CulturAle Press

Brewing All Stars #13: Wicked Weed Pernicious IPA, Asheville, NC

Date:  August 1 , 2019  —

The Story—  Wicked Weed is a boundary pushing brewery that AB-InBev bought to help them understand about boundary pushing.   Fortunately, they seem to have left the creative brewers pretty much alone and like the original Goose Island brewery in Chicago, good beer still flows from this Asheville icon.

We tasted the beer at Winslow’s Tavern in Greenville, NC.   If you get really sick in the eastern part of the tar heel state, you’re likely to wind up in Greenville which hosts a massive teaching hospital with some of the most respected health care on the east coast.   If you’re lucky enough not to be checked in, but are visiting someone who is, you have some good drinking options when visiting hours are over.

A couple of brew pubs are… a couple of brew pubs.   They’re fine, but pretty close to what you have within 10 miles of wherever you live.  The beer gem of the city, though, is Winslow’s Tavern a, rambling drinkery that’s part bar, part taphouse, part beer store and part restaurant.  It does pretty well at all of these.   Perhaps one of the best bargain drinking experiences in the state comes from their take out coolers — you can get cans and bottles at reasonable take out prices…. and drink them in.

The Beer–  Rich malt, big hops.  Clean pale 2-row malt with a spicy herbal broad-ranging fruit that blends and resolves as “just plain hoppy.” Slightly sticky as it drinks gives an additional nod to the hops and sit well as it drinks.

Value —  Very good to excellent.   Five and a quarter for an honest pint at Winslow’s. Expect to pay more elsewhere.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

It’s All-Star season.  MLB has finished theirs, but it seems like a new sport is showcasing exceptional talent almost every day.  So we’ll be presenting our own all-star brewing line up.  We don’t claim to present– or even know– what the best beers in America are, but out of the hundred or so that we taste every month, some are indeed special.   For the second couple of weeks in July, we’ll share some recent standouts in  a very crowded craft beer field. .

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”