Follow the Peach State Ale Trail

Drink local and get the Beer Buzz on the @GAAleTrail!

Started in July, Georgia's new source for "Craft Beer news, reviews, events, & tours" is just getting rolling.

Like other examples of 'Ale Trails' around the country (see Asheville Ale Trail for a great example), the Peach State Ale Trail looks to become the go to resource for the enjoyment of all things beer in Georgia.

PSAT will highlight the Georgia Beer Buzz, profiles of local craft breweries, overviews of beer tours around the state, as well as a future section to display a "directory of restaurants, beer bars, growler stations, and bottle shops in the Peach State."

Definitely bookmark 'em and follow 'em on Twitter to keep ahead of news for your craft beer needs!

Poplar Creek Brewing Arrives!

Augusta now has a local homebrew supply store! Grains, Hops, Yeast, and more...

Saturday marked the opening of Poplar Creek Brewing (PCB) on South Belair in Martinez.  As the CSRA's first homebrew storefront in a long while, it was not surprising to see brewers inside shopping before the doors even officially opened.

If you have ever run out of an ingredient, or forget to order yeast, you understand the value of having a local place you can run to on the quick.  Owner Wylie and his wife understand this, saw the local need, and took the entrepreneurial plunge.

Owner Wylie (L), suffering my poor photographic skills

Although just getting started, PCB offers everything from the aforementioned grains (bulk or measured and crushed on site), hops (40+ varieties), and yeast (20+ varieties of Wyeast), to brewing and kegging equipment, and extract kits and ingredients.

Brewers lined up early!

So if you are a CSRA homebrewer, I highly encourage you to stop by and support this new local business the next time you are planning to brew.  PCB can be found at 212 S. Belair Rd in Martinez, right next door to Azteca Maya.

Beer Trading Made Easy

thebeerexchange.io

@BeerExchangeApp, the first web app dedicated to craft beer trading. 

Augusta beer lovers, have you ever wanted to get your hands on a beer made somewhere else in this great country, but is not sold here in Beer Purgatory?

Well, look no further than the online convenience of The Beer Exchange.  BEX is the product of Mark Iafrate from Charlotte, NC.  Mark is also a co-host (and fall guy) on the wildly entertaining Craft Beercast, a weekly podcast out of the Queen City by a bunch of guys who don't know how good they have it. ;-)

But to get back to the topic at hand....  

You live in Augusta, but you really want to try Heady Topper or Pliny the Elder.  Top rated craft beers that you will never see sold here locally, since they are never distributed outside their own region.  BEX will allow you to search out and find other beer lovers around the nation who possess those beers that you desire, and then set up a trade with them.  The only "catch" is that you need to have a beer "For Trade" that the other party is "In Search Of".

For instance, above is an example of a trade of a bottle of Terrapin's White Chocolate Moo-Hoo for a can of Alchemist's Heady Topper.  Not a bad deal, if you ask me.

Again, the "catch" is that you need to have beers that others around the country won't have access to.  Think Terrapin's various Liquid Bliss, Side Project, Wake-n-Bake, or Moo-Hoo releases.  Sweetwater's Dank Tank Series.  Westbrook Mexican Cake.  Three Taverns Quasimodo or Theophan The Recluse.  Well, you get the idea.  To land those "whales" that you would never otherwise get to try, you need to be able to offer something exclusive from our region in return.

BEX's Most Sought After Beers

If this sounds like something you'd might like to try, head over to TheBeerExchange.io and sign up.  Then go out and start building your southeastern beer cellar.  Good luck!

Augusta Beerfest Special Offer!

@GravityGrowlers is offering a special deal for those dressed appropriately at the Augusta Beerfest: 

"Hey Folks, we are really excited for Augusta's first beer festival. From the sound of it, the attendance is going to be great, and that should really help elevate Augusta on the Georgia craft beer map. For anyone who is unsure about going, please do. Supporting events like this only increases the likelihood more craft beer related events will happen in the future. There are lots of reasons Augusta, with its population and resources, should be an active venue for craft beer enthusiasts, so vote with your dollars and support stuff like this!

We have a fun promo for those attending. If you have one of our shirts and wear it to the festival, take a picture of you wearing it...show us the pic next week and get 20% off of any 64oz growler fill. If you don't have a shirt, get one!! We just reduced the prices!"

So get your butts over to 341 Furys Ferry Rd in Martinez tomorrow and get yourself a shirt!

Augusta Nerdfest..errr...Beerfest!

@TheMetroSpirit has a great interview with reps from 4 Georgia craft breweries coming to Saturday's Augusta Beerfest.

Nerdfest
Its official name is Augusta Beerfest, but craft beer is serious business

If you think those who work for craft brewing companies are rock stars, they are....But if craft brewery employees are part rock star, they’re equal parts marching band geek.

Recently Metro Spirit sat down for a conversation about being small craft brewers in the south with Jonathan Parker of Jekyll Brewing in Alpharetta, Wes Sessoms of Red Hare Brewing Company in Marietta, Josh Kirssin of Monday Night Brewing in Atlanta and JJ Mercurio of Eagle Creek Brewing Company in Statesboro.

Here is a sampling:

"JK: I think the coolest part of beerfests is taking your domestic drinker and putting him out of his environment that he’s not comfortable with and testing his palate, see what he’s comfortable with and trying to figure out really what it is, because I was a domestic beer drinker when I went to Georgia Southern.

JJ Mercurio: I still am!

