Prior to going to a concert in Augusta, GA some friends and I decided to give the World of Beer a try. I mean what could be more perfect for a blog about international foods right? I mean world, it’s right there in the title.

So after deciding to start with the $10 Local flight to hold us over while we were perusing the menus (food & draft beer) and waiting for our friends to arrive I never got into any of the other beers of the world. What happened was that I found one I really liked among the “local” brews and got one more of those with my meal. So let’s talk about the flight of beer I was working with.

When you order the Local flight you’re leaving it to the bartender to pick the brews and when the server delivered our flights I got the one with the dark beers and I could see what looked to be at least one fruity beer and one what I was betting was a sour on my friend Renee’s flight which I didn’t think she was going to love. I was right.

I’m not going to spend a lot of space talking about all the beers but I did want to talk about two. The first was the Reformation Cadence, the first on the left in the photo. It was a really smooth Belgian Dubbel that had a nice complex flavor. Renee liked it too so I traded it for two of hers she didn’t care for. The other was the far right very dark one. The Beerista from Terrapin Beer Company was great. A high alcohol content, barrel aged coffee stout. The minute you get it near your face you smell the coffee followed by a whiff of bourbon. As I drank the taste of the coffee was followed again by the bourbon both packed in a creamy stout that just made this a favorite. I got a full snifter of this 11.2% beer. Good stuff. Now for the food.

I was advised by my niece (thanks Paige) to try the pretzel and beer cheese so we ordered two of them plus some pesto hummus to nibble on while we waited for our friends (one who we forgot has gluten issues, sorry Swain).

Aside from being huge they were warm and soft and damn good by themselves. They came with a course ground mustard that was strong enough it opened up my sinuses. We also popped for the beer cheese because I’m a good uncle and heed recommendations. OMG that was the best damn beer cheese I’ve ever had. At one point I realized I was double dipping (you pick up savage habits living alone). When I apologized for this social faux pas I was told “We’re a little past that now.” I could only infer I came in second in the “who’ll be double dipping first” race. It was on after that. I may have even triple dipped. We only ate one of the massive pretzels since there was food coming as well.

Because of the appetizers I reined in my gourmand tendencies and just got the chicken sliders. They had promise, the bun was soft, the aioli was good, the pickle was pickley but the chicken was overcooked. I got three and they seemed to be progressively move overcooked from the first to the third. They had a good flavor but unfortunately they were almost like jerky when I got to the last one.

So the World of Beer was a mixed experience but on balance I give them a thumbs up. The beer was good, even the gluten free beer my buddy Mike got was actually drinkable and we found beer our scotch drinker Kim didn’t hate. The pretzel was great but the beer cheese was amazing and the star of the visit in my opinion. On another night the sliders would probably be solid. Throw in good friends and it is definitely worth revisiting.