The last weekend of April was busy for us, first on Friday with the Art of Cool jazz festival that we helped fund through Kickstarter, then on Saturday with this year’s Brewgaloo NC beer and local food truck festival in downtown Raleigh. Many different North Carolina breweries were pouring their beer and our taster cards let us try 3 oz pours of quite a few new beers. We generally skipped the places that were pouring beers we could easily try elsewhere.

Our list (also so we can remember what we tried later!)

Brueprint – Amber and Brown – The one I really wanted to try, the Scottish ale, was only in a VIP tent. Boo.

Mystery – St Stephens Green (a dry irish stout) – Good, a little light for me.

SubNoir – Ginger Tripel and Flanders Red Ale with cherries – Both were fantastic, Eric really liked the Flanders Red. SubNoir is making some great beers.

Ponysaurus – Bierre de Garre and Robot Pony (saison collaboration with Gizmo and Mystery) – Longest lines of the afternoon, and we went through twice since they didn’t have Robot Pony the first time around. It can be hard to find these small batch beers around town so glad we got a chance here. Robot Pony was tasty.

Neuse River – Belgian Golden (strong ale) – We went back for seconds on this one, very nice.

White Street – Scottish Ale and Kolsch – Both were solid and good representations of the style.

Deep River – Wee Heavy Rum Barrel – Delicious. One of my favorites of the afternoon.

Hi-wire – Brown ale – Eric tried this one, a good representation of the style.

Bombshell – Pick-up Line Porter and Lemongrass Hefe – Porter was solid, Hefeweizen was light and refreshing, a good palate cleanser after a few darker beers.

Fortnight – Porter – Good standard porter, definitely got a bit hoppier as it warmed up.

Lynwood – Hefeweizen – standard, not too memorable.