Brewgrass Trip... Finally.
We had an amazingly wonderful weekend in Asheville, NC a couple of weeks ago about a month ago (9/17-9/20). We went for the Brewgrass festival, but since it was a three night rental for weekends on the cabin, we made it a long weekend. As soon as we arrived at the cabin on Friday evening, I kind of didn't care if we went into Asheville at all. I seriously did not want to leave that place! We will definitely be back. This place is well worth the extra 30 minute drive up windy mountain roads. It slept the 5 of us very comfortably (and economically) but would sleep up to 8, I think (2 queens, a double, plus a sofa sleeper).
This is pretty much what we saw as we drove up to the cabin:
The cabin itself:
The view from the balcony:
We unloaded then reluctantly pulled ourselves away from this lofty paradise and drove back down the mountain into Asheville. We stopped first at a Green Life grocery and got some beer and food to stock the cabin for breakfast. Then, we were off to a free show downtown where Larry Keel & Natural Bridge just happened to be playing (one of our favorite bluegrass artists). We met up with Doug and Abby there.
The beer, however, was not free, but it was good and plentiful and locally brewed. My personal favorite was the Pisgah Porter. Seriously, for the size of it, Asheville has AMAZING beer culture! After the show, we went and got some yummy pizza and (of course) more beer at Barley's Taproom (kind of an Asheville tradition for us, except this time we hadn't been in the woods for a couple of days prior).
After Barley's, we walked a few blocks away to a Belgian bar called The Thirsty Monk (which was pretty impressive, I must say). But, I needed coffee if I was going to make that dark, windy drive back up to the cabin when we were done. So, after a round (for some of us) there, we walked another couple of blocks over to French Broad Chocolate Lounge for a burnt, nasty macchiato. I will give them this: their baristas know coffee drinks and they make some amazing looking (though insanely expensive) truffles and desserts. But the coffee they use sucks and you can really tell it when you order something like a macchiato.
With coffee in hand, we parted ways to our respective modes of transportation and all headed up to the cabin after a slight detour involving our exit being blocked for paving and the asking of directions from a kind gentleman with an accent like you only hear in North Kakalaka and a mullet of which one could be proud (though it was obscured by his construction hard hat).
We got up the next morning and made a breakfast that would probably give you a heart attack if enjoyed on a regular basis (spinach/mushroom/tomato omelets, home fries and grilled ribeye) and after 4 pots of coffee were finally ready to hit the festival.
We were not prepared for the festival in any way, shape or form. We faced down a mostly unshaded baseball field for the next 7 hours. We had all forgotten sunscreen. No one had thought to bring a chair or water or anything but ourselves, really. Luckily the water situation wasn't too much of an issue. Next to each tap was a large jug of water for rinsing your glass. I made a habit of just drinking the water I used to rinse between samples. Also, there were bottles for sale for $1 each if/when you needed even more hydration (though they ran out at one point and had to restock).
The sampling glasses were really nice. They were actual glass, 4-6 oz., nice size for tastings. A lot of these festivals hand you a huge plastic mug with a pour line on it, which only encourages too large of samples and it's not something I usually care about keeping once the festival is over.
The music was great, but we noted several times during the day that their sound sucked. We're obviously spoiled by living in a city with an abundance of out of work studio techs/musicians. Of note was a really great, though hilarious to listen to, bluegrass band from Sweden. Yes, really! Their mandolin player sounded like Skwisgaar from Metalocalypse when he talked, but like Del McCoury when he sang. After them was the fourth and final band and the one we really wanted to see, The Infamous Stringdusters. They were really great! But by then, I was exhausted and sick of beer and sunburned and did not want to sit out in that field anymore. Obviously, I didn't drink enough or something.
After the festival, we got some dinner at LAB (Lexington Avenue Brewery). I don't think any of us ordered a beer. The food was mostly really good, except it seemed with each of our meals there was some aspect that was disappointing. For example, I had duck confit strudel ("8 hour braised leg of duck, Early Bird cheese strudel, brandied figs, swiss chard, cherry gastrique"). Everything was superb, except the duck itself. While it was perfectly cooked, it just didn't taste like much except duck, salt and pepper. For something that's been braised 8 hours, I would expect some creative flavorful liquid to be used for braising, I guess. Maybe I'm just a food snob. Is anyone really surprised? Still, I can't complain. Thirteen bucks for duck is pretty damn good, even if it is a little underwhelming.
