Edgy Mama

 I finally met Kilgore, the man behind Asheville Beer Blog. More Brewgrass 2008 photos at my Flickr site and tomorrow at Mountain Xpress photo galleries.

Tomorrow is Asheville’s premier bluegrass and craft beer tasting festival, Brewgrass.

Again this year I wrote an article about the fest for Mountain Xpress, with an updated guide to WNC’s microbreweries.

What I didn’t include in the article, I’ll tell you here.

My advice for the day. Bring sunscreen and/or a hat. Even though it looks to be wonderfully cool this year (especially compared to 2007’s sizzler), there’s not much shade at the park. You’ll go home toasted in more ways than one without protection.

Bring extra cash for food. Barley’s, Doc Chey’s, Ruby’s Barbecue, the kettle popcorn guy, and one other local restaurant I can’t remember at the moment, will have food for sale. Face it, not many of us can drink for seven straight hours without a some solid sustenance along the way.

Also, bring either a designated driver, cab or bus fare, or your walking shoes. You know why.

OK, enough mothering.

Now for my advice on the local brews to make sure you taste.

Highland puts out a special high-gravity beer for Brewgrass. This year it’s the Imperial Black Mocha Stout. Asheville Beer Blog has more here. The Imperial will probably go fast. When you see a line forming at the Highland tent, hie yourself hither.

Pisgah Brewing will bring their Valdez, a high-gravity coffee-flavored stout. Definitely worth a taste. Or two.

Of the Asheville Brewing beers that will be on hand, the Rocket Girl’s my fave. Light and bubbly and a great name. Watch for when APBC’s folks bring out the T-shirt sling. But be careful. I’ve seen elbows to the face and broken noses result from jostling for these tees.

Catawba Valley’s King Don’s Pumpkin Ale, my favorite pumpkin ale ever, will be on tap at their tent.  Not too sweet, but smooth and crisp. Like a pumpkin.

Heinzelmannchen Brewery’s Weis Gnome is a yummy white-style ale. My favorite of their beers so far.

I also love the Wedge’s Wit Bier. It’s got some depth while retaining that fresh lightness that I want in a Belgian.

French Broad Brewing’s Ryehopper Ale is getting lots of raves. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will tomorrow.

And Green Man will have a hand-pumped cask beer, probably of their Porter, on hand. It probably won’t last long, but it will be well worth tasting while it’s there.

Other beer tents I’m looking forward to visiting from outside the WNC area are Dogfish Head, Rogue, Duck Rabbit, and Weeping Radish, among others. I didn’t see Flying Dog or Abita on this year’s list, which is too bad. Although I’m not sure when the list was last updated.

Oh, and I didn’t get this in time for my article, but I hear Craggie Brewing will be holding their own beer fest of sorts. Because they aren’t yet licensed, they can’t participate in Brewgrass, but they’ll be giving away their beers all afternoon from their soon-to-be-opened brewery. I have yet to visit, but I hear their strawberry porter rocks.

Don’t pass out because I’m posting twice in one morning. By the end of the day, I’ll probably link to my Mountain Xpress column as well, making it a record-breaking bloggie day.

Anyway, I became enamored of a new beer this past weekend: SweetWater’s Hummer.

The naughtily-named beer out of Atlanta’s premier microbrewery is a white ale laced with coriander and orange peel. It’s not one of those overly sweet ales, however. The beer has a fizzy spice to it that cuts the sugar.

The Hummer’s a tasty spring and summer beer. At 5.1 percent alcohol, the Hummer gets an EM two per session rating.

As the label touts: “Everybody loves a hummer!”

I’m having a lazy Sunday morning, letting the kidlings watch Robots, which is distracting, because I keep hearing Robin Williams’ voice behind me. I may go re-rack with my book for a while. I’m reading Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, which is absolutely riveting and amazing. It deserved the National Book Award it won.

I went to a friend’s 40th birthday party last night, but everyone was scared to talk to me after reading my Party Rules column. I did manage to find a guy who’d brought a lovely, lovely Belgium ale to the party, which he generously shared with me. We talked about The Thirsty Monk, an all Belgian beer bar due to open in Ashvegas on January 24. I can’t wait!

It’s raining. I wish it would snow. Even though, like everyone else, I’ve got tons to do over the next few weeks and snow, which often results in school cancellations, would wreck my schedule. But I love snow and all that goes with it: sledding, snow balls, snowmen, the potential for skiing. For now, I’m happy, at least, that it’s raining.

