Thursday, August 25, 2005

>6% Beer Purchases In NC

Went to McCoul's in Greensboro last night, had two wonderful Chimay Triples.



Also, this sign was outside of Weinhaus in downtown Asheville last weekend:



For an often updated message board listing where to buy these newly-legal brews in the Tarheel State, check out Beerinator.com.

From that site, here's what you can find in Tha 'Ville:

Barleys Taproom

Highland Tasgall Ale (8% Scottish Style)
Pisgah Imperial IPA (currently out)
Ommegang in bottles

Dirty Jacks

Merlin Triple (9.4%)
Imperial Stout (~7.5%)

Westville Pub

Highland Tasgall Ale (8% Scottish Style)
Pisgah Equinox Ale. Not as hoppy as the IIPA and it has a little bit more malt character. Still good, and the ABV is 7.5%.
Ommegang in bottles
Duvel in Bottles

Hannah Flannagans

Chimay White


Greenlife Grocery
All the Chimays
Ommegang Abbey
Ommegang Hennepin
Duvel
Mendocino White Hawk
Mendocino Eye of the Hawk

Not high gravity:
Rodenbach
Rodenbach Grand Cru


Also, poooor Reverend Creech:

Reverend Creech laments the passage of the Pop The Cap bill.

"It came as an awful shock," begins the article. Of course, the reason that the Christian Action League opposed the bill is that they're a pro-prohibition group. They don't think alcohol should be legal at all. So, there's that. From there, we get absolutely no reasons why the bill would have been damaging to residents of North Carolina, except from Senator Kerr, who had this to say:
I think there are a lot of worms in this….this will be bad for our young people who are starting off. So I just think that we are going to have to look at this. It’s supposed to be for the microbreweries. I don’t think it’s for them. We could let the microbreweries do this, but this is a statewide bill. It goes in all areas of the state. And there’s another thing we could do, we could let it be local option. I’m not a hundred percent against the bill; I just think we need to know more about it. And I apologize, I know this is the time of the year when everybody wants to get out, but I think this is a deliberative body. I think we ought to have a chance to bring people in to discuss what’s really happening to our young people, who will be exposed to something that one bottle will put them as a DWI.
There's no acknowledgement by Senator Kerr, however, that if a Barleywine or other high content beer is imbibed by a young person, that he will be drinking as much alcohol as in a similar amount of wine. Add to that the fact that he could also take a shot or two of vodka or rum and get the same effect, and you have a very weak argument indeed.

At any rate, the bill is now law, the cap on alcohol in beers in NC is now 15%, and distributors and microbreweries around the state are scrambling to provide for the demand that will soon be upon them for craft beers.

3 comments:

George Peterson said...

They certainly are not to be played with. These beers are to be sipped and savored, and Pop The Cap actually recommends that all beers over 8% be served in HALF PINTS, so that people don't do anything stupid :)

Jim Jenkins said...

“What do you think
The bravest drink
Under the sky?”
“Strong beer,” said I...

Oh, never choose as Gideon chose
By the cold well, but rather those
Who look on beer when it is brown,
Smack their lips and gulp it down.
Leave the lads who tamely drink
With Gideon by the water brink,
But search the benches of the Plough,
The Tun, the Sun, the Spotted Cow,
For jolly rascal lads who pray,
Pewter in hand, at close of day,
“Teach me to live that I may fear
The grave as little as my beer.”

excerpt from Strong Beer by Robert Graves

arratik said...

heh... when i lived in l.a. there was a bar we used to go that found that out the hard way, but for a while it was possible for one person to order a pitcher of old foghorn barleywine and just guzzle it down in one sitting.

that person was me.

the resulting illness was not pretty.