My first cocktail for Access Carolina, I make a Halloween-inspired cocktail, Jason’s Revenge. This features Scapegrace Gin from New Zealand and Apologue Spirits
https://www.foxcarolina.com/video/2022/10/21/spooky-cocktail-jason-revenge/
Thomas Creek Brewery: The First Greenville Brewery
For Tom Davis, the co-founder of Thomas Creek Brewery, his passion for craft beer started long before he ever brewed a drop of the stuff.
“It all began at a place called International Café way back when I was working at Ruby Tuesday’s in 1982,” he said. “On top of that, my dad was a beer can collector, so he would bring cans from all over the country. At that time there were no such things as craft beer, but there was still beer being put in cans from smaller breweries – bigger than what we would consider a craft brewery today – we’re talking beers like Hamm’s and Falstaff.”
He tells me this as we’re sitting at the bar of the Thomas Creek Brewery tap room, outside of downtown Greenville, South Carolina on a Thursday afternoon. It’s early and there are only two other patrons, sitting against the far wall sipping beers and chatting. He was pulled from the kitchen when I got there and he was still wearing black sanitary gloves. His voice is low and measured and I can only hope my recorder picks it up over the sound of the men talking and the music playing.
“At Ruby Tuesday’s we would go downstairs to the café and we’d have beers from all over the world. Again, they weren’t craft beers per se, but you might be able to find Newcastle. At that point I don’t think Sierra Nevada had even started.”
(It had, brewing the first batch in November 1980, but would not have come close to making its way to South Carolina until some years later.)
Soon, Davis says, he learned from someone that you could actually make beers like the ones they were drinking at the café and the beer that did it, that set Davis on a path that he is still on some twenty years later, was Hofbrau Oktoberfest.
“I started looking more into homebrewing. I bought every book I could get my hands on. I got Malt and Brewing Science, the Siebel Institute of Technology’s brewing textbook, as a birthday present,” he said. “I read it cover to cover six times. After close to a year/ year and a half of reading, I built my system to the specs basically like we brew today. We do all-grain, liquid malt, filtered, and force-carbonated. I never used a kit, I put my first recipe together myself.”
Then, when then the brewpub laws changed in 1994, the owner of the restaurant Davis was working at asked him if he wanted to be involved putting a brewpub in the restaurant. Davis was interested, and he credits that question with what really set him down his path. The expense of putting a brewpub in, though, was more than the owner wanted and so Davis and his dad got together to fund the brewery portion of the brewpub.
“Thomas Creek started as a leasing company. We leased the equipment to the restaurant. At the same time, I was working and brewing there.”
Three and a half years later, the Davises decided they wanted to get out of the restaurant business and further the brewery project, converting what they were doing into a full-time brewery. They bought a defunct brewery out of western North Carolina, Woodhouse Brewing, and put the equipment in storage for a year while they got the facility Thomas Creek currently sits in ready.
“My dad’s next-door neighbor is a contractor and land-owner so he decided he would build this building for us to spec, and in doing so he built two more beside us and was leasing those out short term,” Davis says. “We gradually took those over and had two more buildings built.”
By the time Thomas Creek opened, the state’s first brewery (that is still running), Palmetto Brewing in Charleston, had been open for a few years. New South Brewing, in Myrtle Beach, also opened up around the same time. The only other brewery in the Greenville area, Reedy River Brewing, had opened and closed by the time Thomas Creek came around.
The decision of what to brew when they opened, Davis says, was easy. Being a bartender, he knew the trends of the predominantly Bud Lite/Miller Lite/ Coors Lite crowd. The first two beers their made were amber ales, one of which they still brew to this day (and it is still one of the top sellers). They also brewed a beer based on Pete’s Wicked they called Malty Grain which sold well originally but was discontinued after a while because “the name wasn’t catchy enough, I guess.”
(For Thomas Creek’s thirteenth anniversary, they brought Malty Grain back as a special release, but it has not been back since.)
