While beer lovers can devote a lot of energy to the proper classification of their favorite beverage, oenophiles don’t fret over what to call the sort of wine they’re drinking. Old-world wines are generally known by their region of origin: A Bordeaux wine is made in Bordeaux, France, from the grape varieties that grow best […]
Julie Johnson
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Posted inFood & Drink
Five years after Pop the Cap, a toast to bold beers
Five years ago this month, North Carolina became a modern beer state. On Aug. 13, 2005, Gov. Mike Easley signed a bill that swept away one of the more onerous relics of the Prohibition era and opened the way for our developing craft beer culture to flourish. Before that date, North Carolina was one of […]
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A fresh-hopped N.C. beer?
Geek out with hops Want to learn more about growing hops? The Second Annual Hops Farm Tour is scheduled for Saturday, July 31, in the Asheville area. It will feature two growers in the region and a tour and tasting afterward at the French Broad Brewing Company. If your interests are more in the finished […]
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This beer is skunked!
Yeuchh! What’s wrong with this beer? I’m not talking about your first taste of a Belgian lambic, a sour beer style with an aroma described as “barnyard” or “wet horse blanket,” or the whiff of clove and banana in some traditional wheat beers. These flavors may take some getting used to, but they are appropriate […]
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N.C. breweries win at World Beer Cup
If anyone needed more evidence that North Carolina is transforming itself from a brewing backwater into the most promising beer destination in the South, here it is: Four of our craft breweries won awards at the largest beer competition in the world last month. Outer Banks Brewing Station in Kill Devil Hills, Olde Hickory Brewery […]
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Cask ale: It’s the real deal
Where to look for cask-conditioned ale Top of the Hill, 100 E. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, in their Back Bar. Big Boss Tap Room, 1249 Wicker Drive, Raleigh, offers them a couple of times each month. Aviator Brewing Co. Tap House, 600 E. Broad St., Fuquay Varina, serves three beers on cask at all times. […]
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Triangle breweries give beer lovers a look
Maybe I’m a slow learner, but it took several tours of working breweries before I started to understand how beer is made. But from my first brewery tour onward, I enjoyed the tall, gleaming kettles; the smells that were bready, then spicy, depending on the stage in the process; and the Rube Goldberg wonder of […]
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President Washington’s porter
George Washington, born this month in 1732, comes down to us through the centuries sounding impossibly high-minded. The boy who couldn’t tell a lie, the unanimously elected president who reluctantly accepted power, Washington seems much stiffer than his contemporaries. While we know Thomas Jefferson maintained a wine cellar at Monticello, and John Adams was said […]
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Roll out the barrel-aged beer
Have you spotted the words “barrel aged” on some of the more expensive beers recently? With their proclivity for innovation, a number of American craft brewers have stepped backward in the name of progress. For many decades, brewers had adopted hygienic materials in the brewery, particularly stainless steel, but some have returned to aging their […]
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Imperial beers for plucky palates
⇒ Attend the Triangle Beer Geek Winter Cage Match Dec. 8-9 Before mass travel and transportation, local beer reflected local conditions. There was no understanding of “beer styles” as we discuss them today, and most drinkers had little idea that what passed for “beer” in a neighboring country could be radically different from beer at […]