So day 1 had so much beer I took it easy the second day.  I needed a bit of aspirin to get through the morning but was better by the afternoon.  This day started a bit late for me too.

The afternoon started with session by Budweiser talking about how they make their beer. The interesting part of this was that they had some real wort flown in overnight from their Williamsburg brewer. However, I really didn’t think a Budweiser presentation fit with the rest of the agenda.

The keynote speaker followed, Kim Jordan, CEO of New Belgium, which is opening a new brewery in Asheville. She gave a great speech with some really funny moments. In addition, she brought beer, including Eric’s Ale, a peach sour that hasn’t been made in a couple of years. Great beer– I am really starting to like sours more than I used to.

For the speed blogging session, brewers from several local breweries (part of the NC Brewer’s Alliance) brought beer to sample and told us about the different brews.  The idea was to do one beer from each brewery in 50 minutes and blog about them in real time.

Well, most of the breweries brought more than one beer and there were about 10 breweries so it turned more into 30 beers in that short period of time. I actually am a sipper and I like to savor the taste of my beer and in this instance I could not do that. Basically, all I was able to do was put a score and picture into Untapped for each beer. This really wasn’t my style of beer appreciation. I would loved to have been able to savor some of the beers, not rush through them. For many of the beers, I wasn’t able to take more than one or two sips.  Here are just a few that we tasted.

The evening ended with an event at the Millroom in downtown Asheville. I decided to sit this one out. I wanted to be able to enjoy my beer tour the next afternoon and I needed some healthy detox food. I found myself enjoying a delicious vegetarian meal at the Laughing Seed instead.

I also got to see a bit of Saturday night in Asheville, including a woman who was walking her goat on a leash

.