Since those first batches, Thomas Creek has grown and grown, becoming one of the largest in the state (Palmetto is the largest), producing around 9750 barrels in 2017. (This number does not include the beers that Thomas Creek contracts for other breweries, such as Inlet Brewery, which accounts for around 40% of the brewery’s production.) As of this writing, Thomas Creek’s capacity is 23,000 barrels per year, and they were currently eyeing a possible sale to get the capital needed to do what they want to with the equipment they have. Currently, Thomas Creek brews nine beers, including collaborations with a local tap room, Community Tap, named Trifecta IPA, and a Pilsner licensed by local radio hosts The Rise Guys named P1 Pilsner (“The best beer on the planet”). You can get their beers across the state and in North Carolina or, if you’re flying out of Greenville-Spartanburg airport, you can stop in their Terminal A taproom for a pint or three before a flight.
In the third installment of Books Over Drinks, M. Judson had bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews in town to promote her new book, The Homewreckers (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). From the author’s site:
Hattie Cavanaugh went to work helping clean up restored homes for Cavanaugh & Son Restorations at eighteen; married the boss’s son at twenty; and was only twenty-five when her husband, Hank, was killed in a motorcycle accident.
Broken hearted, but determined to continue the business of their dreams, she takes the life insurance money, buys a small house in a gentrifying neighborhood, flips it, then puts the money into her next project. But that house is a disaster and a money-loser, which rocks her confidence for years to come. Then, Hattie gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: star in a beach house renovation reality show called “The Homewreckers,” cast against a male lead who may be a love interest, or may be the ultimate antagonist. It’s a question of who will flip, and who will flop, and will Hattie ever get her happily-ever-after.
Filled with Mary Kay Andrews’s trademark wit, warmth, junking trips, and house porn, The Homewreckers is a summer beach delight.
With that in mind, I wanted something that would match the beach read-i-ness of the book (and all of Andrews’s books, from what I’ve gathered over time). Thus the Savannah Sunrise. It’s simple and light, and can be made lighter by cutting with club soda (or turned into a blended frozen drink on especially hot days).
Note: I’d also garnish with a mint leaf for color, but we were batching 80 cocktails and speed/efficiency was the name of the game.
Method: Add all ingredients to shaker with ice except grenadine. Shake well and pour into a Collins glass with ice. Drizzle grenadine on top. Garnish with a mint leaf.
One of the things I realized, quickly after starting working with the fine, fine folks at M. Judson for Books Over Drinks was that I enjoyed the challenge of working with books by authors that I didn’t know. It’d be one thing to create a cocktail for a book by an author I’ve read everything from (in case you want a drink, TC Boyle, you just say the word), but getting to experience new books by different voices is surprisingly fun. For this round, I was tasked with coming up with a drink for Kimberly Brock’s The Lost Book of Eleanor Dare. From the author’s website:
The fate of the world is often driven by the curiosity of a girl.
What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke remains a mystery, but the women who descended from Eleanor Dare have long known the truth lies in what she left behind: a message carved onto a large stone and the contents of her treasured Commonplace Book. Brought from England on Eleanor’s fateful voyage to the New World, her book was passed down through the fifteen generations of daughters who followed as they came of age. Thirteen-year-old Alice had been next in line to receive it, but her mother’s tragic death fractured the unbroken legacy and the Dare Stone and the shadowy history recorded in the book faded into memory. Or so Alice hoped.
In the waning days of World War Two, Alice is a young widow and a mother herself when she is unexpectedly presented with her birthright: the deed to Evertell, her abandoned family home and the history she thought forgotten. Determined to sell the property and step into a future free of the past, Alice returns to Savannah with her own thirteen-year-old daughter, Penn, in tow. But when Penn’s curiosity over the lineage she never knew begins to unveil secrets from beneath every stone and bone and shell of the old house and Eleanor’s book is finally found, Alice is forced to reckon with the sacrifices made for love and the realities of their true inheritance as daughters of Eleanor Dare.