WS: Personally, when I go to beer festivals I start to treat it like a wine tasting. I have a restaurant background and we would do these wine tastings and you start with the whites and move on to the reds. Everyone’s got a lighter beer, a pale ale or a lager, so you start there and gear up to those high alcohol and those bigger flavors as you go on throughout the day so you’re not starting off with something like an imperial IPA that’s going to wreck your palate.

MS: Why IPAs? You all have one, right?
JK: Every brewery has an IPA.

JJM: We don’t. We have a pale ale. And I’ve given it to the nerdiest of the nerdy beer nerds and they thought it was an IPA. Nope. It’s a pale ale.

WS: There’s an emerging style between all of our breweries of an East Coast or a Southern IPA. It’s not as dark, it’s not as heavy of an IPA and that’s the thing that I have tried to tell people more recently, you know, don’t compare us or any of our IPAs to a Stone or a Lagunitas or any of these West Coast breweries because it’s a completely different environment. It’s hot here in the summertime. You can’t have an 8 percent, hoppy, dank IPA. That’s just not refreshing, so the one thing that all of us do is that style, more of an emerging, Southern style."

But the best part to read was this:

"MS: What will you be offering at Augusta Beerfest?

JP: Three regular styles and two specialty casks.

WS: The same for us; three regular styles and two specialty casks.

JK: Five and a specialty cask.

JJM: Two and two specialty casks.

WS: The cool thing about specialty casks is you’re not going to find that beer anywhere else. It’s just for this event. The beauty of it is that it’s super rare and super special; you gotta be there to have it. The downside is if you really, really like it you’re never going to see it again."

And that people is what beerfests should be about. Widening your beer experience, and tasting cool new things (i.e. specialty casks!) you may never see again.  Chances are, if you are going to the later session, you won't see those specialty casks...sorry!

Floating the Mainstream in New Bottles

@SweetwaterBrew intros cool new bottles embossed with logo, mantra, and a river scene.

Additionally, Sweetwater is introducing bottle conditioning into their lineup.  Here is their infographic on how it works...

Craft Beer: Is There A Bloodbath Coming?

Sam Calagione thinks so.  With a sudden spike in craft breweries, and a flood of similar beers, have we reached a jump the shark moment?

"We’re heading into an incredibly competitive era of craft brewing,” he says. “There’s a bloodbath coming.”

This may seem alarmist. After all, the Brewers Association just announced that 3,000-plus craft breweries now operate in America. Last year’s craft sales climbed 17.2 percent...The highway, however, is getting mighty crowded. Hundreds of different beers debut weekly, creating a scrum of session IPAs, spiced witbiers, and barrel-aged stouts scuffling for shelf space. For consumers, the situation is doubly confusing. How can you pick a pint on a 100-brew tap list? Moreover, beer shops are chockablock with pale this and imperial that, each one boasting a different hop pun. When buying beer, I can’t count how many times I’ve assisted overwhelmed shoppers, playing the benevolent Sherpa in the wilds of modern brewing."

Personally, I do think there will ceratinly be some thinning of the herd, especially with a market so saturated.  No industry can have meteoric growth, without experiencing a contraction along the way.  Lots of small craft brewers have opened to pump up those numbers noted above, and not all will (or should) survive.  And when they go away, it will be a signal that that meteoric growth will be over, and we will see a plateauing, perhaps a reduction, in the number of craft brewers in the country.  In the long run, perhaps that could be a good thing.

Of course the obvious solution to me is that craft beer lovers should not chase the whales (every Stone project, limited releases, etc) that get all the publicity, and concentrate a majority of their drinking to local and regional options.

If there is a bloodbath coming, then the best way to lessen its impact is to keep your best local/regional brewers in business by quaffing their product.

Now, to put my money where my mouth is, I have a bomber of Westbrook's Mexican Cake calling my name in the beer fridge...

Augusta Beerfest!

If you haven't heard already, Aug 16th at the Bell Auditorium.  Details below....

"It’s Augusta’s largest celebration of craft beer, Augusta Beerfest 2014 on August, 16! With sampling of over 75+ of some of the region’s most popular craft beers, it is a beer lover’s dream. So, if you consider yourself a beer connoisseur, you won’t want to miss Augusta’s signature beer event, the inaugural Augusta Beer Festival at the Bell Auditorium!

Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door. The Bell Auditorium provides a historic, unique, and intimate atmosphere. Two sessions are available, 12:00pm-3:00pm and 4:00pm-7:00pm. Your ticket includes a souvenir cup and beer samples. Local food trucks will be providing food for purchase.

This is a 21 and up event, rain or shine (mostly inside event, with food trucks outside), no refunds."

Augusta Homebrew Rising!

Yes, the AGS will be getting it's own Homebrew store!  Poplar Creek Brewing!

It has been a good long while since Augusta has had its own homebrew supply store.  While ordering online is nice and all, it is certainly better to have a local place you can support and frequent.  and it is always nice to have a place to run out to if you need something in a pinch.

Poplar Creek owner Wylie tells me that he is just starting to receiev supplies, and put the store together.  The location will be at 212 S. Belair Rd, right next door to Azteca Maya.

"Hey, Homebrewers! We will be opening Poplar Creek Brewing in Martinez, GA the first week of Sept! There are supplies coming in this week and store hours will be limited as inventory arrives before the grand opening. Stay tuned to this FB page for details on our limited store hours before the grand opening." 

Poplar Creek's website will be up and running in a few days, so keep your eyes out for updates there, or on their Facebook page.