Since everyone’s talking about the new Dunkin’ Donuts in town, can we talk acoustics in the hallowed hall of sugar? I’ve been there three times, and every time, they’ve messed up my donut order. Because you have to shout in order to be heard. I can’t hear anything in there, and I totally get that the folks standing behind the counter, in the chaos of early morning need, can’t hear anything either. Maybe they need microphones for the customers: “Hey you, put the chocolate-sprinkled donut down. Right now. I said rainbow sprinkles, not chocolate sprinkles!”

I went to the new Irish pub, Tolliver’s Crossing, in West Asheville last night. I like the place, although the spinning laser light over the front door made people look like they were being targeted by snipers. Which made me nervous. The food, basic Irish/American pub fare, looked good. I ate only the age-old Irish comfort food of potato skins. They could’ve used more cheese, but otherwise were good. Tolliver’s has a decent beer selection, but they need more local brews on draught. They only have Highland at the moment, and they’d already drained their keg of Cold Mountain. More local beers and get rid of the laser light. People drinking alcohol don’t want even the illusion of being lasered. Or tasered. Or potentially shot at.

I heard from an intrepid Mountain Xpress reporter I ran into at Tolliver’s that the Admiral opened down the street (near BJ’s) on Friday. He said the bar has a wonderful, homey atmosphere. I didn’t make it down there (babysitter, you know), but I hope to soon.

Back to kid wrangling.

Commenters tied the vote on the next book I should read! Three votes each for After Dark and Cataloochee. Two votes for Suite Francaise. Several of you commented and didn’t vote, but it’s too late now!

Of course, I’ll read them all eventually. And first I need to finish Niagara Falls All Over Again. But I think I’ll go with After Dark next.

Who knew that the discussion over my next reading project would get so heated. Emotions run high among my literary nerd buddies.

In other news, I’ve been shooting up this fair city over the past 20 or so hours for Day in the Life of Asheville. This time around I didn’t plan as well or allot as much time for shooting as I did in the spring. I doubt I’ll have 12 decent shots, much less 24. But you never know. I hope you fotogs have been shooting hard!

This next week’s going to be busy and I plan to be fainting a lot because I haven’t made much headway in my goal to lose five pounds before my high school reunion. Which event is next weekend in Atlanta! Argh! So, I plan to exercise hard and eat little for the next six days. The exercise part, ironically, is the easy part for me. If I put my mind to it, I can become a workout machine. Until I hurt myself by fainting while hanging from the pull-up bar.

Of course I’m going to an oyster roast/barbecue/microbrew party tonight. But I figure if I don’t eat much until the party, then I can drink a couple beers, get tipsy, and then totally forget to eat while I entertain the other party-goers.

I purchased two growlers of French Broad’s Marzen Oktoberfest brew, which is ambery and delicious. I’d planned to write an article for Mt X on local Oktoberfest brews, but I got busy and didn’t follow-through, and then the beer guy totally wrote a rocking round-up of Oktoberfest beers, so instead of writing about Oktoberfest beer, I’m just going to drink it.

I may have to take some local Oktoberfest brews to my high school reunion as well, because I’m a bit concerned that they’re going to serve Stroh’s, in memory of our glory days of chugging the watery liquid in parks and parking lots. Is Stroh’s even made anymore?

Beer goddess and Captain A, originally uploaded by edgygrrrl.

in my fave T-shirt of the moment with fellow beer lover and long-time EM aficiando, Captain America. After writing the article about local microbreweries, I do, indeed, know quite a bit about beer. I rarely give biz shout-outs on the bloggie, but, for free beer, I will. So here’s to Bruisin’ Ales, our lovely, local speciality beer shop, for donating a keg to Saturday night’s Blogaversathon party. Thanks, y’all!

Here’s my Flickr slideshow from Brewgrass. Blogger finally let me back in. Whew!

want me to publish my link to my Brewgrass Flickr set for some reason, so if you’re interested in more photos, scroll down and click on the Flickr box in my left sidebar!

In fact, Blogger’s not letting me publish any photos at all. Not sure what’s up with that.

Brewgrass rocked. We ran into several people whom we didn’t know would be there, and didn’t see several people we knew were there. I never made it to half my favorite beer tents, including Rogue and Abita. I meant to go introduce myself to a couple of the brewers whom I’d interviewed on the phone, but I somehow didn’t manage to do that either. Beer is yum, but not so good for my organizational skills. Or memory.

The highlight of my day was the beer posse, who rightly worshiped at the feet of the beer goddess. Yum.

Brewgrass stories in the comments…