In this sweeping tale from award-winning author Kimberly Brock, the answers to a real-life mystery may be found in the pages of a story that was always waiting to be written.
The inspiration for this drink came from the beautiful cover, specifically the peacock feathers. To capture their essence, I used butterfly pea flower tea, which changes color when it interacts with acid. (You can read the science behind it at Bon Appétit.) From there, I added some rum and a few other ingredients, and voila!
Method: Add rum, tea, and simple syrup to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass with ice. Top with lemon and lime juice and stir to see the color change.
A few weeks ago, I was attending an event at my local indie bookstore, M. Judson Booksellers, to celebrate the launch of my friend Taylor Brown’s incredible new book Wingwalkers — y’all need to read it, by the way — when I had an idea. The event, Books Over Drinks, gives you a chance to meet the author, hear them read, get a copy of a book and a cocktail (or beer/wine if you prefer). That night, because of the book, we were having Paper Planes. It was a perfect pairing. After the event, I went up to the owner of the shop and offered up a proposition — I’d be happy to come up with the custom cocktails and serve them if she gives me a copy of the book to work with and allows me to be at the event. She agreed. Easiest win-win ever, in my opinion. Thankfully, M. Judson had a couple in the immediate future, so I got to work.
The first event I participated in was with Katherine Reay and her new book The London House (Harper Muse 2021). From the author’s site:
An uncovered family secret sets one woman on the journey of a lifetime through the history of Britain’s WWII spy network and glamorous 1930s Paris in an effort to understand her past, save her family, and claim her future.
One call could bring ruin to her family name.
Caroline Payne thinks it is just another day at work when she receives a call from Mat Hammond, a doctoral candidate, who has uncovered a dark and scandalous family secret: her British great-aunt defected to the Nazis to marry her German lover.
The letters tell a different story.
In search of answers, Caroline flies to London to search her grandmother’s diaries and her aunt’s letters. In them she discovers the “Waite girls” and a time of peace and luxury in the interwar years that is beyond anything she ever imagined. But the buoyant tone quickly changes as the sisters grow older, fall in love with the same man, and one leaves home to join the glamorous art scene of 1930s Paris—all amid the rumblings of war.
But history won’t let its secrets go so easily.
The more Caroline learns, the more questions she has. Together Caroline and Mat work to dig out answers, uncovering stories of spies and love, of family rifts, and of one fateful evening in 1941. Will the truth they uncover heal the decades-old family wounds, or will they tear the family even further apart?
From this, I knew I had to use gin, and I wanted to use other ingredients that evoked London. So, tea (naturally).
Note: This one is great hot, too.
Method: Add all ingredients to a shaker with ice and shake well. Strain into a glass with ice and garnish with a lemon wedge.
Okay, so while spritz season can technically be any time if you really want (and I do, oh, I do), when it comes down to it, summer is one of the best times for all things spritz. Ice cold, low in ABV, and endlessly drinkable, a well-made spritz is the perfect companion for right before a meal, sitting on the porch, hanging out poolside, you name it. I’ve consumed spritzes in all of those settings and they are indeed wonderful.
And while spritzes can be made with a wide variety of spirits (or wines), when I think spritz, my mind usually wanders into the Italian camp with Aperol spritzes, Campari spritzes, et cetera. Blame the power of marketing, I guess. Nothing wrong with them — I’ve always got a bottle of each in my house — but I do enjoy it when I find a spirit to work with that features a different flavor profile. When Le Moné was pitched to me as an aperitif for tequila lovers, I was intrigued. Not often, I thought, had I contemplated agave and spritzes in the same sphere.
Does that make me an undereducated simp when it comes to all things agave? Maybe. I’ll own up to that one. Anyway.
