Gameday Beers of the Week: Charleston Southern
No column last week because I wanted y’all to stay sober in honor of the game being played in a dry county. Then I was informed that, in fact, you CAN buy beer in Starkvegas (you still can’t be in possession of beer in Oktibbeha County outside ofStarkville city limits). That I was assuming a sense of backwardness & regressiveness with alcohol because the place seems so regressive everywhere else. I mean, think marriage licenses there are still legitimized through a cowbell dowry, but I suppose I could just be assuming that as well.
No such concerns about regressiveness in Charleston (apart from, well, the slavery-era costume balls), even though it’s an intrinsically backwards-looking city in terms of its culture & cuisine; mostly in all of the great ways: historical preservation, finding the new in the old, etc. The beer scene in South Carolina is likewise exciting. There are breweries that look to the agrarian past for inspiration, there are breweries pushing boundaries in terms of the Southern beer palate, and there’s at least one brewery that’s become an international standard bearer in multiple styles.
Six-pack beer of the week: Westbrook Gose
Westbrook found its way onto the radar of the beer community for being one of the primary contract brewers for Evil Twin’s dark beers. Excellent ales like Lil B and Even More Jesus were brewed & bottled at this formerly-obscure brewery in Mt. Pleasant, SC. But attention soon found its way to the strong ales that Westbrook was bottling themselves. Their Mexican Cake line of imperial stouts has especially garnered them acclaim. But arguably their most in-demand beer is a seasonal six-pack: their gose. As a beer style, Gose is, like Westbrook, formerly obscure. It’s a low-alcohol sour wheat ale that’s brewed with a little bit of salt (and sometimes coriander). That salinity works like the salt does in Gatorade: it increases the refreshing quality of the beer, and makes it a great post-labor beer (wheat beer is already pretty scientifically established to be one of the better post-workout beverages. Chocolate milk too, oddly enough). Westbrook’s version is perhaps a touch more sour than historical examples of the style (like Leipziger Gose or Ritterguts Gose), and that may explain why American beer drinkers have taken to this beer. It disappears from shelves & even punches above its weight class on the beer trade market. So if you find some cans of this you should happily purchase them all & happily drink them all.
Celebration beer of the week: COAST Old Nuptial
Westbrook isn’t the only brewery in South Carolina that can deliver an impressive strong ale. North Charleston’s COAST — all-caps, always — are Southern masters of high-efficiency brewing themselves. Their most revered beer is Old Nuptial, a bourbon barrel aged barleywine. It was first brewed in honor of, you might guess, a wedding (specifically for the owner of the Charleston Beer Exchange), but has been brewed a couple of times since then. You’ll have to go online and trade to get this monster of a beer, which hasn’t been brewed since 2014. But that’s all the more reason to celebrate by popping its cap. It’s 11%ABV+ & full of sticky toffee flavors, dark fruit notes, and the oaky/vanillin/whiskey combo from the bourbon barrels. It’s a massive beer, ensuring that it won’t, in the parlance of coach Nick Saban, go through your ass like shit through a tin horn.
Grandpa beer of the week: Well, Bud Light is the best-selling beer in South Carolina. Go with that? I mean, there aren’t any traditional industrial lagers that come from the state. The notable breweries of South Carolina that do brew lagers tend to go for maltier styles, like Vienna Lager, that don’t refresh and refamiliarize in the same ways that we expect “grandpa beers” to do. I’m not going to shoehorn in a beer that really isn’t a grandpa beer just to stay on-theme. Drink your go-to this week.
South Carolina beer you can buy in Alabama: Westbrook White Thai
While Westbrook’s gose is hard to find sometimes, you can generally always find cans of White Thai within the brewery’s distribution footprint. White Thai is their take on the Belgian witbier. Traditionally, that beer is a wheat ale brewed with coriander & orange peel. If you’re thinking “Blue Moon,” then you are exactly correct. Well, what Westbrook does is spice their witbier with ginger root & lemongrass, effectively taking the witbier concept and making it less sweet — more in line with Southeast Asian flavors. In my opinion it’s an improvement on the witbier concept: supremely drinkable & better able to hold up to more savory foods. It’s unique AND versatile; a rare combination. I once went on a brief campaign in Tuscaloosa to get bars to carry this beer on draft at all times. You can give this to your Blue Moon-loving [dad/sister/niece/uncle/sorority member/townie/whoever] and it will be familiar to them but also broaden their palate a bit. Pick it up on your next beer run.
South Carolina beer to avoid at all costs: Thomas Creek Vanilla Cream Ale
First off, why are you buying a cream ale? It’s an adjunct lager, only with an ale yeast strain. Who goes to the beer store and thinks “I’d love to drink a Miller Genuine Draft, only way less clean”? That’s imbecile talk. Thomas Creek is a fine brewery, I guess, but this is a beer for suckers. They’ve doubled-down on the word “cream” here, adding vanilla bean or extract or something to their cream ale recipe. The result is like Coffee Mate that gives you a hangover. It’s blandly sweet in multiple ways, like dipping a grocery store biscotti into generic grocery store store brand hazelnut spread. Imagine what a “vanilla Budweiser” would taste like, and then imagine something worse.
