The Locals HINTS AND HAULS THREAD

Love the Big Hurt,man could take a pitch! I still have a ton of his cards in storage!

 

As i was typing my answer the "more posts in this thread"alert came up and it was Nick. Haha!

 

Yeah, great ball player! Reason I fell in love with the Sox. Too bad he makes a piece of shit beer LOL. Ever have Big Hurt Beer, Public Service Announcement to the group, don't!

 

And man did I appreciate it. That just shows the kind of ba you are.

 

You kinda gave it away with your age/location, who else would it be? I was about to guess that too until I saw there were other guesses too

edit: it's kinda fun to have a "lightning round" LIF sometimes too

 

I'm an hour north of Charlotte in Hickory, kind of at the crossroads of Asheville, Charlotte, and Winston-Salem (which is a pretty friggin' solid place to be beer-wise). I don't get down to Charlotte as much as I should, but can give some pointers.

Beer stores:
Brawley's and Salud are going to be the best options I'm pretty sure. I think there's probably been one or two that have popped up in the last year that I don't know about, but I'd say these two would be a really solid starting point.

Breweries:
NoDa has to be your first consideration. Definitely the best brewery in Charlotte. Alternatively if you're way into german beers, Old Meck has a huge lineup of German beers executed quite well... But if German's aren't your thing (and they aren't particularly mine) then it may not be for you.

Food:
This is a bit more tricky as usually when I'm going down to Charlotte its 'date night' or something and we're drinking wine. I'd say the best place(s) for beer/food are Duckworths. There's four of them around town. Pretty ridiculous tap list (all of them but the one up in the suburbs have 50+ taps) and a small, but solid, bottle list. Their website is kept up-to-date for their tap lists. A small smattering of what's on tap at the Park Road one right now: Allagash Interlude, Great Lakes Blackout Stout, Green Man Dweller, NoDa HDR, OHB Event Horizon, and Terrapin WnB. They're fairly large places so can feel a bit impersonal, but man they have an awesome list.

Another interesting option would be to go to Heist, which is a brewery, for dinner. I haven't been myself, but I've heard from multiple people now that I trust that it has absolutely awesome food. The problem is that the food was better than their beer for quite a while, though they've replaced their head brewer and the beer is getting much better.

What I'd do in your case:
I'd go to North Davidson and hit-up NoDa, Birdsong (another brewery in the same parking lot as NoDa), Heist, and Salud. All of which are within two miles of each other.

The other option is Brawley's and Duckworths Park Road, which are less than a quarter mile apart. This is closer to the airport than North Davidson is. Brawley's is probably the better bottle shop compared to Salud, and Duckworths has better beer than Heist (though not better food), but you miss NoDa (though chances are NoDa will be on tap at Duckworths and in cans at Brawley's...)

 

I wish we could "sticky" posts within the thread, so that every time someone sums up an entire town in one post like this, we'd have an easy way of getting back to it

 

Yep, so this is pretty much about 1/4 the size of my wall of text but covers almost the exact same advice. I've never been accused of being concise in the written word

Only addition to @billhelm 's advice is that HDR is getting easier to get around Charlotte (still somewhat tough outside of Charlotte as stores have to pickup themselves and they have a minimum order that isn't small (though it always sells) and some months they just get told they don't have anything for the out-of-towners).

 

That's awesome to hear Bill as I know the other 4 hearing good things about the others is intriguing.

 

In the Southeast forum people are continually asking about Asheville. I wrote up that kind of post probably 10 times when I started being more active before I finally just started linking to old posts.

I actually rather like what they've done in the NW forums where they have a thread for Portland and another for Seattle with that information in it.

 

That's an absolute bomb of dark beer! Itaska Loonidragon may actually be the 'worst' dark beer in the box and it was one of my favorite new beers of last year.

 

34 would have been my first guess to, that was my # all the way through college. Reason I wore 34 was partially for Nolan Ryan and mainly for Walter Payton.

 

Thanks! I'm staying, having dinner, and having our meeting at the Hilton on Westpark drive, sounds like I will try to shoot over to Duckworth's after dinner for some beer and hopefully Brawley's before our flight leaves to fill my carry on bag.

 

I usually just drink it atraight out of the bottle.

 

I'm actually working on a spreadsheet for the group with @Mikexw and I'll incorporate this type of stuff.

 

Never made it to college but the funny thing was that the 34 jersey I had was two sizes too big,when I tucked it in it looked like I was wearing a diaper! I just had to have that # though lol

 

There is definitely new avatar potential there...

 

You better listen to him and change it. He is the enforcer after all

 

My ass would be a great avatar! It bares repeating though: don't want nothin to with your avatar

 

Im going, but I have a ride home afterwards, so probably would not be able to stay around after for a bottle share.