Sweetwater Brewing

Everyone this is the Sweetwater Brewing company, and they have done their part to make me proud to be an Atlanta resident.  Their beer kicks ass and they throw the best festival in Atlanta,  I found my new favorite band at this years Sweetwater festival, Greene Sky Bluegrass,

I consider myself a beer aficionado / snob, and have been that way for more years than I can think back.  I have convertee a pile of friends into lovers of a  well made beer, and they are thankful.   I prefer to be sober rather than drink a PBR, Bud, Coors, Miller, Heiniken or anh beers from a real long list of bad beers available to everyone.  All of the Sweetwater beers are a safe when looking in the beer isles, and they make are made right here in Atlanta Georgia.  

So, as the reality sinks into the of my moving to Austin, I fear the beer.  My understanding thus far is, that Shiner Bock is the Austin flagship and I just don't like that beer.  (Soapbox),  Shiner Bock misses its qualification of a bock in every way.  Bocks are malty, Shiner is pee pee, and so are the other flagships I remember from living in Texas.  When I lived there it was Coors, Mickeys, Michelob and Bush.  Hopefully, I'll be able to find Sweetwater there, and if I can't I'm calling Burt Reynolds to truck some in.

This is Zak Ray, and he is my tour guide today.  Zak is holding two brewing awards that Sweetwater just won in the Great American Brew Festival in Colorado.  It's a very prestigious award and real hard to get, and there is a wall full of them behind the bar.

A hand full of glorious hop plugs, this is the stuff that makes good beer great.

This is the mash.  The mash is a bunch of malted barley and water held at a specific temperature, allowing the natural enzymes to convert the starches into sugar.  After this, the liquid is removed, hops are added, and then it is boiled.  After the boil, it's cooled and the yeast is added.

A majority of these bottles end up in my refrigerator.

shlameel shlamazal, now start loading these into my car.

My friend Jim Badonsky and I enjoying a Sweetwater 420 in 1998