Wedge Brewing Opens

Well, the long wait is finally over. The Wedge Brewing Company has opened its doors with a very successful first day, as Asheville's beer population descended on the river arts district last night for a first look at the new brewery. Right now they only have one beer on tap, the Iron Rail IPA, which I would assume is named for the railroad tracks that run close to the building. The beer should be familiar to fans of brewer Carl Mellisas, who has always brewed a top notch IPA. As for the brewery itself, there is plenty of glass that allows you to look at the brewing operation, as well as having a small, U-shaped tasting room. If it gets too cramped inside, there is plenty of space to take your beer outside and enjoy the nice summerlike weather. For now, the brewery is going to be open from 4-9ish on Thursday and Friday nights. This should change as they get more beers online, and they are shooting for an official grand opening on the 18th of July. Here is a tentative release schedule for their beers:

Porter - June 14th
Pilsner - July 10th
Gollum (Belgian Stong Ale) - July 17th
Vit (Belgian Wheat) - July 17th
Pale Ale - July 17th
Maibock - August 14th

This looks like a great lineup of beers for the hot sumer months, and if you have a chance you should definitely go and check out Asheville's latest brewery. While you are there you can also check out some of the many fine artists in Asheville in the River Arts District.

(Photo taken from here, which incidently is right next door to the brewery and provides excellent directions to the Wedge Gallery.)

Its Coming!

It was almost a year ago when I made my first post about the upcoming brewery at the Wedge Gallery. Well, our wait is finally over. Almost. According to Tony Kiss, the Wedge has begun brewing beer and they hope to be open sometime by the end of the month. That could mean the end of this month, the end of June, or the end of September, but I'm hoping it is sooner rather than later. I myself have driven by more than once to take a look at the project, and until now the only thing I knew for sure was that they were working hard and they had signs on the bathrooms. The other thing I know for sure is that the beer is going to be great. Most of you are probably already aware that the brewer is Carl Melissas, former brewer at Jack and a lover of Belgian style ales. His first beer though is going to be an IPA, with a pilsner, bock, and the oh-so-good Gollum soon to follow. I hope to be able to talk to Carl soon to see if he has anything else up his sleeve.

I'm going to have a little bit of fun with statistics, and make the claim that Buncombe County has the most breweries per capita in the entire United States. Portland, Oregon has been making this claim, but they only have 30 breweries to serve the over 2 million people in the Portland Metro Area, for an average of 1 brewery per 66,000 people. Asheville/Buncombe has 1 brewery to every 37,500 people. Of course Black Mountain can claim one brewery to every 7650 people. Okay, so throw out the statistics, but I still like to think of us as the best small city for beer in America.

(picture taken from River Arts District webpage)