2015 Brewery Tour Rolls On

While I'm nowhere near on the level with beer gods like Brew Travelers, I do visit a lot of breweries during the year. Punxatawney Phil has just made his appearance and I've already been to 9 this year in 3 different states, with more on the upcoming schedule. My recent trip to Memphis this past weekend added 3 more to my list, and I've got Fort Worth in the sights for a few more.

Here's where I've been so far in 2015:

• Diamond Bear (North Little Rock, AR)
• Vinos Brewpub (Little Rock, AR)
• Stone's Throw Brewing (Little Rock, AR)
• Lost Forty Brewing (Little Rock, AR)
• Blue Canoe Brewing (Little Rock, AR)
• Marshall Brewing Companay (Tulsa, OK)
• Wiseacre Brewing Company (Memphis, TN)
• Memphis Made Brewing (Memphis, TN)
• High Cotton Brewing (Memphis, TN)

I love all my local breweries and pretty much a week doesn't go by that I'm not in at least one of them, but it's really become something fun to do when traveling as well. Lucky for me, my wife is also a craft beer lover so we really enjoy the road trips. At some point I need to go back and count how many I visited last year, but I'm going to do a better job of documenting this year's breweries. Hopefully I'll be adding Martin House (Fort Worth, TX), Rahr & Sons (Fort Worth, TX) and Pecan Point Brewing (Texarkana, TX) next weekend.

Here's a few pics from the past weekend :

My favorite Memphis brewery currently.

First visit to Wiseacre Brewing and found it to be a fantastic place.

Barrel room at High Cotton Brewing.

High Cotton Taproom

High Cotton Brewing

Memphis Made Brewing Company

Memphis Untappd

I was planning on doing an update to my Arkansas Uptappd posts this morning, but then decided I wanted to wait until Lost Forty Brewing officially launches this coming week so I can include their numbers and see how their first week goes on my favorite beer logging site. But since I was already in the mood I figured what the heck, I'll do something a little different and visit Memphis' excellent beer scene numbers on Untappd.

Only a 2 hour drive (when I-40 is actually moving) from Little Rock, I make a lot of trips to Memphis for one reason or another, but usually just to hang out and enjoy their great restaurant and music scene. Lately though their beer scene has made the trips even more enjoyable, not just from the great selection of beer available there which we don't have (Dogfish Head, Stone and Yazoo to name just a few) but from their recently booming local breweries.

Ghost River has been around for a while over there, but in the last few years 3 new craft breweries have popped up. No visit is complete unless I hit one of their local pubs like The Flying Saucer, The Growler or Bar Dog to get some drafts or hit Cash Saver to reload my Memphis shelf of the beer fridge.

Let's see how the Untappd world looks for their breweries as of today:

Wiseacre Brewing Company - 13,664 (1,302 monthly)
Ghost River Brewing - 9,312 (504 monthly)
Memphis Made Brewing Company - 4,957 (460 monthly)
High Cotton Brewing Company - 4,372 (242 monthly)

The first thing I noticed was Wiseacre already has more check-ins than Arkansas' leader Diamond Bear (11,839). Ghost River is just about to bust the 10,000 mark too. Overall having over 2,000 check-ins on local beers average on the month is a pretty good indicator of how their scene has taken off.

Glancing back through my Untappd check-ins from these breweries, here are a few of the beers I've ranked the highest from the city where Marc Cohn walked (with his feet 10 feet off of Beale):

* Memphis Made Soulful Ginger
* Wiseacre Ananda IPA
* Wiseacre Unicornicopia
* Memphis Made Plaid Attack
* High Cotton Belgian IPA
* Wiseacre Tiny Bomb

So step away from the BBQ on your next visit and seek out some local brews.  The King would be proud.

Also see: A visit to Memphis Made Brewing

Visit To Memphis Made Brewing

If you're from Little Rock and enjoy getting over to Memphis for weekends regularly as do I, I'm sure you've also had some frustrating trips on I-40. It's the interstate/parking lot that seems to have been under construction since prohibition. John Lee (Rebel Kettle Brewing) and I took a a quick trip over on Sunday, but the drive over was anything but quick. 4 hours and 25 minutes (and approx 200 curse words) later we got to town, and thanks to the super patient Drew Barton at Memphis Made Brewing, we still got to stop by the brewery and visit for a little bit as we'd planned. It made the drive seem like a distant memory pretty quickly.

Memphis Made Brewing is located in Cooper­-Young and it's just expanded, after less than a year in production (they opened in Oct 2013). They recently installed three new fermenters, doubling their capacity. These guys are just pretty much everything I want in a brewery, except of course I wish their location was much closer to my home. The owners/operators/brewers are just the type of guys you pull for to really succeed, I dig their marketing, and oh yes... the beer. Damn tasty stuff.

We got to sample the newest brew, Bearcat, an IPA (Simcoe, Chinook, Citra and Mosaic hops) that's very nice. Also had some Lucid, a Kolsch that's crisp and easy to drink, but with a spicy hop note from Herkules hops in the back end. And lastly, we tried the FANTASTIC Soulful Ginger, a 6.2% ABV golden saison brewed with candied ginger and peppercorn. This brew is just so completely kick ass, Elvis might come out of hiding to sing a song about it.

So find these guys on your next Memphis trip for sure. Their tap room at the brewery is hoping to be opened this fall (there's a picture down below of the future patio area). Until then, you can find the 750ml bottles in some stores (we did at Cash Saver) and they're on tap in plenty of places around town. Ask for them.

Here's a few pics:

This welcomes you to the parking lot

Yes, you're there

Inside the brew room

Rebel Kettle and Memphis Made talking shop

2 excellent brews here

Here's what's going to be the big patio area soon