Thursday, March 19, 2009
{The Blue Banner}
Page 3
Lagers and tankards and brews! Oh, my!
Seven independent Asheville breweries band together^ forming an alliance
By Rhys Baker
Staff Writer
RDBAKER@UNCA.EDU
Six local breweries formed the Asheville Brewing Al
liance to promote Asheville beer and provide informa
tion on beer and beer-related events.
“The ABA is all of the microbreweries in the city of
Asheville. There will be eight by the end of the sum
mer,” said Mike Rangel, media spokesman for the ABA
and president of Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company.
“We’re looking to create more of a name brand mar
ket. Asheville is a destination with a lot of beer
tourism.”
The current members of the ABA are High
land, Green Man, Wedge, French Broad
and Craggie. The Lobster Trap Brewery
and the Lexington Avenue Brewery will
open soon and join the alliance.
There has always been an unoficial
alliance between the Asheville brewer
ies, according to Rangel.
“We’re like a little country mafia.
The idea is that if French Broad Brew
ery sells somewhere, it’s a success for
all of us,” Rangel said. “We’ve doubled
the numbers in the last two years fi-om
four to eight. Four breweries in a town
is huge.”
According to Rangel, Asheville has
the most microbreweries, per capita, of
any city in the United States.
“The Asheville breweries have never
tom each other down,” he said, remem
bering stories about times when the
Highland Brewery let the APBC borrow
grain when their shipments were late.
According to Rangel, microbreweries
are better than the “Big Guys.”
“I definitely feel that there has to be a
Budweiser in this world. Luckily for us they
make a fairly bland, safe, easily drinkable
product, and that’s great for a certain percentage
of people. But for people that really enjoy beer,
the micros can create hundreds of styles and there’s
a dedication to microbrews as a master craftsman
like a great chef The microbreweries bring that sort
of craftsmanship to the table,” he said.
Rangel said the alliance allows for more educational
and recreational opportunities for Asheville beer lov
ers.
The ABAplans a yearly competition in which home
brewers can compete with the local microbreweries.
“We will elect a liaison from the ABA to work with
the home brewers to give out yeast for educational
purposes, to pick their brains, that sort of thing. We
also want to create an event with the home brewers that
once a year the home brewers and the microbreweries all
create the same kind of beer and kind of compete, just
for fun, just a general love of beer type of thing,” Rangel
said.
UNC Asheville students, home brewers and room
mates Kyle Romeo and Jonah Freedman are excited
about the chance to pit their beer against local profes
sionals.
“The microbrewers would have something to worry
about. The home brewer has a serious advantage because
his beer is his craft. He doesn’t do it for money. We brew
it to drink it, and there is nothing better than a beer that
was brewed just for you,” Freedman said.
The roommates plan to become involved with the
ABA.
“We’re all brewing beer for our own enjoyment and
appreciation of good taste. So why not enter a compe
tition?” Romeo said. “It would just be for fiin, and it
would be a great way to get home brewers together to
talk about beer, and maybe lead to the formation of
new microbreweries.”
Romeo and Freedman hope that the beer of
choice was an oatmeal porter they brewed last
month because, out of the ten beers that they’ve
brewed in the last year, they both agree the
oatmeal porter is their best.
“The oatmeal porter was the most deli
cious porter I have ever had. I am usually
not a fan of dark beers, but this porter had
just the right balance of sweetness to the
hoppy flavor. That burst of sweetness after
the first swig was ecstasy. That defines a
porter. It’s funny because the brew was left
in the carboy for way too long, but perhaps
it is the imperfections in a beer that make
the taste appealing,” Freedman said.
The short-term goal of the ABA is to
create an interactive and user-friendly
Web site and to create a process that will
break down the barriers between home
brewers, microbreweries and beer lovers,
according to Rangel.
“They’re two sides of it from a micro-
brewery perspective, to keep the commu
nication, the friendship and camaraderie
between the breweries alive,” Rangel said.
According to Rangel, the ABA is a place
where once a month the microbreweries can
get together and share information.
“We’re a baby organization,” Rangel said.
“The feedback we have received from media,
other businesses and other beer alliances has
been very positive. 'A lot of it is ‘it’s about time,’
he said.
Rangel said he hopes to see Asheville become
a beer mecca.
“We have Bruisin’ Ales, the beer store down-
tovm that was voted one of the top five beer
places in the world. We have Tony Kiss, the
beer guy; Asheville actually has a beer colum
nist. It’s very much ahead of the curve as far as
beer towns go.”