Le Moné (16% ABV) is made from a Traminette grape base (sourced from the Finger Lakes region of New York) that is then fortified with California brandy. The liquid is then infused with Meyer lemon essential oil distillate before the addition of Blue Weber agave (imported from Mexico) to finish the aperitif. Beyond the flagship expression, Le Moné also produces Orange & Lime, Raspberry & Lavender, and Blackberry Flavors.
Bright and vibrant are the first two words that come to mind when you try Le Moné. There’s no doubt that this is a lemon-flavored spirit. At all. From the first aroma to the finish, you get crisp, fresh lemon flavor that is a delightful wake-up call for your taste buds.
The Meyer lemon peel distillate helps to enhance similar citrus flavors derived from the Traminette grapes. These are then bulked up just enough by the brandy to give Le Moné all the backbone you need in an aperitif. The agave gives a sweet complexity that also happens to come in with fewer calories than other spirits that use sugar as a sweetening agent (better flavor, fewer calories — it’s a win-win).
While you could drink it on its own over ice, it truly shines in a spritz. The carbonation in extra cold sparkling water (or wine, whichever as long as it’s dry) is Le Moné’s best hype man, bringing taking its naturally bright flavor and doing the equivalent of a rap horn every time you take a sip.
I tried Le Moné in a few other drinks – tea (both hot and iced), a riff on a Vesper, and in one of the cocktails from my book, Are You Afraid of the Dark Rum? And Other Cocktails For ‘90s Kids (#shameless plug, go buy my book) where limoncello was called for — and it worked in each case quite well. I liked using it as a substitute for limoncello because it does everything that limoncello does, just…lighter. I don’t want to call Le Moné limoncello light, because that sounds like an insult, but in a way, it is limoncello light. All the flavor without getting a punch to the face.
(Other phrases that don’t work: Diet Limoncello, Lite-moncello)
At the end of the day, Le Moné shows itself as a versatile aperitif that you can have over and over again during the summer, something I will surely be doing.
Le Moné retails for $35 and currently ships to 18 states.
I’ve been a fan of Stranahan’s for a few years now, since getting to experience the annual Snowflake release for the first time in 2017.
(Sidebar: I also made one of my best booze-writing friends on that trip, too! There’s something to be said for being outside and a little drunk on coffee and whiskey at 3 a.m. in Denver in December.)
While at the distillery, I had my first real experience with American Single Malt whiskey and got to try not only their Original and Diamond Peak but of course the Snowflake release (which people used to line up for days in advance, camping out outside the distillery.) I forget what the release was for that year, but this year, I was able to go back to Stranahan’s for the first Snowflake release in two years. Instead of being at the distillery, as it used to, this year’s release took place at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I could go into the natural beauty of the spot, but words wouldn’t do it justice. Well, one word does:
Damn.
(I’ll be getting to the cocktail, I promise, more on Snowflake first.)
Seeing Red Rocks for the first time is a humbling experience. Then, when you pair it with delicious whiskey it becomes a whole new experience. Seeing that many people coming together to celebrate a special release is fun, and it is a nice reminder that sometimes all it takes to get along is a good drink.
This year featured two releases, Sunshine Peak (the 2020 release) and Mount Eolus. Sunshine Peak was finished in apple brandy (Calvados and Applejack) as well as Moscatel and Cabernet wine casks. Mount Eolus, on the other hand, was finished in rye, reposado tequila, extra añejo tequila, French oak, lightly peated whisky, and tawny port barrels. They are very different whiskeys that appeal to different palates.
I preferred the fresher, brighter Sunshine Peak over the richer, spicier Mount Eolus, but both have their place. I think of Sunshine Peak as a spring and summer whiskey while cooler fall days call for Mount Eolus. The unfortunate thing about Snowflakes, though, is that unless you are there that day, you ain’t getting any. The whiskeys sell out every year, and for good reason. I will, however, be savoring my bottles as long as possible.
