Your Favorite Local Breweries

[furley]

These are the delusional ramblings of a man who smoked way too much crack. "Everything tastes the same to me" tells you everything you need to know.

let's do a blind tasting. i bet you couldn't pick the witbier out from the pale ale from the rauchbier.



















because i'm going to cut your tongue out first

 

[Contemplatebeer]

Happy to respond here as well. Two breweries in Louisville that, I think, will be viewed among the best in the state within a couple of years:

Mile Wide- I love their mix of everyday beer and their attention to detail on their more limited offerings. Noteworthy among the former is their McPoyle Milk Stout, Leroy Brown Ale, Idlewild (an IPA with a rotating hop each batch) and Wooderson (a smoked beer with a mesquite thing going on). Their recent Saison, Chair Lift, is one of the better American examples I've had in the last few years.

Gravely- As we speak, they have twelve taps of their beer on at their brewpub, and in twelve different styles. Who does that right now? Nobody else in KY at least. I get instantly excited when a new brewery can make an able Pils or Vienna right along with their APAs, etc. and Gravely accomplishes that exceptionally well for a young brewery.

 

[NClambicguy]

Raleigh/Durham

Brewery Bhavana - they are making some great under the radar saisons that really don't get the love they deserve. Their hoppy beers are also great for the most part. Will certainly be looking to BiF some of these beers in the future. They also get credit for having an amazing kitchen, if you can ever get a table.

Casita Cerverceria - he's gypsy brewing at Duck Rabbit, but has been turning out some delicious beers of just about any style. He has made some great IPA, lagers, and I'm sure most have heard of Southward. I'm really looking forward to what he does.

Trophy - they have had great IPAs for awhile. The brewery is always packed, but that's assisted by the great pizza they have. Need to revisit them soon.

Under the radar but likely going to explode in 2019 is White Elephant. They are in podunk NC, but the beers I have had from them have always been extremely well executed for the style. They are really killing it and have started barrel aging. I'm hoping they are the next great thing to come out of North Carolina.

Overrated category includes Fonta Flora and most of the breweries in Durham. Fonta has been entirely too inconsistent and some of their beers just end up tasting like pickle juice. Their is a terrible issue with their customer service and I've also heard that their membership is entirely too disorganized.

Thought I would love but ended up disliking - Barrel Culture - I was super excited to have a local brewery that was trying to go after the same styles as Casey. After all, the brewmaster was obsessed with what Troy has been doing. What we ended up with is a bunch of overfruited and throat burning sours that are barrel aged for about 25 days. Don't even get me started on their hashtag game and their amazingly terrible use of adjuncts in beers that end up making them unbalanced messes. The membership club is terribly organized and their brewery seems to lack any direction for the future. The worst part is that the owners are great people that are genuinely awesome people to grab a beer with. I just wish the brewers would stop chasing the new fad and get back to brewing beers that have some sort of nuance.

 

[PSUMike]

Overrated category includes Fonta Flora and most of the breweries in Durham. Fonta has been entirely too inconsistent and some of their beers just end up tasting like pickle juice. Their is a terrible issue with their customer service and I've also heard that their membership is entirely too disorganized.

I've only had 2 beers from them and I saw the inconsistency. One was one of the best and most well balanced sours I've had in a long time (a sour pancake Kvass with maple syrup...sounds dumb as hell but holy ****, it blew me away). The other tasted like burnt plastic.

 

[kbuzz1]

(a waffle pancake Kvass with maple syrup...sounds dumb as hell but holy ****, it blew me away).

Still dumb as hell, but fixed.

 

[JulianB1]

The "pickle juice" thing seems to have to do with the malt they are using, or maybe the combo of that malt with the yeast. It's pervasive across almost all of Fonta Flora's beers, or at least the saisons/wilds/etc. I definitely like some of what they are doing, but there's for sure inconsistencies and their fart-huffing social media presence doesn't help. Their incensed reaction when people questioned the original pricing structure of their club being a good example, there was a spicy thread on the BA South Atlantic forum about that with a lot of unwarranted defensiveness.

