Ok, since Hatch took a crack at reviewing his Spring Break brewery tour, I'll take mine:
Olde Hickory Station (Olde Hickory Brewing, Hickory NC). Excellent beers, excellent guest taps excellent little bottle shop, food not so good.
Fonta Flora (Morganton, VA). Excellent and interesting beers with foraged ingredients. Best of Doc Watson and Best of Conway Twitty on the cd player. My kind of place.
Pisgah Brewing (Black Mountain, NC). Decent beer, live jam session my wife was digging. Some old long bearded hippie guy who reeked of cigarettes came up and hugged me. My daughter asked, "Is he a hobo?" I mis-heard her with all the noise and thought she asked "Is he a homo?"
New Belgium Brewing (Asheville, NC) Excellent tour with plenty of free beer including La Folie. Great river view seating on a picture perfect day. Lots of outdoor space with plenty of people frolicking.
Funkatorium (Asheville, NC) All Wicked Weed sours, all the time. Informative tour, a little awkward as we were the only three people on the tour. I think I tried maybe 14 different tasters over the course of two visits. All very good, many very excellent. Great bottle shop (only Wicked Weed beers)
Hi Wire (Big Top location, Asheville, NC). Unremarkable but not terrible.
Sierra Nevada (Mills River, NC). Excellent, free tour with lots of free beer. Good food. Ambiance a little too estate-y and overdone for us. I can totally see why someone referred to this place as Malt Disney World.
Appalachian Vintner (Asheville, NC) Best bottle shop in town, and they had KBS on draft for $8/pour to boot (and Grimm and Lodgson among others).
Appalachian Mountain Brewing (Boone, NC) Four excellent beers, good ambiance, lots of dogs, great food truck. Beers included a brett porter, and a chocolate pomegranate gose (!) that you'd have to taste to believe.
Blue Mountain Brewing (Afton VA) Good DIPA and excellent peach gose. Decent food. Great view of the mountains, very dog friendly.
Three Notch'd Brewing (Charlottesville, VA) Their Minute Man IPA has to be one of the most underrated beers produced in VA. It's not really NE style as they bill it, but damn is it tasty.
Great tapas at Curate, great Indian at Chai Pani, great tacos at White Duck Taco, great Thai curry at Sierra Nevada. Asheville Pinball Museum was a lot of fun. Daughter enjoyed "gem mining" near Boone. Daughter puked multiple times due to the drive down Blue Ridge Highway.
