Beer today, gone tomorrow: Asheville beer happenings: May 22-28

Posted on by Edwin Arnaudin
Image courtesy of AVL Beer Week

Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow is the one-stop home for Asheville-area beer news. Check back throughout the week for updates and send your own to wncbeertoday@gmail.com.

Bottle and can releases

  • **NEW** Starting Thursday, May 24, Sweeten Creek Brewery is selling its first canned product. Six-packs of Pilsner — canned May 24 — are available in the tasting room.
  • Burial Beer Co. releases a limited amount of Skillet Donut Stout (8 percent ABV) on Friday, May 25, in four-packs of 16-ounce cans.
  • On Saturday, May 26, Catawba Brewing Co. releases Rebellion Roads (8.2 percent ABV), the second installment in its Cloud Cover Hazy IPA series, exclusively at its four tasting rooms. Brewed with flaked wheat and oats and three New Zealand hops varieties – Nelson Sauvin, Pacifica and Motueka – the beer will be available in four-packs of 16-ounce cans and on draft.

Small-batch beers

  • Wedge Brewing Co. is currently pouring Chilli Vanilli (5.5 percent ABV), an American wheat brewed with vanilla, oranges and lactose, at its Foundation location.
  • In addition to Skillet, Burial has two other releases this week. Harnessing Ruin Brett IPA (7 percent ABV), an AVL Beer Week IPA collaboration with One World Brewing available Friday, May 25, is made from brewing water that was aged on pineapple and lemongrass, then hopped with Enigma, Azacca and Idaho 7 and fermented entirely with Burial’s house Brettanomyces strain. The Tearing of Flesh from Bone DIPA (8.2 percent ABV), double dry-hopped with Mosaic and El Dorado and a small dose of terpenes, will be available Saturday, May 26.
  • Catawba taps a Brett IPA (5.7 percent ABV) on Thursday, May 24, at all four of its locations. The beer is hopped with Citra, Simcoe and Amarillo and fermented entirely with Brettanomyces. Then on Monday, May 28, the brewery releases its AVL Beer Week IPA (7.0 percent ABV), a West Coast-style IPA brewed in Asheville in collaboration with two Argentinian breweries, Beata Cerveza Artesanal and Cerveza Güira. The beer is a reinterpretation of Güira’s award-winning Bomber IPA.

Special events

  • AVL Beer Week begins Thursday, May 24. A complete list of special beer releases and events is available here, and a schedule of collaborations and weeklong specials can be viewed here.
  • Asheville Brewers Supply hosts its monthly Brewers Social on Tuesday, May 22, 6-9 p.m. Attendees are invited to bring and label recent homebrews. Pizza from Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co. will be provided.
  • Burial‘s latest installment in its Off-Topic series takes place Wednesday, May 23, at 5:30 p.m., and features Civil Society Brewing from Jupiter, Fla. Tickets are $10 at the door and include a branded glass to keep and shared beers from Civil Society.
  • Bruisin’ Ales hosts two free tastings this week. Thursday, May 24, 5-7 p.m., features selections from Foothills Brewing, including samples of its newest flagship offerings (Tangled Vine Berry Rose Ale and Thousand Smiled Golden Ale) and growlers and draft of Dead and Berried Imperial Stout available for purchase. Then Stone Brewing is the focus of the Friday, May 25, 5-7 p.m. tasting, with samples of Fear.Movie.Lions DIPA, I’m Peach DIPA and Totalitarian Imperial Russian Stout, plus growlers and draught of 2014 Odd Year Oak Smoked Old Guardian Barleywine available for purchase.
  • **NEW** On Thursday, May 24, 5-9 p.m., Appalachian Vintner hosts a special event featuring selections from Allagash Brewing Co. Three vintage beers will be released — 2015 Confluence (draft), 2016 Helena (bottles) and 2017 Hibernal Fluxus (draft) — plus Shiro’s Delight (draft), samples of White and Curieux, and bottle service on some of the shop’s cellar bottles for on-premise consumption.
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About Edwin Arnaudin
Edwin Arnaudin is a staff writer for Mountain Xpress. He also reviews films for ashevillemovies.com and is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA) and North Carolina Film Critics Association (NCFCA). Follow me @EdwinArnaudin
View all posts by Edwin Arnaudin →

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2 thoughts on “Beer today, gone tomorrow: Asheville beer happenings: May 22-28”

    • Gina Smith

      Hi, John. Yes, Just Brew It is definitely one of WNC’s most popular beer festivals! It’s not noted in this column only because it’s an official AVL Beer Week event, all of which have been listed in our AVL Beer Week guide (Edwin linked to the online version of the AVL Beer Week events listings above under “Special Events.”) There’s also a great story about Just Brew by Tony Kiss that’s included in the guide as well. The guides are on the stands now inside this week’s issue, and Tony’s story will post on our website later this week.

      It gets a bit tricky putting together “Beer Today, Gone Tomorrow” during AVL Beer Week since the many dozens of local brewery events that are scheduled during that time have, for the most part, already been covered in our guide. Thank you for mentioning Just Brew It, though — there are certainly a lot of local beer enthusiasts who are looking forward to it.

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