Ratchet Brews

Ever since the first Asheville Beer Week was announced, I have planned on going. Everyone that knows me knows of my love of Beer City USA. I live in Knoxville, a quick 2 hours away (more like 90 minutes if I have no scaredy cat passengers in my car, ha ha). Only a 2 hour drive but it’s so different from Knoxville, it feels like a world away. I love everything about it. The beer, the food, the people, basically the whole culture. Yes, myself and almost every other Knoxvillian I know has entertained thoughts of moving there. I don’t because I have a pretty good job here, but if the stars were aligned, I’d be packing for my move instead of writing this. In fact, it seems like that is what I hear the most from fellow Knoxvillians about moving there. They can’t find work and the cost of living is higher. For whatever reasons we don’t move, my friend Jeff of Three Bears Coffee sums it up best (and I’m paraphrasing) “They don’t need you there, they have enough cool people. If all the cool people in Knoxville moved, it would suck”. So instead I visit as often as my finances will allow.

Which brings me back to Asheville Beer Week. Technically not a week, but 11 days of celebrating Asheville’s great world renown beer culture. I have lost count of the amount of breweries this area has, but it seems like I read about a new one popping up at least once a month. The stated mission of this special “week” is “to celebrate that nectar known as beer—to taste many different styles of beer and variations on those styles; to pair beer with a smorgasbord of delicious foods; to learn about and explore beer in all its delectable complexity; and, most of all, to have fun drinking beer in the brewery-centric mountains of Asheville, NC”. With a statement like that, how could I not plan a trip?

So here I am. My plan is to blog all 5 days I am here. I really want to stick with the plan. I WILL stick with the plan. Every morning, hungover or not, I will sit in the hotel cafe with my laptop and write about what happened the night before. The bar hopping, the food, the tastings, the special casks and all the different events and beer. I will upload my photos and post them as well. If you would like to follow along in real time, make sure to check out my twitter feed at @RatchetBrews . I will also post on my Ratchet Brews Facebook Page. See what I’m drinking on Untappd. If you read this and are out on the town, send me a comment, let’s get together for a beer. After all, that’s what I came here for.

Cheers,

Ratchet

Day 1: Wednesday events I plan on attending:

First go to Brusin’ Ales, say Hi, have a few samples of whatever they have on tap, pick up my bottle of Greenman Flanders Red ale I bought and had them hold, grab a few other things for later.

I also plan on hitting The Lobster Trap for a pint of thier special beer week casks, Thirsty Monk around 4pm for the special Stone Beers tasting, Asheville Brewing company for the District 12 release, Green Man for a Session Fest pint, possibly taking a cab out to Highland and/or Brixx for the cask tapping.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 at 19:30 and is filed under #AvlBeer, #knoxbeer, #NCbeer, Asheville, Asheville Beer Week, beer travel, Craft Beer, Drinking, Knox Beer Crew, Knoxville beer blog, Ratchet, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.