Tag Archives: Sycamore Brewing

Beach Beer

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I decided to add a new activity to our family beach vacation this year. On the way to get some cider for the trip I thought it might be fun to have a beer tasting and introduce people to beer they might not otherwise try and have some fun with their reactions. My thought was to keep it local by only including NC & SC beers and have 4 pretty different styles.

We used small cups as our tasters so it only took two bottles / cans for everyone to have a decent taste with little waste in case someone didn’t care for one of the selections.

The first one we tried was RJ Rockers Peachy King. Let me say now I’m using internet images because some brain surgeon forgot to take snaps of the containers.

RJ Rockers is out of Spartanburg, SC and the Peachy King is a wheat ale brewed with, you guessed it, peaches. It’s also 9% alcohol which got peoples attention even with the little shot cups. I didn’t do a word cloud but some comments were; creamy, bitter, peachy, pecan?, yuck and a straight up shiver of dislike. We had one person enthusiastic about it and several others like it while a third did not and a couple were in the OK camp. Personally I liked it.

Our next contestant was the Lenny Boy Ground Up Coffee Stout.

Lenny Boy is a Charlotte brewer and the name of the beer pretty well lays out what it’s all about. It is a 5.3% beer. The consensus was the coffee taste was there but it was mild. It was not as bitter as the Peachy King but we had several people who weren’t coffee fans so that didn’t help them much. No one was enthusiastic about this one, although a third liked it. It did get a nod for best aftertaste from one of the panel. As much as I like stouts I have to say I didn’t love this one.

Our third beer was from Sycamore Brewing, their Strawberry Lemonade Gose.

Sycamore is from Charlotte and I’ve been there a couple of time on a Friday when they had food trucks so I was already feeling positive towards the beer. If you aren’t familiar a gose is a sour beer that usually has a salty taste as well. This one is tarted up even more by being brewed with lemons and they say there are strawberries involved as well but it was a real struggle to find any. Initial impressions were; sour, lemon, lemonade flavor, acidic, and no. It is a summer beer that should be ice cold when you’re drinking it. About a third liked it, most were jumped on the OK bandwagon and one just didn’t like it at all.

Our final entry was the White Zombie white ale from Catawba Brewing.

Catawba is headquartered in Morganton, NC and I’ve visited the Charlotte location which has a very nice taproom. The White Zombie is a Belgian style wheat beer of 5.1% alcohol and a hint of citrus courtesy of the orange peel added to the brew. Interestingly this had the most initial likes but didn’t finish as the top beer in our final review. Early comments included; pissy (yes that’s what I typed), light, least bitter, watered down, a hint of orange. My feelings were it was meh.

When all was said and done Peachy King was the overall number 1, White Zombie took second, Strawberry Lemonade avoided last place by being third and the poor old Ground Up Coffee Stout was easily in 4th place.

Thanks to all the guinea pigs, I mean tasters; Lynn, Mr B, Dee, Alex, Haley, Chris, Paige, Garrett, and Lauren who joined us in spirit and can for real next year.

We all enjoyed the activity and plan to do it again on next years trip with the twist that everyone who wants to participate will bring a beer to ante up. Very much looking forward to it. Only 51 weeks to go.

FTF – South End

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Food Truck Friday

I took a break from the blog for Easter but I did hit Food Truck Friday in South End on Good Friday.  This is a regular event hosted by Sycamore Brewing a local brewery with a nice taproom, beer garden and a big parking lot they corral the trucks in.  Sycamore is on Hawkins Street in Charlotte and this is a very popular event.

The normally quite sufficient parking lot is blocked off for the food trucks and patrons so here’s a caution for anyone planning to go, parking is a bear.  The event is from 5:00pm-10:00pm and I had arranged to meet a friend at 5:30ish and I arrived at 5:20 and it was quickly evident there was going to be a walk in my future.  I drove around for a while before parking at a business off Rampart St. hoping they wouldn’t be the towing kind.  Some of the businesses had signs up explicitly stating they would boot or tow.  Fortunately the weather was good so the short walk wasn’t bad.

I met my friend Jody and we did a circuit of the 8 trucks we had to choose from and I decided to try Queen City Sliders but they were having technical difficulties and didn’t take an order for some time that exceeded my patience so I jumped into the line for Tin Kitchen.  These folks have several trucks and a pretty regular schedule so they are easy to find if you need a fix. 

The menu has interesting tacos, quesadillas, nachos & sliders as you can see from the menu below.  I thought hard about the Special but I’d had my mind set for sliders so I decided to go that route.

I got two Korean BBQ sliders and one of the Balsamic Portabella Stack.  It took about 10-15 minutes after ordering for the food to come up but it was worth the wait.

