Been a while since I posted about a new brewery in Asheville. Hillman Brewing is a recent new brewery down near Biltmore Village right near Catawba, French Broad and the soon to open Burial Brewing second location. Stopping by last night gave me the opportunity to sample and drink 4-5 of their offerings. The non IPA's (i'm not an IPA fan) were very good, solid beers with a couple of easy drinking options for the non beer advocate amongst us. Something that I complained about in my review of Twin Leaf. The food is top shelf as well. I would give them a 4 out 5 ranking, experience wise, and I will definitely be re visiting them.
I stopped by within a week of their opening, almost certainly before they had gotten to the 2nd batch of any of their beers, and I remember thinking they needed to keep an eye on the fermentation of their IPA and DIPA. Both had a pretty clear diacetyl issue. Perhaps they've fixed that by now. Oddly, the non-hoppy styles which tend to show this kind of flaw more clearly had none of it (brown, ESB, robust porter)--they were the stars of my visit. Not a big fan of the golden pale. But otherwise, the people were fantastic, the food looked great (I didn't partake), and the location has been remodeled quite nicely and has a lot of promise. I was told it used to be a seedy strip club (as opposed one of the really nice ones...).
We have been several times. Beer is good, but I haven't found one that says "you gotta come back for more of this". They did do a great job of taking what had been dive bar/watering hole and turning it into a nice venue.