After dinner, we walked a few blocks for some better coffee at Izzy's Coffee Den before heading back to the cabin to rest our weary bodies and a have a few beers before going to bed. Beer and sun and lack of sleep totally sucked the life out of us for the most part. But we were still able to enjoy the dark valley from the deck before turning in.
We got up the next morning and made an ungodly amount of bacon and two kinds of French toast (croissant and sourdough). If croissant French toast sounds crazy or weird or gross or insanely fattening, well, it's only one of those things. We had gotten a bunch of frozen berries to make a sauce to go over it all. Doug had thought to dump some sugar and leftover mead on them the night before for a macerated effect. I threw them in a pot on the stove and simmered it down into a delicious goo. We completely stuffed ourselves and still had some leftovers for a rather unorthodox lunch/snack a few hours later (slice of sourdough French toast with some of the leftover ribeye from Saturday's breakfast, bacon and some cranberry chipotle cheddar all stuck in the toaster oven to warm everything and melt the cheese, again, sounds gross, weird and fattening, but was only one of those things). We spent the majority of the afternoon just lounging on the deck and tending to our various forms of busy work. Jonathan turned on the Titans game for a while. The rest of us spent the day outside sipping beer and coffee and chatting. Abby knitted, Doug read, Chris was working on some coding and I worked on Arwen Angel gown embroidery. It was a fantastically perfect, relaxing, lazy Sunday.
Eventually, Jonathan, Chris and I traveled down the mountain to the nearest grocery to get provisions for some grilled fish tacos (red snapper and amberjack that Jonathan had caught in the gulf earlier in the summer, pre-oil spill) with homemade guacamole and salsa for dinner. Oh, right, there was a little garden on the property of the cabin with a few tomato plants and some herbs. Such a fantastic idea for a vacation property! We also got ingredients for some of Doug's delicious brownies with a little vanilla gelato and the leftover berry sauce. YUM! Again, we stuffed ourselves and everything was just so delicious! This is what happens when you get five people in a cabin who all love to cook. Dieters beware if you ever go on vacation with us!
Before the sun went down, I took a bunch of pics as the colors changed across the valley below us.
We did our best to finish off the growlers we had bought and just hung out for the rest of the night sipping beer and Corsair triple smoke whiskey and smoking cigars and having a fantastic time. We turned in at a reasonable hour knowing we'd have to check out at 10am and knowing we'd have to have ourselves packed up and the cabin reasonably picked up (beds stripped and dishes in the dishwasher and such) by then.
Really, the weekend was as great as it could be, though perhaps missing a few people. Yes.
Full set of pics are here, if you're interested and haven't already looked through them.
This is pretty much what we saw as we drove up to the cabin:
The cabin itself:
The view from the balcony:
We unloaded then reluctantly pulled ourselves away from this lofty paradise and drove back down the mountain into Asheville. We stopped first at a Green Life grocery and got some beer and food to stock the cabin for breakfast. Then, we were off to a free show downtown where Larry Keel & Natural Bridge just happened to be playing (one of our favorite bluegrass artists). We met up with Doug and Abby there.
The beer, however, was not free, but it was good and plentiful and locally brewed. My personal favorite was the Pisgah Porter. Seriously, for the size of it, Asheville has AMAZING beer culture! After the show, we went and got some yummy pizza and (of course) more beer at Barley's Taproom (kind of an Asheville tradition for us, except this time we hadn't been in the woods for a couple of days prior).
After Barley's, we walked a few blocks away to a Belgian bar called The Thirsty Monk (which was pretty impressive, I must say). But, I needed coffee if I was going to make that dark, windy drive back up to the cabin when we were done. So, after a round (for some of us) there, we walked another couple of blocks over to French Broad Chocolate Lounge for a burnt, nasty macchiato. I will give them this: their baristas know coffee drinks and they make some amazing looking (though insanely expensive) truffles and desserts. But the coffee they use sucks and you can really tell it when you order something like a macchiato.
With coffee in hand, we parted ways to our respective modes of transportation and all headed up to the cabin after a slight detour involving our exit being blocked for paving and the asking of directions from a kind gentleman with an accent like you only hear in North Kakalaka and a mullet of which one could be proud (though it was obscured by his construction hard hat).
We got up the next morning and made a breakfast that would probably give you a heart attack if enjoyed on a regular basis (spinach/mushroom/tomato omelets, home fries and grilled ribeye) and after 4 pots of coffee were finally ready to hit the festival.
