As you may know, the Democratic National Convention will be taking place next week. The convention itself is officially three days long (Tues. - Thurs.), but I suspect that there will be plenty of delegates, members of the press, technical staff and others who will be here days beforehand and afterward. Are Charlotte's breweries (and/or perhaps those from Hickory) doing anything special to get their beer out there so that people from all over the country and the world can taste them, return home and remember them fondly? I HOPE that those brewing operations with tasting rooms have been able to book their space to some lucky convention groups. But what about getting the beer into the many parties and events going on all over the Charlotte area? Are caterers and event planners getting the local beer into these events? It seems that if Charlotte wants to emphasize the local color in any way, the local breweries should be well represented. And what a prime marketing opportunity. Anyone have some info on this? (let's please not turn this into a political discussion) Also, I wonder if Cigar City is available to the attendees at the RNC in Tampa right now?
I know Mother Earth is doing special labels of their Endless River Kolsch for the DNC. http://nc.worldclassbeer.com/beerspy/product/mother-earth-endless-river-kolsch--dnc-label-/11019/ It's not a Charlotte brewery tho...
Aside from NoDa Brewing expanding their hours (as lpb1970 mentioned), I'm not sure if they're doing anything special or not. Here's a list of national publications that have mentioned Charlotte's beer scene: http://www.charlottebeer.com/2012/08/27/dnc-charlotte-beer/ Mellow Mushroom will have only NC beer on tap during the week of the convention. Half of Vintner Wine Market's eight taps will be devoted to NC beer.
OMB is expanding our hours from Tuesday through Friday to noon to 10 p.m. No special beers or whatnot, just hopefully selling a metric ton of Charlotte beer to all these out of towners!
Cigar City was open during the convention weekend and they did nothing out of the ordinary for it. I was lucky enough to fly in on saturday right before they cracked open a firkin of Big Sound.
I did read a list of opening events in the Observer yesterday, and loca beer was mentioned at a few of them. Hopefully the delegates try some at the airport, too.
My hope is that the bars doing this have strong weeks and realize, "Hey why don't we just do this all the time?"
not necessarily a tap takeover, but Queen City Q was doing a great job promoting the local NC crafts. Their entire draft board was chalked up by Erica @ Noda with colorful logos of all the local beers on tap. Unfortunately they are somewhat cutoff by the large DMZ fence surrounding the building, but we had a good time there yesterday before The Daily Show. They were having a private party later that day, so hopefully the local NC beers were a spotlight.
