“We hit up 7 places over the 2 days, and here’s our take on them for anyone else who heads that way.” Some excerpts from Bread + Cheese, Please:
Pisgah Brewing. We tried 9 different beers, and there wasn’t a single one we didn’t like. And I don’t even LIKE certain beer styles – sometimes porters and stouts and NEVER IPAs. My favorite’s were a seasonal bacon stout (I promise it wasn’t bacony – just smokey and actually a little chocolate-y) and the red devil, their Belgian triple brewed with the addition of raspberries.
Craggie Brewing Co. Favorites here were the choconut winter brown, the bourbon chipotle porter, and dubbelicious Belgian-style double.
French Broad Brewery. Favorites here were the Wee-Heavier Scotch Ale and the 13 Rebels ESB. It is on the outskirts of town, so we stopped here after Pisgah and Highlands before heading downtown for dinner.
Asheville Brewing Company. I hear the pizza is good, and we enjoyed a huge pile o’ tater tots for an afternoon snack, so perhaps make this a meal outing with beer on the side. I really enjoyed the Roland ESB.
Highlands Brewing Co. The Gaelic Ale was quite delicious, but the others we tried were just OK for us.
Lexington Avenue Brewery. We had pretty good food (I’d call it upscale, creative pub fare; more on that in the next post), but the beer was pretty disappointing. A lot of light-lager-like tasting beers, or stouts and pale ales that are more like the ones I’m used to and don’t like. If you like your beer on the lighter or hoppier side, you’ll be fine, but for us, this was really a miss. I do recommend the food, though!
Thirsty Monk. Located in the heart of downtown, Thirsty Monk is two levels of intriguing beer choices. The lower level bar is all Belgians (or Belgian-style), and the upper level all Americans. I personally loved that you could get a half-pour of anything – as the driver and someone who loves having a variety of tastes, not to mention someone who gets full easily on too much heavy beer, it was awesome. Want to know what I mean by intriguing and interesting? I had Catawba’s Pain Pour Nicole downstairs, a beer brewed with rye, molasses, and caraway seeds that tasted almost like a winter warmer. Back upstairs, I tried the Stone/Elysian/Bruery collaboration La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado, an amber brewed with Stone-grown pumpkins, toasted fenugreek, birch bark, and lemon verbena. Both were explosions of flavor – love!
Bruisin’ Ales. As Ryan uttered as we walked in, it’s like a craft beer lover’s mecca. A small, but full shop packed with all sorts of local and national craft beers, including a lot of limited editions, and import brew. Worth a stop, for sure, especially to take back to the cabin for a night in (or night cap, as the case may be …).
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. . . back in March.