Thirsty orange | Ratchet Brews

Grand Opening of @HopsandHollers and info on @CurtisFestKnox #CraftBeer

April 5, 2014

Hey y’all, quick update today. I’m really looking forward to next weekend and the Thirsty Orange Craft Beer Extravaganza. I plan on leaving Mur-vul first thing Friday morning to go visit a friend named Adam at his brewery, The Damascus Brewery. This is located in, you guessed it, Damascus Virginia. I remember visiting the Virginia Creeper Trail a few years back and thinking that Damascus would be the perfect place for a brew pub. After visiting there I plan on going to Kingsport, TN to visit Sleepy Owl Brewery. My friend Brian Connatser recently came up with the funds to start Sleepy Owl through a successful kickstarter campaign. He’s not brewing yet, because he’s still waiting for his TTB permits, but I’m going to check out his system and see what the future holds. Then it’s off to Johnson City to check out the site, get settled in to the hotel and go to the Friday night beer dinner at The Battery. The menu for this looks incredible. I am mostly vegetarian, but I’m not passing on this. It’s more calories then I normally consume in a week, but I’m not worried because the next morning I’m running my first official 5k.

The Run For The Booty is a color run, meaning they bomb the crap outta you with colored cornstarch that sticks to your sweat. You come out looking tie-died at the end. This isn’t a timed race, because they have unique stations set up along the route where you did for gold coins and other prizes. This is a fund raiser for ETSU’s new football team. After I run, I’ll get cleaned up and head to the site to get set up. Much like last festival, I’m running the mobile infuser.

Of course, I’ll be blogging about all this after the fact and of course you can follow along in real time on my twitter feed.

Today (I’m writing this part on Saturday April 5th), I started my day early. Friday after work I took my son to go see the new Captain America movie. We got popcorn and I ate way to much of it. I have been trying really hard to stick to my diet and everyone knows movie theater popcorn has a bazillion calories in it. So I was feeling guilty and chastising my inner fat boy. So instead of going out or drinking beer that night, I made myself go to bed early so I could get up and run. I did 5 miles beating my record by 5 minutes. After I showered and changed, I drove to Knoxville to the Happy Holler neighborhood for Hops and Hollers’ Grand Opening. I had seen my friend Charles on Thursday night at South College’s Brewing Science Program Graduation party at Saw Works. I didn’t know he was co-owner. We started talking and he said they were going to open on Saturday at 11. I said I’d be honored to be his first official customer. He said, “Do it!” so I was there at 10:30. This is a cool spot on Central. It’s not as far down central as Taps and Flats. I walked in and was greeted by Charles and his partner getting ready. They were still writing the tap list on the board. I took a few pictures and at 5 till 11 I asked for a pour. I got Terrapin’s RecreationAle. It was the first pour there. I had brought along some markers and had a 1 dollar bill so they could put their first official dollar as a business up on the wall for good luck. I can’t wait to go back and drink there again. I could only have 1 beer because I had to work at the Beer den, so I said goodbye and headed back to Mur-vul. On my way I picked up some flyers from my new friend Joe Fox to put up for CurtisFest.

: Outside of Hops and Hollers

: Inside of Hops and Hollers

: The view from the door

: He’s writing the beers on the board

: Outside seating at Hops and Hollers

: Their first dollar!

: Me enjoying the first official beer at Hops and Hollers

What is CurtisFest? It’s a small intimate craft beer festival that will take place 2pm to 7pm on Saturday April 26th at Mead’s Quarry at Ijams Nature Park. This is a festival mainly to celebrate the life and legacy of a good friend, Curtis McArthur. Curtis passed away due to a tragic accident on New Years eve. All of us who knew him are still in shock and mourning. Curtis was beloved by all. As a rep from Sweetwater brewery, he traveled around and was a fixture of the craft beer scene nationwide. I got to know him from his many trips to Knoxville and we hung out together at many festivals. I have some Sweetwater swag given to me by him that I will treasure forever. His longtime friend Joe Fox started the Curtis McArthur foundation to raise money for scholarships for South College’s Brewing program. This is a way to honor his memory and is something that ol’ Dirt McCurt would have approved. The money from CurtisFest will go to this and to his memorial fund.

So what is going down at CurtisFest? Good people drinking phenomenal beers in an absolutely gorgeous setting. Tickets are $50 and worth every penny. You get an official Curtisfest tulip glass and unlimited samples of some of Curtis’s favorite breweries. These include Asheville’s Wicked Weed and Highland, Nashville’s Yazoo, Terrapin and Sweetwater from Georgia, Knoxville’s own Alliance and Saw Works along with Founders from Grand Rapids Michigan. They expect to add more breweries as we get closer to the date. Curtis was big into sharing beer, so that is a big part of the festival as well. Dig in your cellar, grab a couple of rarities and bring them out to let other people enjoy them. Who knows, maybe someone else who’s doing the same will have that rare white whale you’ve been searching for. For people who live or are booking a hotel room downtown, there will be free shuttles going back and forth from Market Square to the site.