 

[NClambicguy]

The "pickle juice" thing seems to have to do with the malt they are using, or maybe the combo of that malt with the yeast. It's pervasive across almost all of Fonta Flora's beers, or at least the saisons/wilds/etc. I definitely like some of what they are doing, but there's for sure inconsistencies and their fart-huffing social media presence doesn't help. Their incensed reaction when people questioned the original pricing structure of their club being a good example, there was a spicy thread on the BA South Atlantic forum about that with a lot of unwarranted defensiveness.

Plus making members renew before getting a single member beer (which all ended up being blends of beers they already produce) is shitty behavior. They also refused to acknowledge the Urban Monk infection and were late to acknowledge Sal. Their handling of Zwanze was my final straw with them. I won't buy another beer from them, but plenty of others will.

 

[MooseLang]

Not too much here for me in Wienerville, MD (Census designated location).

Realerevival Brewing aka RAR: First things first, this is one of the dumbest brewery names ever. They are pretty much known as RAR (rawr) now, and seem to have all but abandoned whatever Realerevival was. This is probably the closest brewery to me, and it also happens to be one of the two or three "it" breweries in Maryland (along with Burley Oak, which is slightly too far to include on this list for me). They follow the nu-money brewery model that is popular right now - Hazy IPAs and Kettle Sours. I think most hazy IPAs taste exactly the same outside of the few breweries that really transcend the style (Hill Farmstead, Trillium, Transient, Brew Gentlemen, etc.). These guys are no different. If you like hazy IPA, you'll like these guys. If you like kettle sours with a bunch of lactose and fruit, you'll like these guys. For me, I do really enjoy their Pales and lower-abv IPAs. That's their sweet-spot. Once they approach and exceed 8%, their beers just drink way too sweet for my liking.

Evolution Brewing: This brewery is not flashy at all, but may be my favorite in MD. They make a couple of good IPAs (Lot 3 and Lot 6) that are sort of in the "2010" realm of IPAs with a bit of crystal, but they avoid being overly sweet. They make a Chardonnay Barrel-Aged Saison that is absolutely crushable when the batch is on. Where they really get their money from me is with their Rise Up Stout and Delmarva Pure Pils. Rise Up Stout is a <7% Coffee Stout. But it is just about perfect. Lots of coffee, perfect stout underneath, and no green pepper or charred character. The Pils did well in Paste's blind Pilsner ranking - which means jack **** - but it's nice to have such a good local Pils readily accessible. No lactose necessary.


Union Brewing and Burley Oak are both ~1 hour away, which pushes the "local" thing a little too far. I enjoy both of them, as well.

 

[JulianB1]

Union Brewing and Burley Oak are both ~1 hour away, which pushes the "local" thing a little too far. I enjoy both of them, as well.

Union's variants on their Old Pro gose - the Older Pro that's barrel-aged with various fruits and the Tee Time versions that are designed to taste like fruited iced teas - are absolutely phenomenal beers.

 

[ncaudle]

Union's variants on their Old Pro gose - the Older Pro that's barrel-aged with various fruits and the Tee Time versions that are designed to taste like fruited iced teas - are absolutely phenomenal beers.

I went to their 5th anny party last summer and drank soooooooooo much of their fruited goses and BA BWs

 

[user 307594]

Evolution Brewing: This brewery is not flashy at all, but may be my favorite in MD. They make a couple of good IPAs (Lot 3 and Lot 6) that are sort of in the "2010" realm of IPAs with a bit of crystal, but they avoid being overly sweet. They make a Chardonnay Barrel-Aged Saison that is absolutely crushable when the batch is on. Where they really get their money from me is with their Rise Up Stout and Delmarva Pure Pils. Rise Up Stout is a <7% Coffee Stout. But it is just about perfect. Lots of coffee, perfect stout underneath, and no green pepper or charred character. The Pils did well in Paste's blind Pilsner ranking - which means jack **** - but it's nice to have such a good local Pils readily accessible. No lactose necessary

really enjoyed that pils when I was down last summer and their food was pretty dope, at least for this landlocked old bay lover. nearly made myself sick by eating an idiotic amount of shrimp and crab.