Greg Barbera

I sat at the elbow seat of an L-shaped bar with a flight of beers in front of me. They were from Raleigh’s Trophy Brewing Co. Sitting to my right were Trophy’s owner Chris Powers and head brewer Les Stewart. But, before telling me about each glass, Powers explains the name of the brewerya three-barrel […]

You know what the arrival of the holiday season means, right? No, not gifts or decorations or quiet reflection. It means seasonal beer! You’ll find plenty of namesake beers out there like Port Brewing’s Santa’s Little Helper, Troegs’ Mad Elf Holiday Ale, SweetWater Brewing’s Festive Ale, Rogue’s Santa’s Private Reserve Ale, Ridgeway Brewing’s Reindeer’s Revolt […]

Cooking is in Charlie Deal’s blood. “From the time I was a little kid I was always into cooking. I wrote my first cookbook at age 5,” he says. On top of that, by 5 he had already had his first craft beer. “There’s a picture of me in diapers holding a bottle of Anchor […]

The Yeti Crawl is Nov. 7th. There is no fee, but you pay for your food and drink. The crawl starts at 6 p.m. at Sam’s Quik Shop in Durham, heads to the Federal for a food and beer pairing, then to the Surf Club where seven different Yeti beers will be on tap. It […]

Sam Malone was my idol,” says Dain Phelan, the 36-year-old proprietor of Dain’s Place, which has been a fixture on 9th Street in Durham for more than six years. “All I ever wanted to do was open a bar.” Phelan’s hero Malone was the bartender on the hit television show Cheers played by Ted Danson. […]