Note: You'll see me give star ratings to breweries in this post. I explained my "methodology" in my Portland post if you're curious as to what they mean.
Charlotte
Our sojourn to Charlotte was a brief stop during our day-long drive to the coast. Aside from visiting our friends and their new baby, we made a quick visit to No Da Brewing Company (link). No Da is probably the most famous brewery from the Charlotte area, in part because of the GABF Gold Medal they won for their IPA, Hop Drop and Roll. That beer lived up to expectations as a nice, complex hop bomb that touches on just about every flavor you would want from an IPA. There were other fine selections as well, specifically What Gose Round, the cranberry gose that exhibited perfect balance for the style. Some of the other hoppy offerings were merely decent with the Jam Session PA coming off a bit too abrasive and the Woody and Wilcox DIPA burying the hops a bit too much. The place itself was nice but a little cramped, although the outdoor area presumably provides good overflow spacing on days when it isn't 95. An overall mixed bag with solid upside, I give No Da 2.5 stars.
Charleston
Edisto Beach is roughly an hour outside of Charleston, so the second-largest city in South Carolina makes for an easy evening destination. As it appears to be a pretty nifty town, there were too many dining options to choose from. We ended up settling on Closed For Business (link), which was an excellent choice. The bar regularly shows up on lists of best beer bars, and while the selection was decent, the food was even better. They didn't have their famous Pork Slap (which I would order based on the name alone), but the spicy chicken sandwich I had was pretty great. A nice piece of chicken, a light and tasty breading, and a balanced blend of spices made for a great dinner.
Before dinner we (of course) had a few beers. We wanted to visit COAST Brewing Company, but the brewery wasn't open the day we went. In lieu of that, we went to another top 100 beer bar, Craft Conundrum (link), which appeared to have the best selection of COAST in town. I was especially looking forward to trying their HopArt IPA, but it had unfortunately just tapped out.* Luckily, they had several other beers from COAST, so I opted to try their All Columbus Pale Ale. This was a solid pale ale with a nice airy body that reminded me a bunch of a lot of 3 Floyd's newest efforts. One beer** is not enough to fully judge COAST by, but given how good it was and their reputation, I feel that they are likely a quite good brewery.
*It also wasn't in stock in the beer store we went to later. I had an unlucky day with HopArt, but lucky in other ways you'll see in the next paragraph.
**Ad had their black IPA and enjoyed that, so I wasn't alone in my high opinion of COAST.
After that, we made our way to the pinnacle of South Carolina brewing, Westbrook Brewing Co. (link). Westbrook has a good reputation for a wide selection of brewing styles, and it did not disappoint. Their Gose is famous as being one of the first of the style to reach critical mass in the US. It managed to stay true to the style while simultaneously taking it to the limit, mixing it's extremely tart nose with a great bready malt. They also had a second gose (Bearded Break-In), which was somehow even more extreme, tasting basically like orange juice while still maintaining the necessary saltiness and body. Their IPA was a solid but forgettable citrus-y offering. And of course, their Mexican Cake imperial stout is as good as advertised, with a hint of chili pepper balanced against a solidly made stout. I wasn't personally a huge fan of it (I find pepper-based things very hit or miss), but I can understand the fuss. While we were lucky to get that on tap (it's a May release), we were even luckier to be there on the day they released their seasonal DIPA, Citurs Ninja Exchange. This beer takes a pretty basic setup (Cascade-based DIPA), and infuses it with enough grapefruit to make it taste like something completely different which each sip.* Westbrook not only has something for everyone, but does everything quite well. For that, I give it 4 stars. If you find yourself in Charleston, you must go.
*When I had it there, I thought of it as a higher-ABV pseudo sue, but upon having a bottle of it, I think the more apt comparison is a danker Grapefruit Sculpin.
Asheville
Following the week at the beach, we made our way up to Asheville, North Carolina for a weekend. Part of what made this jaunt interesting was the sheer difference; going to the mountains right after the beach is a bit of a shock. To get the maximal effect out of this shock, we decided to go as high as we could, taking a lovely section of the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Mitchell State Park (link). Mount Mitchell, at 6684 feet in elevation, is the tallest point in the Appalachians, and thus the tallest point East of the Mississippi. Being that it's a mountain in the East, you can drive to the top, but we decided to earn the summit as best as we could, and took the Old Mitchell trail, which starts at the entrance and climbs for two miles to the summit. When we reached our goal, there was a bit too much fog to see any of the surroundings, but it was still a pretty great feeling being on top of everything.
Of course, Asheville isn't great just because it's a short car ride from a bunch of mountains. It also boasts a disturbing amount of great places to eat. We only had two days to sample from the wide array of offerings, but I feel like we got the gist just fine. Our first evening, we went to Luella's BBQ (link) which was a perfectly croumlent barbeque joint. Everything was a bit too salty, but the brisket managed to balance that a little bit better than the pulled pork. Our second night, we had one of the best multi-course dinners we've ever had at The Admiral (link) on the west side of town. The menu features enough small plates to allow you to get a taste of everything. All of the dishes (we got four small plates centered around four different proteins: mussels, pork, steak, and duck) were very well done, but the steak and potato dish was probably the best, due largely to perfect execution. When you cook flank steak to perfection and lather a beautiful potato pancake in enough butter, it's going to be a pretty good dish. For our final morning in town, we had brunch at Biscuit Head (link). If Biscuit Head's claim to fame was simply it's amazing dishes (I had the Asheville Benedict, which was predictably awesome), that would be enough. But, there's also a jam and butter bar, where you can sample as many of their concoctions as you could possibly want. There were a lot of good choices, but the mango jam was probably my favorite. Next time we go, maybe I'll try the gravy flight...yes, that's a thing.
