Get on the Brew Bus Gus!

According to @drinkblogrepeat, @ColumbiaBrewBus hits the streets of SC's capital on Nov. 7th!

"The Capital City’s first brewery tour business gets rolling this Friday, Nov. 7, as the Columbia Brew Bus begins its weekly tours of Columbia’s breweries.

[...]

During a preview tour Sunday, Nov. 2, the Brew Bus staff gave an idea of what each of the weekly trips will be like. The rotation of the breweries will change, but the bus will take riders to Swamp Cabbage, River Rat and Conquest where they’ll have the chance to try 24 oz. of beer at each brewery..."

It will be nice to now have a "Brews Cruise" as it were a little closer to the CSRA than Atlanta.  If we wanted to do one here in Augusta we would have to go to our one main growler outlet, and a number of top homebrewers houses....

For more information on the Columbia Brew Bus, check out their website at columbiabrewbus.com!

A photo posted by Columbia Brew Bus (@columbiabrewbus) on Oct 10, 2014 at 12:06pm PDT

Atlanta Beer Envy: Part II

This past Monday I was fortunate enough to be invited by 'Beer Me Augusta' on a trip to the Atlanta area to visit a couple of up and coming Georgia breweries.  Our second stop after lunch was to the corporate cubicle escapees at Atlanta's Monday Night Brewing.

Situated in an awesome space near downtown Atlanta, Monday Night encourages all it's fans to cast off their ties, and tie one on. And that is just what we did! 

 "We spent almost 5 years perfecting our Eye Patch Ale and Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale before bringing them to market. Years of minor tweaks, arguments over hop profiles, and experiments with different brands of base malts are poured into every glass that we brew. In the summer of 2012 we launched our 3rd offering, Fu Manbrew, which won Bronze in the US Beer Open in its first month.

The appropriately bearded brewmeister, Duck, gave us a quick tour of the generous brewhouse, where they are not yet brewing to capacity, but as they gain wider distribution in Georgia, and perhaps neighboring states, the brewhouse will no doubt become a round-the-clock operation.  (Too many commas?)

Duck working his comedy routine

Black Tie fermenting

Afterwards in the cavernous garage of a tasting room, Josh tended the taps I got to try my first taste of their Fu ManBrew Belgian-style wit.  Along with their regular Blind Pirate DIPA, Drafty Kilt Scotch Ale, and Eye Patch IPA, I got to try their limited "mythical, mysterious" Serrano Eye Patch IPA.  Very nice with just a bit of pepper-bite on the tail end. 

This huge tasting room is also set up for some great outdoor action as well, but the roll-up doors on the bar stayed closed as it was just too darn cold.  I hate this Global Warming!

I am a giant fan of the Monday Night Brewery, and have been following their development online as they built out this space.  So I was excited to finally get to visit and see why they are having so much success.   I am also glad that Monday Night is a growing brand in the Augusta area, as I see more bottles on shelves and tie-shaped tap handles behind many bars.  If you don't have it where you are, ask your bartender to request it.  Let's make these guys brew 7 days a week! ;-)

Just to finish things off, here is a video of the MNB backstory and ethos.  Cheers!

Atlanta Beer Envy: Part I

This past Monday I was fortunate enough to be invited by 'Beer Me Augusta' on a trip to the Atlanta area to visit a couple of up and coming Georgia breweries.  Our first stop was Red Hare Brewing in Marietta...

Red Hare is the first craft brewery in Georgia to actually can its beer, and is starting to spread its wings with distribution into South Carolina, and just this week, Tennessee.   The one thing that struck me was how much brewing, fermenting, canning and serving is packed into such a small space (11k sqft).  And as crowded as it looked, head-brewer Bobby Thomas told me that they have room for expansion in their current facility.

The Red Hare brewhouse features a steam-jacketed brewing system, 3800bbls worth of fermentation capacity, a nice cold room/bright tank area, and lots of cans!

Bobby- Red Headed Head Brewer

 Fermentation goin' on

 Bright Tanks

Canning Line

Lots and lots of cans!

Given that Red Hare is now expanding out of state, and that they are brewing every day of the week, I can see them filling up their remaining space with fermentors real quick.

Of course the real fun of a brewery tour is to try out the proprietor's wares, even if it is still before lunch!  Red Hare's frontage tasting room has a good line up of their regular offerings, as well as some seasonals and 'Rabbit Reserve' series.

We were lucky in that Red Hare had just released their most recent seasonal, Cotton Tail Pale.  Additionally, they had their Rauchbier on tap, as well their 1-year old Bitter Hearts Double Black IPA.  Given that it was that old, it had held up really well.   The only reason we knew about it was that Bobby was drinking one during the tour.

Unfortunately they had just floated the last keg of Thrice Hopped Imperial IPA at their Pale Ale release party, so I missed out (until later....).  Lastly, I tried their Root Beer on tap.  Now I lost my liking for Root Beer a long time ago, but this did hit the spot. Perhaps it was the pure cane sugar and spices.... I do hear you can find it in some stores here in Augusta....

Where will Red Hare go next?  Perhaps they will add another offering to their regular line-up, but don't expect that too soon.  Instead, keep and eye out for their seasonals and  Rabbit's Reserve Series.  In fact, go out of your way to ask your bartenders to request these items of the distributor.  Otherwise we will probably never see them here in Augusta.

Thanks again to Bobby and Bryan for the great tour and tasting, and here's to continued growth and success for that scarlet rabbit....