Anyway, cocktail time. This drink features Stranahan’s Blue Peak, an American Single Malt that is aged in new American oak and Solera finished. (Solera being a fractional blending method, which results in a variety of ages being blended together.) I liked the mix of mellow single malt whiskey with tropical pineapple and just a bit of added heat from the cayenne. I couldn’t necessarily have more than one of these, but that’s what a rocks glass, a big ol’ cube, and straight whiskey are for.
Ingredients:
Method: Stir Stranahan’s Blue peak, pineapple liqueur, maple syrup, chili bitters, and orange twist in a glass over a large ice cube. Garnish with dried pineapple and a sprinkle of cayenne.
You know what day it is, I know what day it is, anyone with a pulse knows what day it is. I’m going to take this time to talk about one of my favorite ways to relax: Artet aperitifs.
I was first introduced to Artet a year or two back in the form of their Original Aperitif. Made with chamomile, gentian, ginger, grapefruit, and more, the flavor is light and herbal with just the right amount of bitterness to echo an alcoholic aperitif. With 2.5 mg per pour (from the conveniently attached shot glass), it offers the perfect amount to build off of, depending on your tolerance. It hit fairly quickly (within 30 minutes), and lasted just enough time to relax, laugh a bit, then come back down to Earth and move on with my day.
The fact that it’s only 30 calories per serving also helps (especially when, like me, I was trying to lose weight at the time). There’s enough in one bottle to sustain oneself for a week or more — or, like I did, enjoy the bottle with friends. I was then, for a while, without any. It was gone too soon and while I did not weep, I was a little sad.
Artet came back into my life in the form of one of their newest releases, Tet and Tonic, a canned version of their Original chamomile-flavored aperitif with lemon (and quinine, hence the tonic). It came out about a year ago, but I finally got my grubby paws on some. The flavor is best described as a mix between lemonade and tonic (or a gin and tonic with a twist…with some chamomile tea). At 35 calories per 8-ounce can, you can’t beat the impact on your waistline (especially compared to most normal tonic water-based drinks, especially when it delivers 5 mg (and 5 mg CBD) per serving.
The feeling hits, again, pretty quickly, and it carries on for at least an hour, with the gentleness of a warm hug meets the excitement of watching your favorite sports team in the championship game. The size makes it a great dosage to be social without being comatose, to relax without falling asleep — something that, now in my 30s, is an option after a long day of partying (when alcohol is involved).
Tet and Tonic — and the other Artet beverages are a great option when you’re looking to move away from alcohol, but still need a little something to overcome social anxiety, a great thing when we’ve spent so long not truly interacting with people in the ways many of us grew up.
No long screeds about anything today. I was sent this cocktail from Catoctin Creek Distilling Company, located in Purcellville, VA, and they had me from Tajín. (Well, they had me before that, because I’m a fan of the distillery’s whiskeys, but the Tajín sealed it.)
Tajín, the spicy, citrusy Mexican spice blend that graces the rims of many, many Micheladas and other drinks (both sweet and savory), was invented in 1985, according to Kat Thompson, writing for Thrillist. It’s infinitely useful and I always have some in my house. Here the piquancy is heightened by the citric acid, which then bring out the lemon peel flavors in the whiskey. Pair these notes with the sweet orange flavors and the vanilla in the whiskey and you get a nice, incredibly bright (without being too tart) cocktail. It’s a reminder that summer is just over the horizon and we’ll soon be sweating our asses off (at least here in South Carolina). This one would work well, too, as a batched cocktail for Taco Tuesday or any other excuse you might have to drink with friends.
(Cocktail recipe courtesy Denise Petty, tasting room manager at Catoctin Creek Distilling Co., Purcellville, VA)
Method: Stir, fine strain, and pour over fresh ice. Garnish with Tajin dusted orange rose.
