Beer Tourism - Memphis, Tennessee

I had the pleasure to take a brief work trip to Memphis last week. Luckily, my old buddy Nate was available for some Memphis fun. Because of Tennessee's shitty beer distribution/laws, I kept it pretty local/macro...nothing exotic, but very good times...

We started out the afternoon on Nate's front porch with with a very easy drinker: Ghost River Golden Ale. Ghost River revived an old brewery in Memphis and began brewing their own beers just a few years ago. Generally speaking they distribute kegs to local restaurants, but Golden Ale is their first bottled beer. This is a very familiar formula...nice, easy drinking lager. Nothing out of this world, but as far as supporting the local guy, this is by far your best bet.

After we finished up the golden we moved on to Southland Park ..seriously. Dog racing at 4 in the afternoon on a Wednesday in West Memphis, AK...you cannot ask for much more! Nate and I split a bucket of Coors Light/Miller Lite (no pic required here, but keep in mind that the Coors bottles had that blue line on them to tel me that they were "very cold"). As a side note, people get up-tight about dog racing...don't. Those dogs eat better meat than I do. Just make your bets and hope that Santa's Little Helper gets to go home with Homer and Bart at the end of the night..anyway, 26 bucks later (yeh...the one-dollar Quiniela..it was hours of fun) we rolled back to Nate's for a brief meet-and-greet with his little one and then on to Young Avenue Deli.

Young Avenue Deli is known for a couple things...incredible shows, a big beer list, and home made french fries. There wasn't a show that night (Nate was lucky enough to have seen some awesome bands in a very intimate setting there in the past), but the fries were ridiculously good. The beer list was definitely big (especially for TN), but since I was trying to play it local and light (still had to drive across town), I stuck with the Memphis boys again, and ordered a few draught Ghost River Glacial Pale Ales (no pic for these). Again, the Memphis locals follow a known pattern to make a very sessionable, yet slightly hoppy brew (more flavorful than the Golden Ale mentioned above). Again, nothing mind-blowing here, but another easy drinker...this time with a bit more of a hop kick. If I lived in Memphis (and had a kegerator) I would likely keep this around the house.

That about covers the Memphis trip..wish I had an extra day to go bottle shopping/perusing, but I was in a bit of a rush (thanks, work). Oh well..

One other note: I cannot believe that I didn't die on the flight home...terrible thunderstorms for more than half the flight...ugh. I fly (pretty much) weekly, and have done so for the past 5-6 years...this flight home was number two on my top ten worst flight list...