Thanksgiving South Easterly Trip

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone. For it, Kridz and I went south east. Our initial plans were to go down to Marietta Georgia and spend the week with my uncle helga, and do Thanksgiving day (proper) with the mother.

Then we thought a whole week in Georgia might be too much, so we thought about going to Asheville on Friday (or Saturday) and spending some time with Frank and Dana. Then we changed our minds again, and went to Asheville first, and headed to Atlanta area on Thanksgiving itself.

On the Sunday before we left, I stopped at Friar Tucks to pick up some things to trade with Julie from BruisinAles. She had asked for some of this years Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Three Floyds Behemoth, and Three Floyds Alpha Klaus. GIBCS and Behemoth were available at Tucks so I picked up some of that for her.

We left on Monday morning around 8:30 or so. We got to 465 in Indy around 10:45 (with the time change; maybe). Then had to get gas, so we stoped at Crown Liquors. Crown Liq is at exit 2B on 465. Take that for about 3 miles south and it's on the left. It doesn't have a huge selection, but the selection it has is outstanding. (If you go down 31 further south, you'll come to E Stop 11 road, turn left there and go down another 2 miles and on the right is Parti-pak Liquors, that store doesn't look like much, but has an OUTSTANDING beer selection, and everything is available in singles; we didn't go there this time) We weren't really shopping to get much, just hoping to pick up some more GIBCS (tucks only had the bombers) and hopefully some Alpha Klaus. The store had Alpha Klaus, horray. It also had bombers and 4 packs of GIBCS, horray. It also had Behemoth, horray. It didn't just have Behemoth, it had '09 Behemoth, sitting next to '08 Behemoth, sitting next to '07 Behemoth. All were the same price, exactly how that was possible, I have no idea. So, I got one of each of those (for Julie). I also picked up a 4pack of Bells Hell Hath No Fury, because that's awesome. I think that's about all we got there. The guy working was nice enough to give us 15% off our purchase, it was supposed to be just for bombers, but he did it for the whole thing. I'm sure we got more, I just don't remember what all else we got there.

We continued traveling to Asheville. Interstate 40 is closed just inside the North Carolina border, so we hadda take a detour. This was through some of the windy-est up and down backwoods parts of North Carolina. In Illinois, we are pampered. Seriously. The ground is flat, and pretty much all the roads go north and south, or east and west. There are a few curves, but it's pretty straight. Even the non-interstate roads are pretty straight. You can take route 150 from Danville to the Quad Cities, and you'll be stopping a lot, but it's pretty straight. This backroad route that we had to take in North Carolina, I swear we stayed on the same road, but intersected the road we were on. There's a lot of turning. There's a lot of ups and downs. There's mountains. There's valleys. There's OMG YOU ARE GOING TO FAST FOR THIS CORNER!!!! ARRRRGGGGHHH.

We made it to Asheville, without much incident (although my car is making a weird rattling noise). Got to Frank and Dana's and ate and had a beer or 2, not exactly sure what all we drank that night, the week got kind of fuzzy...

Woke up on Tuesday and ate breakfast. Killed some time, then headed to downtown to the Mellow Mushroom to eat lunch. I had a Sweetwater Motorboat, Kridz had a Wedge Pale, Frank had a Highland Cold Mountain. I had a second beer, that was the French Broad Rye Hopper. We left there and headed to Pisgah Brewery. There we met Julie and J from BruisinAles. We all got beer and went and sat at the tables and chatted about beer. Based on my twitter messages, I know that the first beer I had was their Belgian Amber. Kridz had their porter and Frank had the Nitro Stout. Because we were there with Julie and J, we got to go back and check out the works of the brewery (I'm sure they would have let us back their without them; but it didn't hurt that we were there with one of the top beer store people in the world). We talked to one of the brewers and learned some of their stuff. We finished up and headed to the next brewery.

Our next stop was Wedge Brewing Co. Wedge is pretty. Wedge is possibly how I'd like my brewery to look. While there, I had their belgian abbey ale, which was awesome. Frank and Kridz both got their DIPA. We got to go back and talk with Carl, the brewer, about some of the things he was doing, and to look at their setup. I'm pretty sure that I had another beer there, but who really knows. We packed up there and headed to the next brewery.

Our next stop was Dirty Jacks. While there, we got to talk with the brewer, John. I was drinking the DIPA, and Kridz got the ESB. Their ESB was one of the first non-bud light beers that Kridz had. From our first trip to Asheville, when we helped move Frank and Dana down. It's a good gateway beer. Back then, it was probably a lot more flavor than she was used to, now it's probably kind of tame. John was working on something special for something special (not exactly sure what it was) but he brought out some samples of a stout for us, and that was pretty darn good. We packed up there and headed to our next stop.

