Beer « ear-fung.us

24May/101

Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival

A few weeks ago, I went to the Beer, Bourbon, & BBQ festival, held at Symphony Park at SouthPark Mall in Charlotte, NC.

Charlotte, NC Skyline

I spent the night at the office and woke up early to go Geocaching around the Charlotte area. Grabbed this great pic from the top of a parking garage while finding GC1W2N7.

I went for the beer tastings since I'm not a big fan of bourbon (or Tennessee whiskey). I was pleasantly surprised at how few people were there for the VIP event. There were no lines and the folks manning the booths were friendly and chatty. The folks at the Saranac Brewery table (from my home state) were having troubles with their CO2 canister.

We were given tasting glasses when we entered the festival so that everyone had the same size glass. It's not like I was pounding back pint after pint of beer, the tastings were probably about 3-4 fluid oz each.

The Tasting Glass

There was some great food and some great beer, although I was a little disappointed by the half-rack of ribs I got. They were chewy and tough, a sure indicator of being cooked too quickly. But the mac & cheese, brisket, and pulled pork were all excellent.

: I was extremely disappointed by the lack of an apple in the pig’s mouth.

: They roasted a WHOLE pig!

: Carb Overload!

One of my favorite beers had a booth set up: Heavy Seas - Loose Canon by Clipper City Brewing Company. The booth was all pirate themed, but sadly, the beer maid was not wearing an eye patch and didn't have a peg-leg.

: Huge Sign!

: Pirate Themed Booth

By the middle of the day, the tents started getting really full and I had tried all the samples I really wanted to so I loaded up on some more carbs and sat around for a while with @jameshartsell and his wife enjoying the live music and beautiful day.

Overall, I had a great time, though as expected: the crowd started to get pretty rowdy.

Crowds are fun to watch, not fun to be in trying to get a sample.

The Live music was good, not great.

I'll probably go back next year, making sire to purchase the VIP ticket like I did this time. It's totally worth the extra $15 to avoid the crazy crowds.

Tagged as: bbq, Beer, charlotte, festival, food, fun, live music, outdoors 1 Comment

24May/101

I Love Seeing Old Friends

I don't keep in touch with many people from my past – my best friend from high school is about the only person from that period of my life that I talk to on a semi-regular basis.

However, I do still keep in touch with by good friend Ben. We knew each other in Florida and were both part of a Church plant startup there. He's from Canada (America's hat) and was living & working in Florida at the time. We became good friends and stayed in contact when we moved to NC about the same time he moved back to Canada.

Ben and his fiancé came to N.C. for a wedding last weekend and we were delighted to be able to put them up for a night. After their 14 hour drive (which included a 2 hour wait at the border), we took them out to Foothills Brewery in downtown Winston-Salem and then stayed up way too late talking once we got home. The next morning, we went out to Chick-Fil-A for breakfast before they headed over to Asheville for the wedding (there's no Chick-Fil-A's in Canada at the time of this post).

Props to the CFA employee for being willing to take our pic in front of the cow, however, he didn't do a very good job - the lens flare from the window is kind of annoying.

Check out Ben's Twitter & his blog (he's an awesome artist).

Tagged as: Beer, canada, chick-fil-a, foothills, Friends, visit, wedding 1 Comment

7Jan/104

My Latest Creation

As some of you may already know, I've started brewing my own beer at home ("homebrewing" creates "homebrew"). I've made some 2.5 gallon batches here and there including an American Light Ale, an Oatmeal Stout, and a few other misc brews. Then I decided to invest in some better equipment. Don't get me wrong, Mr. Beer is a great kit to start out with, but I felt the quality of the beer I could create was being held back by some of the more simplistic equipment and ingredients that you get with Mr. Beer.

I now have a problem: I have a bunch of glass bottles with different styles of beer in them. The majority of these bottles are unlabeled. Luckily, I have two different color bottle caps that I've used, but that's really the only differentiation between the bottles at the moment.

I've decided that whenever I create a new batch of beer, I'm going to create a custom label for it. just like commercial micro-breweries do. I'll print out the labels on my inkjet printer on plain paper, cut them up, and adhere them to the bottles using Elmers' Spray Adhesive (the stuff schoolkids use to tack things to display boards for presentations). With the type of spray glue I'm using, it shouldn't be too hard to remove the labels once the bottle is empty. I understand that the inkjet printer won't produce the best and most lasting results, but it'll do for now.

So, I proudly unveil my first-ever label. It's for my latest batch which I'm calling "Bitter Old Lady IPA" (India Pale Ale).

I'll be printing, cutting, and adhering the labels tonight. Who knows... if this turns out to be way more of a hassle than its worth this may also be my last label!