so that you won't have to become ill from seeing a crooked paper label on the beer you buy.

Even with the frankly anti-ale propaganda spewed forth making it a bit much to choke down, it was a nice hour to get away from the muddled mess that is my current psyche.

Dayton, OH is destroyed.

Friday morning. 7:00am. I hit the road for Dayton, OH. (Amazing how this anti-morning person can get up early when it's for something sweet.) By 2:00pm, I'm at Art's house. By 3:00pm, me Art and Doogie are at our first destination: Chappy's Taproom. 30 taps, and 27 of them craft brew. Nice. Appetizers and Stone Brewing Co.'s Sublime Self-Righteous IPA. A black IPA. Powerful.

Next? To the University of Dayton campus and Dewey's Pizza. The three of us met up with Shelley and the kids and all 7 of us DEVOURED some pizza. The cool thing is Dewey's allows you to split a pizza half-and-half with two different styles. So in total, 6 different pizza styles were killed. Yum.

Then, off to see a Midwest League minor league baseball game: the Dayton Dragons vs. the Lansing Lugnuts. (How great are minor league team names?) Lansing pulls out a 5-1 victory. We got some season tickets from someone that wasn't going, so we had a great spot along the third base line:

Three of us Kappa Psi boys had a great time.

Then....the carnage truly took form. After the game we arrived at The Dublin Pub for some post-game libations. We paid the $5 cover at the door, and upon entering a pretty blond, a "Guinness Girl", approaches us and asks "Guinness 250?" We all think, "$2.50 for a Guinness? That's a good price! Sure! Bring us 3!" Little did we know that it was a special brew: the 250th anniversary Guinness beer. For free. Nice!!!

We sit and listen to the Irish band, Uncle Hamish & the Hooligans. I only know the name because apparently in my fog I purchase two of their CD's. Art and I got some face time with Liam, the bagpiper. They have a bagpiper. And his name is Liam. Kick ass.
Then, it was just blotto all night long. In addition to the pints of Guinness 250, I got the bright idea to order up shots of Jameson's. After all, it's a frigging Irish bar. Ugh. Felt like crap the next morning, but I did manage to down my tried and true "med cocktail" before bedtime to avert a truly nauseating hangover. And it worked! Dayton was successfully destroyed.

It's official: NC is "beer country".

After all, CNN says so.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/08/27/beer.country.travel/

Raise a glass to 'beer country'

• STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Craft beer has turned popular brewing towns into travel destinations
  
• Experts say Oregon, California and North Carolina offer some great brews
  
• Wherever you go, make sure to talk to locals to get insider brewpub suggestions

updated 9:36 a.m. EDT, Thu August 27, 2009

By Breeanna Hare
CNN

(CNN) -- When it comes to taking spirited vacations, wandering a vineyard falls flat in the face of handcrafted brew. With more than 1,500 breweries across the United States, beer is not just a drink -- it's a destination.

Wooden barrels of beer are just part of the draw at The Lost Abbey Brewery in San Diego, California.

1 of 3

"What's happened is that the old world has influenced the new world; the U.S. is now a travel destination for beer, [even] for people from outside of the country," said Julia Herz, craft beer program director at the Brewers Association.

"What's so great about beer is that you have this range," said Randy Mosher, author of "Tasting Beer: An Insider's Guide to the World's Best Drink." "It's from 3 percent alcohol to 20 percent, from super malty to very hoppy, and then you throw in stuff like fruit, spices -- you have an enormous range of possibilities."

With such a wide flavor profile, said Stephen Beaumont, author of "Premium Drinker's Beer Guide," beer travel is less about hanging out at the brewery and more about the tasting. In other words, don't look just for an incredible brewer, but also for an incredible city in which to drink beer.

Although it's a highly contested question that Herz calls "fodder for late-night philosophical conversations," there are a few brew towns that these beer aficionados identify as the cream of the hops.

Eat, drink and brew local

If you didn't know that Portland, Oregon, is synonymous with "Beervana," then you clearly need an introduction to the beer scene.

"In a lot of ways, [it's] a very highly developed town for craft beer," Mosher said.

The city has a reputation for going local, and Portland thoroughly applies that philosophy to brewing.

Don't Miss

• Stylish digs along the Oregon coast
• Hawaii-style fun on the mainland

"When you live in Portland, you become entrenched in the whole hops and malts [thing] because you're living right where it's being produced," said Portland resident Angelo De Ieso of beer site Brewpublic.com. Thirty percent of the world's hops come from the Pacific Northwest and Idaho, De Ieso said.

The other major pull is the "high concentration of breweries," Beaumont said. "Portland is a fairly small compact area, [but] they've got a free transit system, and they've got brewpubs chockablock."

Higgins Restaurant and Bar is a great place to get advice on navigating the local beer scene, according to Beaumont. And while you're there, you can sample their impressive beer list including Oregon-bottled Rogue Morimoto Imperial Pilsner and The Bruery's "Trade Winds" Triple out of California, a brewer that Beaumont notes is "up-and-coming, doing phenomenal stuff."

As for breweries, De Ieso said "the one that really stands out is Upright Brewery with their Belgian farmhouse style beers."

Another stop has to be Hopworks Urban Brewery, an all-organic brewpub fully powered with renewable energy. "They do a lot of the standard styles of Northwest beers, like the IPA, which is our flagship beer," De Ieso said. Try the signature Hopworks IPA for a taste of Pacific Northwest flavor.

SoCal brew style

Much further south, in San Diego, California, you'll find what Beaumont calls "a hotbed of innovation," where the beer tends "to be a little stronger, with more alcohol."

And while "all of California could be considered the state from which the innovators of craft beer came, San Diego specifically grabbed the golden ring from the merry go round and ran with it," said Matt Simpson, a craft beer consultant.

So when you're talking San Diego-style beer, for most beer geeks you're talking about The Lost Abbey. "The most notable guy right now is Tomme Arthur at Lost Abbey. He was one of the early adventurous brewers in Southern California," beer tasting expert Mosher said.

Known for Belgian-style beers and a "flavor first" philosophy, beer expert Beaumont said "they're doing some really innovative, interesting stuff in terms of barrel aging and unusual fermentations, beyond basic brewers yeast."

Beer experts also fawn over AleSmith, a microbrewery that has been pumping out diverse, high quality ales since 1995. "The special beers that they do are astounding, if not sublime," Simpson said. "They do a barrel-aged series, and those beers are limited to 250 bottles or less, so you can imagine the supply and demand market for them."

Flavors of the South

Although other beer lovers often skip over the South because of restrictive brewing laws in some areas, Simpson insisted that some of the best brew can be found below the Mason-Dixon line.

"One of my top three is North Carolina, with Asheville being the center of that. Not only is it a really fun place to visit, they make amazing beers," he said. "There's Foothills, a brewpub that has a breakout hit called Sexual Chocolate, an imperial stout that put them on the map of craft beer."

Simpson also touts his home stomping grounds, Atlanta, Georgia. "We have one of the top five beer bars in the world in the Brick Store Pub, across the board," Simpson said. "You can go to Greatbeers.com, Ratebeer.com, Beeradvocate.com -- they're rating the Brick Store Pub as one of the top beer bars in the world. And if you're here for a few days you can hit breweries like Sweetwater, 5 Seasons, and Twain's."

Whether your drink town of choice is San Diego or Philadelphia, San Francisco or Boston, Beaumont recommends chatting up locals for clues on the local beer scene.

"Beer is a social drink, and beer people love to talk about the beer," he said. "You can find a local or savvy visitor who can tell you about something you've never heard of, and that makes it a phenomenal experience.