The other really cool parts of this festival is the food truck fish taco cook off. There will be some stiff competition to determine who makes the best one. Also on tap is a dj playing Curtis’ favorite tunes, so come prepared to boogie! If that isn’t enough to entice you, there will be disc golf, corn hole, paddle boarding and kayaking demonstrations as well. So go ahead and make plans to attend now. For a festival of this nature, there are a very limited number of tickets being sold. You can purchase them online or at the following locations: Barley’s in Knoxville and Maryville, Central Flats and Taps, Hops and Hollers or come see me out at The Market in Maryville, where Dave and I have them for sale. Even if you never met Curtis, please come help us honor his memory and make some great memories while doing so.

This is all for now. I’ll write again next week after Thirsty Orange. Don’t forget I work Sundays at The Market and do a different infusion each week. We also do a bottle share, so garb something cold and come on down.

Cheers,

-R@TcheT-

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Posted by jasonknowsbeer

Report on the Thirsty Orange Brew Extravaganza @ThirstyOrange

April 19, 2012

This is my third attempt to write about last weekend’s Thirsty Orange beer festival in Johnson City. My original idea was to live blog from the festival. I even set up the page the night before. However, there was so much to do and I was so busy it just wasn’t possible to live blog. I hardly even had time to take my phone out of my pocket to check emails, text and tweets.
So here it is, almost a week later. Let’s see how much I can actually recall.
Here’s some background first. I am currently moving. Everyone knows that packing and moving is a big pain in the ass. Luckily I pretty much have a whole month to do it. I am renting a slighly bigger house on a hill that is closer to downtown. The view is pretty great and the fact that I have a whole basement to brew in is what sold me on the house.

Well, I have a brew schedule that I am trying to stick to. I didn’t want to try to move my fermentation fridge and carboys while they were in mid-fermentation. So I did what any slightly crazed beer obessessed homebrewer would do. I got up extra early Friday morning and started brewing. I ended up mashing in around 5:30 am. I figured, if I was going to move full carboys that I should do it right after brewing so the sloshing caused by the car ride would help oxygenate the wort. Yeast needs oxygen to help get it going. So as I brewed, I cleaned. I moved my small lagering chest freezer into the back of the van. Once I was done brewing my Maibock, I drove the whole set up to, and set it up in, the basement of the house I’m moving in to. I plugged in the fridge and thermostat control and put the two 5 gallon carboys to ferment at 48 degrees. I was done completely around 11 am. I then went over to the Downtown Grill and Brewery and picked up the Woodruff Brewing beer that I took to the festival.

I than went home and packed the van full of tubs, beer, kegs, ice and merchandise. I then drove to Johnson City. Arriving there I quickly checked into my room. The festival site was at the Mellow Mushroom just down the road, so I headed there to meet with the organizers. I stashed the kegs in the walk in cooler, had a beer and taked plans for the next day. Well as you can imagine, I was exhausted from getting up at 4:45 am that day to brew. I knew Saturday was going to be hectic, so I went back to the hotel and passed out early.

Saturday morning, I rolled out of bed, made some crappy hotel coffee and headed to the site. I was still pretty tired and the crappy hotel coffee just wasn’t kicking in. Thank goodness one of the guys there, Andrew, had brought a carafe of great coffee to share. After “irishing up” a cup of it with a shot of baileys, I was good to go.

While crews set up tents and generally prepared the site for the days festivities, I worked on getting my table, kegs and jockey box set up. I was also on infuser duty. I had my own infuser to run beer through and the festival had it’s own. Responsible for the festival’s infuser was a cool dude (who I had the pleasure of working with) that they called Flipper. I showed him the ropes on how to pack it, how to set up the lines, etc. He picked up on it rather quickly and was able to take the infuser around and fresh infuse different beers with different ingredients all day. It was definitely a hit of the festival.

Well once the gates were open, things were hectic. I still hadn’t completely set up my merchandise when a line began to form at my table. I was very greatful that the festival organizers had provided me with someone to assist me at my booth, as I honestly could not have done it by myself. Right at the start, I had a beer line break in my jockey box. My first clue that it occured was when beer started pouring out the sides. I lost the whole keg of chocolate ale that I had brewed for the Iron Brewer challenge. I had to cut the bad section of line out and rehook it up to a different keg.

Once all the kinks were worked out, the festival went really well. I did my share of drinking, slipping away from my booth a few minutes at a time to try other beers. I met more then a few really cool people, fellow homebrewers from all over and tried many great brews. It was also really good to see and hang out with my Knox Beer Crew friends who had made the trip up from Knoxville. They left before the end of the festival, but we did have time to squeeze into the on site beer photo booth and get our pictures taken.

Well I stayed until the very end, and was the last brewer set up and pouring until my ride came and got me. I packed up, said my goodbyes and went back to the hotel. After settling in, I went downstairs to get something out of the van and realized that there was a comedy show taking place in the hotel’s restaurant. I drunkenly wandered in and sat in the back unlit portion of the space and laughed for awhile. Then I wandered back upstairs and passed out.

It was a great festival and Aaron and his crew always put together a good event. As far as I could see, everything went smoothly and everyone had a fun time. If this happens again next year, you can count me in to be there.

Ok, will this is all for now. I don’t feel like this write up is all that good, but I had to post something. If you read this and were at the Thirsty Orange, please leave a comment with your thoughts below.

Cheers,

Ratchet