And finally, there's the beer. Despite it's small-ish size, Asheville is home to about two dozen breweries. As such, it's one of the rare beer Meccas that isn't a giant metropolis. Unlike other similar-sized Meccas (namely Vermont), everything in Asheville is super close together, which can make for some very fun evenings. Even if the beer weren't amazing, the set-up alone makes Asheville a great place. Luckily for everyone, the beer is also quite good. We didn't go everywhere as our time was limited, but I feel like we made the most of our time.
6. Asheville Brewing Company (link) - 1 Star
The town's eponymous brewery has a pretty nice set up in its downtown location, with a large outdoor area that shows "drive-in" movies. That said, the beer is fairly forgettable, and the brewery didn't have descriptions of most of the beers available on site or on the web (there is a page of their regular brews, but not a couple of the specialties they had on tap). Their session IPA, Perfect Day, was probably the best of their offerings, if you find yourself in the area.
5. One World Brewing (link) - 1 Star
One World should probably be last on the list, but they're elevated above them on the list due entirely to being located deep in a basement that you can only access from an unmarked door in an alley. That's pretty metal. As for the beer, there were a few bright spots (the imperial IPA was a decent Citra bomb), but the utter failure of their Inner Thigh IPA overshadowed any goodwill I had towards them. Hopefully, it was just a bad batch (it had that weird homebrew-y soap aftertaste), but it's pretty disheartening that they would serve something that gross.
4. Wedge Brewing Company (link) - 1.5 Stars
This is an incomplete grade of sorts as we only had time to split one beer. Luckily, it was a pretty good one; their Iron Rail IPA, which has its very own serving window. The space outside the small taproom was very nice, and full of people with dogs. And piles of peanuts. All of my favorite things. I wouldn't mind skipping the previous breweries to spend a little more time at Wedge on my next visit.
3. Green Man Brewery (link) - 2.5 Stars
We got a parking spot right next to Green Man our first night in Asheville, so this is where we went to start. Their seasonal DIPA, Rainmaker, had just been released, so a good start it was. If I squint hard enough when drinking it, I can see echoes of Sip of Sunshine in the fruitiness, pineiness, and clean finish, but it comes up a little short of being a true taste explosion. Everything else we had there ranged from good to great, with the Apricot Berliner Weiss being a nice beer to drink on a summer evening. The physical space is quite similar to Wedge, with more room outside than inside.
2. Burial Beer Company (link) - 4 Stars
This isn't a perfect comparison, but my immediate reaction after having a sampler of Burial's beer was to liken them to Pipeworks. Odds are that's probably excessive praise, but I was consistently blown away by each beer I had, and the sense of clarity and purpose to each offering reminded me of only one other place. The Thresher Coffee Saison might be one of the best coffee beers I've ever had, incorporating the bitterness perfectly (we weren't as impressed with it when we returned, so maybe there's some batch to batch variation there? - it's a pretty new brewery, after all). Pipehawk Mountain Ale was a great example of what to do with a session ale, as using El Dorado hops can pretty much never go wrong. Surf Wax West Coast IPA not only put Weezer in my head for the rest of the weekend, but it also combined Nelson and Columbus hops quite nicely. Nelson can be a bit light on its own, but when it's combined with a "harsher" hop, it can make for a great beer.* Finally, their Gandasa DIPA takes a difficult task (making a DIPA with what I consider a delicate hop, Amarillo) and passes with flying colors.
*This one is probably where I came up with the Pipeworks comparison, as their Nelson vs. Sorachi IPA is a natural sibling.
1. Wicked Weed Brewing (link) - 4 Stars
Even though I gave Burial 4 stars, it's still well behind Wicked Weed, which does more things well than perhaps everybody else in the world. Sure, I would probably take Cascade's sours over Wicked Weed's, and I prefer a few of 3 Floyd's IPAs to the best thing I had from Wicked Weed. But the fact that I have to strongly consider those comparisons shows the ridiculous breadth that Wicked Weed has to offer.
The main brewery doubles as a restaurant and bar, with a large drinking area located a level down. The selection is impossibly large, and with their lack of samplers (the only ding against them) making a decision was tough.* They had not one, but two session IPAs, which were both nice examples of how you can make interesting versions of the style (I slightly preferred the Napoleon Complex). Pernicious IPA (named after the quote that gives the brewery its name) seemed interesting, but I would have liked to have it a little warmer. Finally, their Freak of Nature DIPA was probably the best hop bomb I had the whole weekend. It might be the dankest beer I've ever had. I recommend it.
*One nice thing about Asheville is that most places offer half-pint sizes of things, so you can make a pseudo-sampler if you so choose.
What's even cooler than the main brewery is their second location, which has my favorite name of all time, the Funkatorium. As you might guess, this is where Wicked Weed features all of their barrel-aged and sour beers. The menu itself is awesome, separating out the sour offerings from the funky offerings. I tried the Brettaberry from the funky side and enjoyed it just fine, but the clear winners of the night (and of the weekend) came from the sour side. While Cascade in Portland focused a little more on the fruity side of things, Wicked Weed leaned more on the wine barrels used to age their beers. Succession was a gorgeously light-colored beer that tasted almost exactly like drinking a really good Riesling. Blank Angel Cherry Sour was a testament to how well subtlety can work in a beer...while it was indubitably filled with cherries, its sense of restraint allowed it to be perfectly balanced, and thus perfect. The best beer of the trip though was the specially-released White Angel. It's nose was like getting hit in the face with a bottle of wine (in a good way!), while it's body was a perfect sour, tart but not overwhelmingly so. It finished gently and completely with a perfect light aftertaste. It was a good way to end the trip.
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