We were not prepared for the festival in any way, shape or form. We faced down a mostly unshaded baseball field for the next 7 hours. We had all forgotten sunscreen. No one had thought to bring a chair or water or anything but ourselves, really. Luckily the water situation wasn't too much of an issue. Next to each tap was a large jug of water for rinsing your glass. I made a habit of just drinking the water I used to rinse between samples. Also, there were bottles for sale for $1 each if/when you needed even more hydration (though they ran out at one point and had to restock).
The sampling glasses were really nice. They were actual glass, 4-6 oz., nice size for tastings. A lot of these festivals hand you a huge plastic mug with a pour line on it, which only encourages too large of samples and it's not something I usually care about keeping once the festival is over.
The music was great, but we noted several times during the day that their sound sucked. We're obviously spoiled by living in a city with an abundance of out of work studio techs/musicians. Of note was a really great, though hilarious to listen to, bluegrass band from Sweden. Yes, really! Their mandolin player sounded like Skwisgaar from Metalocalypse when he talked, but like Del McCoury when he sang. After them was the fourth and final band and the one we really wanted to see, The Infamous Stringdusters. They were really great! But by then, I was exhausted and sick of beer and sunburned and did not want to sit out in that field anymore. Obviously, I didn't drink enough or something.
After the festival, we got some dinner at LAB (Lexington Avenue Brewery). I don't think any of us ordered a beer. The food was mostly really good, except it seemed with each of our meals there was some aspect that was disappointing. For example, I had duck confit strudel ("8 hour braised leg of duck, Early Bird cheese strudel, brandied figs, swiss chard, cherry gastrique"). Everything was superb, except the duck itself. While it was perfectly cooked, it just didn't taste like much except duck, salt and pepper. For something that's been braised 8 hours, I would expect some creative flavorful liquid to be used for braising, I guess. Maybe I'm just a food snob. Is anyone really surprised? Still, I can't complain. Thirteen bucks for duck is pretty damn good, even if it is a little underwhelming.
After dinner, we walked a few blocks for some better coffee at Izzy's Coffee Den before heading back to the cabin to rest our weary bodies and a have a few beers before going to bed. Beer and sun and lack of sleep totally sucked the life out of us for the most part. But we were still able to enjoy the dark valley from the deck before turning in.
We got up the next morning and made an ungodly amount of bacon and two kinds of French toast (croissant and sourdough). If croissant French toast sounds crazy or weird or gross or insanely fattening, well, it's only one of those things. We had gotten a bunch of frozen berries to make a sauce to go over it all. Doug had thought to dump some sugar and leftover mead on them the night before for a macerated effect. I threw them in a pot on the stove and simmered it down into a delicious goo. We completely stuffed ourselves and still had some leftovers for a rather unorthodox lunch/snack a few hours later (slice of sourdough French toast with some of the leftover ribeye from Saturday's breakfast, bacon and some cranberry chipotle cheddar all stuck in the toaster oven to warm everything and melt the cheese, again, sounds gross, weird and fattening, but was only one of those things). We spent the majority of the afternoon just lounging on the deck and tending to our various forms of busy work. Jonathan turned on the Titans game for a while. The rest of us spent the day outside sipping beer and coffee and chatting. Abby knitted, Doug read, Chris was working on some coding and I worked on Arwen Angel gown embroidery. It was a fantastically perfect, relaxing, lazy Sunday.
Eventually, Jonathan, Chris and I traveled down the mountain to the nearest grocery to get provisions for some grilled fish tacos (red snapper and amberjack that Jonathan had caught in the gulf earlier in the summer, pre-oil spill) with homemade guacamole and salsa for dinner. Oh, right, there was a little garden on the property of the cabin with a few tomato plants and some herbs. Such a fantastic idea for a vacation property! We also got ingredients for some of Doug's delicious brownies with a little vanilla gelato and the leftover berry sauce. YUM! Again, we stuffed ourselves and everything was just so delicious! This is what happens when you get five people in a cabin who all love to cook. Dieters beware if you ever go on vacation with us!
Before the sun went down, I took a bunch of pics as the colors changed across the valley below us.
We did our best to finish off the growlers we had bought and just hung out for the rest of the night sipping beer and Corsair triple smoke whiskey and smoking cigars and having a fantastic time. We turned in at a reasonable hour knowing we'd have to check out at 10am and knowing we'd have to have ourselves packed up and the cabin reasonably picked up (beds stripped and dishes in the dishwasher and such) by then.
Really, the weekend was as great as it could be, though perhaps missing a few people. Yes.
Full set of pics are here, if you're interested and haven't already looked through them.