The Korean BBQ sliders were made with beef topped with what they called 30 minute kim-chi and some hoisin sauce on a brioche bun.  The meat was tender and moist with a good flavor, slightly sweet with a hint of spice and more filling than they would appear at first glance.  I got the portabella stack just for variety with fairly low expectations of a meatless slider but was really pleasantly surprised.  The portabellas were balsamic marinated and there were grilled red peppers and fresh mozzarella cheese plus basil and tomato aioli on a brioche bun.  That was so tasty I forgave it for the lack of meat.  The tang of the marinated mushrooms and the mildness of the cheese plus the textures all worked well together and honestly if I was to do it again I might get one BBQ and two portabella sliders.

Jody decided to try out Papi Queso, which has been featured on a previous blog but I will share a shot of the Pig Mac she got.  This is a pulled pork and mac and cheese grilled cheese that was apparently really filling and delicious based on her feedback.  If it was anything like the quality of the sandwich I tried before then they are two for two.

We ate our meals sitting on a low wall between the beer garden and the parking lot.  So here is another caution for those interested in checking out FTF, this is a dog friendly event and that is taken to heart.  The website says dog and child friendly but we saw twice as many dogs as we did children.  Now all of these animals were on leashes and their owners kept them under control pretty well so there were no incidents but I caught a malamute eyeing my sliders pretty hard.

After finishing our food we adjourned to the taproom to try an adult beverage.  The bar was several people deep so it took a few minutes to get to it and get some service.  I opted for their honey toasted amber and Jody got a Windy Hill Orchard peach cider.  They also have some wines for those who go that way.   The beer was decent but not really noteworthy.

We found a small table near a window so we have a view of the live music outside but couldn’t hear much because it was loud in there but we were able to toast a successful venture to expand our palates.

I’ll be hitting Food Truck Friday again this year for sure but I’ll consider a couple of lessons from this trip.  First if the weather isn’t too hot I’ll probably take the light rail to the East/West station with is just a couple of blocks from Sycamore Brewing.  If it is hot then I think trying to get there before 5:00 and trying to find a parking place then or wait until after 6:00 when the other businesses are almost guaranteed to be closed.

 








Cheese, Coconut & Weird Yoga

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Papi Queso

Well this weekend was another food truck lunch.  I happened to see a tweet that the Papi Queso Truck would be at an event at Sycamore Brewing.  It was a brunch for the Salty Coconut Can Release.   How could I pass up a gourmet grill cheese truck at a brewery.

The brunch was from 9-12 and I got there around 11 so it wouldn’t be too early but hopefully they wouldn’t have run out of too many things.  I guess I should mention you won’t just notice Sycamore Brewing as you’re tooling around town as it’s kind of on a side street but that means they have lots of parking on the street and in their spacious lot.  They were already serving up draft beer in the taproom and selling cans of the aforementioned Salty Coconut beer (more on that later).

In addition to the regular menu Papi Queso had a couple of special items for the event, a Salty Coconut French toast and a croque monsieur sandwich.  I went for the croque monsieur because if you’re going to get a fancy grilled cheese you might as well have one with a snooty French name too.

It was taking them about 10 minutes per order so I went in and grabbed a pint of the Salty Coconut Red Ale and a 4 pack of the cans to help bide my time (just the pint not the 4 pack too).  This was a very interesting beer.  You immediately got the coconut taste and then the smooth red ale washed it away until the next sip.  I wouldn’t want to make a steady diet of it but this was a great change of pace beer.

 

The croque monsieur was a really tasty grilled cheese as you might expect from something made from French rosemary ham, gruyere cheese on French Pullman bread with sea salt and scallions sprinkled on the top plus a side of truffle mornay sauce for a little dipping.  I’m thinking any of the menu items would certainly be worth trying and like any good grilled cheese provider they offer tomato soup as well so you can get all your comfort food needs met at once.

I was going to just go sit in my car and eat the sandwich but the Sycamore Brewery has a beer garden plus additional seating at picnic tables and on one of these tables was a lady on all fours and a guy was taking her picture with two other folks standing there watching.  Well I figured I might as well have a show while I ate and sauntered over to one of the other tables to observe this spectacle.  By the time I got to table the young lady was contorted into some odd pose with her hands on the table and her legs up around her elbows which made an impressive centerpiece for the picnic table.  Based on my observations the story I decided on was that it was a photo shoot for some yoga studio or classes or something.  One of the other folks was the posers husband and joined her in some of the shots doing some tai chi looking stuff.  It was an interesting accompaniment to brunch.

Final judgements; Papi Queso Truck – Yay Cheese!, Sycamore Brewing – Yay Beer! also they have food trucks regularly on site, Yoga show – Yay yoga pants!