Next stop, the Thirsty Monk. The monk is pretty much 2 pubs, downstairs is all Belgian and belgian style, upstairs is pretty much... beer, any and all beer. When we were there, we got to sit in on a tasting of Hanssens Lambics in the basement, which I enjoyed, but Frank and Kridz didn't seem to like. At one point I said, "you have to want to like these beers" if you don't you'll never get around to appreciating them. If you don't want it, you'll hate them and just be stuck with the vinegar flavor. Then we went upstairs and got to drink some cask Ola Dubh 12 year. That was awesome too. I'm pretty sure I had a beer from downstairs, but I have no clue what it was. While we were finishing up the Ola Dubh glasses, Dana called and said she was about ready to be picked up from work. That call ended a LONG day of drinking. A LONG great day of drinking. Although I think we may have had another one or two when we got back to Frank and Dana's.

Woke up Wed, and felt a little small, not horribly hungover, but not the greatest. Dana managed to get the day off, so we ate breakfast and headed out to go do some beer exchanging with BruisinAles. We got there before they opened, so we had to figure out something else to do. We wound up going to The Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa for the National Gingerbread House Display. That was... interesting. The place smelled like gingerbread, which I guess is to be expected. Some of them were nice, others were... meh. We finished up there and went to BruisinAles again. (the final haul list will be at the bottom of this post).

We left there, went back to Frank and Dana's ate dinner had a couple beers (including a Troegs Nugget Nectar from Julie and J's private stash) and watched Pelham 123. Woke up Thursday and headed towards Atlanta. Made the 200 wind-y drive in about 4 hours. Got to mom's a little bit into the packer game. Had to call mother for directions to her house from the road we exited the interstate from. She apparently doesn't know the road's name to turn on from the road we were on, which I believe is the road she works on.

Watched football, ate, played scategories, left and went to Uncle Helga's. Wanted a beer during dinner, but not so much after. Relaxed the rest of the night at Harolds. Friday went back to go work on their laptops that both had issues. Frank's display was turning off, and they needed the data from it on the other lappy. Mom's lappy wasn't printing. I managed to transfer the data without having much visibility on the monitor, and managed to get her printer working (Windows 7 security features have a tendency to lock down machines to a point where they don't work). Ate, then headed to Highland Beverage in Hiram.

Highland doesn't have the biggest selection, but they do have a decent one. This whole trip my plan was to only get beers from the south east, I pretty much succeeded, but did get a couple of Stone's and some other things.

Left there and went to Taco Mac Marietta. Other than pizza, Taco Mac is the beer place that Old Chicago wishes it was. Old Chicago has like 20 taps, Taco Mac Marietta has 50. Old Chicago claims 110 brews. Taco Mac has 402 bottles. I don't know any place locally with that number, (other than the houses of people in the beer club). While there, met my cousin, his wife and 2 daughters. That was nice. I added 4 beers (between kridz and I) to my passport club thing.

Saturday, packed up and headed back to Illinois.

That's pretty much the trip. Here's the haul...

4 pack Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
4 pack Atlanta Brewing Company Double Chocolate Oatmeal Porter
4 pack Terrapin Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout (and another for Puffer)(commonly known as Wake and Bake)
2 Dogfish Head/Sierra Nevada Life and Limb
3 Terrapin Gamma Ray
2 Stone Sublimely Self Righteous
2 Duck Rabbit Wee Heavy Scotch
2 Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot
Sweetwater Festive '09 #1655 (must check to see what number my '06 is)
Bruery 2 Turgle Doves
Stone Old Guardian Early '09 Release
Smuttynose Baltic Porter
Smuttynose Imperial Stout
Smuttynose Wheat Wine Ale
Weyerbacher Insanity
Hanssens Oude Kriek (from Thirsty Monk tasting)
Highland Tasgall
Sweetwater Wet Dream (dank tank)
Terrapin Side Project #6 90 Shelling
Terrapin Side Project #7 Maggies' Farmhouse Ale
Weyerbacher XIII
Weyerbacher 12
Deschutes Jubelale '08 (from Julie and J)
Highland Imperial Black Mocha
Sweetwater Big Ol' Belgian Blue Balls (dank tank)
Troegs Mad Elf (from Julie and J)
Terrapin Imperial Red Ale Big Hoppy Monster
Brewdog Paradox Smokehead #15
Brewdog Paradox Isle of Arran #16
Weyerbacher 14
Weyerbacher Quad

(the Paradox gives me numbers 1,3,5,8,10,11, 13, 15, and 16)