Southern App Brewing & Asheville Brewing

Recently my wife and I made the all to familiar trip to NC mountains, mainly the Asheville area. We make this trip quite a bit to see family, and anytime we’re up that way we like to sneak in some local brews.

First up was Asheville Brewing which is the home of such popular brews like Shiva I.P.A. and Ninja Porter. This place is a pizza joint/brewery all rolled into one nice little package and even recently taking home a “Best of WNC” for their pizza, which I can confirm is quite good. Once we arrived a tour was starting and was already moving into the back so I quickly inquired if I could join in and they told me I could head on back.

I hate I cannot remember the name of the fellow giving the tour (Brian?), but he was very knowledgable and friendly. He encouraged us to ask as many questions as we liked and to take as many pictures as we wanted while we walked through the brewery. I had never seen a canning machine until we reached the canning room, which I thought was a pretty cool little device.

After that we were free to show ourselves out or stick around for a few more questions. I actually was allowed to walk around and snap a few more photos and even watch the guys at work. I highly recommend this brewery as a place to stop by and check out while in Asheville even if you aren’t a beer person – the food alone makes it worthwhile.

With all the breweries that have been moving/opening in the Asheville area, some rogue brewers have decided to take their business a stones throw away to the small town of Hendersonville which is only a short trip down I-26. This is where you will find a little Brewery by the name of Southern Appalachian Brewery.

The outside of the building can fool you a bit, but upon walking in you are greeted to a nice warm atmosphere and a bar that shares the same open space as it’s brewery, which I feel is becoming a more popular trend that I personally enjoy.

As for the beers themselves, Southern App offers a nice variety of year rounds while they also offer some seasonal fare as well. My favorite seasonal was the Imperial Stout, but i’m also a sucker for most IPAs and so I just had to have one of those as well. Toss in a guest tap, some snacks, and some live music and you have a pretty cool place to stop off and grab a brew or spend a Saturday night there in a small mountain town and listen to some good local music.

It’s always great to get to head up to the NC mountains, but even better when you can stop by breweries such as these. The fun thing about western NC and NC as whole….We aren’t running out of awesome new breweries anytime soon!