This past weekend, I participated in the Ville to Ville Craft Brew Relay, a 72-mile run from Asheville, NC to Greenville, SC (Way to go Team Legends of the Drunken Temple). Two of my best friends from college were on the team, too, and my partner was our faithful driver (bless her for putting up with six stinky people for ~11 hours). Broken into 12 legs, I ran legs 4 and 12, 7.55 and 3.95 miles, respectively. At the end was a big party with music, food, and all the good stuff.
The night before, we kept it light, instead choosing to overindulge in pasta and bread and tuna steaks. As I was getting ready to meet up with the group, an idea dawned on me — bring some nonalcoholic beer. I had joked about carboloading, but the thought struck me that I could actually do as much with some NA beer without risking, you know, getting shit hammered and throwing up on the side of a random road in the mountains of North Carolina. Thankfully, I had gotten some Athletic Brewing Company beers back in January to try for Dry January which, while I made it 3 weeks into Jan, I never did try the ABC beers. This seemed like the perfect time.
I threw a six-pack of the Upside Dawn Golden Ale and the Run Wild IPA into our collective cooler and called it a night. Now, before this, I had mostly laughed off non-alcoholic beers. Not that I have anything wrong with NA options, but working in food and booze for years, I never wanted for beer, wine, or anything else. When I wanted to take a break from drinking, I’d just drink seltzer, if anything other than water, coffee, or tea. I had friends who had given up drinking for various lengths of time and had enjoyed NA beers, but the few times I had had them amounted to when I was a kid and would take St. Pauli Girl beers out of my parents’ basement fridge. I remember the cool, crisp taste and the bubbles. I liked the bubbles as a kid.
Now, though, with the ability to drink whatever I want, why would I bother drinking a beer without alcohol, I asked myself. Then, I ran 7.55 miles of straight hills in a light dusting of snow. My first leg was rated the second hardest of the 12, and well, yes. Yes it was. An initial big hill just led to what I thought of as a Limp Bizkit leg. It just kept rollin’, rollin’, rollin’.
Yes, I did make that joke.
My leg ended at a local Hendersonville Brewery, and I would’ve loved to sit with a beer (my next leg wasn’t for another six or seven hours), but we had to get to the next transition point. No beer for me.
On the way to the next stop, I grabbed a Golden out of the cooler and chugged it.
My god, it was everything I needed and wanted at that moment. Yes, one of my nipples was raw and dangerously close to bleeding. Yes, I smelled like what happens when you leave a boy’s locker room closed off without ventilation for a week. But its light and pretty balanced profile with just enough of a hop kick (it comes in at 15 IBU), was absolutely perfect. It was the definition of thirst-quenching. When I run, I sometimes envision air coming in through my mouth and nose and pervading every area of my body, a picture of a vascular system being pumped up with fresh oxygen. It helps me focus during a run. This beer did the same thing here. I felt its cool crispness pervading me. Attaching itself to my already tightening quads and calves. Replenishing my definitely empty stomach.
By the time we got to the next stop, and we were waiting for our runner to finish his leg, I cracked one of the IPAs — no NA beer left behind, after all. If it were warmer, the bright hoppiness would’ve been more appealing to me — I love a good, cold IPA on a hot summer day, especially here in South Carolina — but even though the temperature hadn’t yet broken 45 degrees, it was still enjoyable. I preferred the Golden, but my teammate preferred the IPA after his legs.
Sitting in a van for 10 hours, with some time running, gave me time to think about NA beers. While I probably won’t have them with regularity, I can honestly say I now see the value in them (outside of being able to offer someone who doesn’t drink an option beyond water, seltzer, or juice). I’m team Athletic Brewing now, and will definitely be packing more when we do Ville to Ville again next year, as we signed up as a team the next morning to do it again. It may have hurt at times, but we hurt together, and we did it (while also beating our estimated end time by 20 minutes).
Cough Athletic Brewing, want to sponsor us next year? Cough
Cough I’m not kidding, call me Cough
