Beer in the Raleigh-Durham Area

In the company of the woman I travel with, I spent a week in the Raleigh-Durham area with enough time on my hands that I was able to peruse a fair portion of the local beer scene.

Raleigh boasts two brewpubs: the Southend Brewery and Greenshields. The Southend Brewery is located in an old power station at 505 W. Jones Street, close to, but not in downtown. Parking is not a problem. The woman I travel with and I were there for lunch and looking over the beer choices (a wheat beer, 'golden ale', brown ale, IPA, and a stout), I opted for the brown ale while we were waiting. The brown ale was very toasty, with a big Special-B thing going on. A little one-dimensional, but a good clean beer. Lunch showed up and I ordered the IPA which was excellent. I'm not a big hophead, so some might think the beer was on the lame side. However, the brewers had put enough Cascade in to give the beer a nice bitey hop flavor and aroma, but had avoided going over into the grapefruit zone. This reporter was impressed. The menu is pretty standard pub food, although it does offer real Carolina barbecue (as one might expect). As my ex-wife (a southern girl) left me with a serious addiction to pulled barbecued pork with Carolina sauce and coleslaw, I was in heaven.

We went to Greenshields a few nights later for dinner. Having spent the day in a mind-numbing tour of antique stores in the area (a concession to the woman I travel with), I was in dire need of hunkering down with something cold and malty. I found it at in the form of an excellent Dunkel at Greenshields, which is located in the Old City Market at 214 E. Martin St. in the middle of downtown. Parking is not a problem, but navigating to the place through the confusing mixture of one-way streets is painful. Although Greenshield's name, logo, and advertising would suggest an English pub, the strength of the brewery seems to be in the German style beers they produce; besides the dunkel, they also had an excellent pilsener. Also, on draft when I visited (I had the very generous sampler) was a porter, an amber, a 'golden ale', and a brown. All of these beers were very good, but the dunkel and the pilsener were clear stand-outs. Greenshield's has a bottling line on premises and six packs of the pilsener and amber are available at the brewery and at local grocery stores.

Just around the block from Greenshields is Tir Na Nog, advertised as an Irish pub awarded the '1998 perfect pint of Guinness' for Raleigh. If your perfect pint is one served at Budweiser temperatures, I couldn't argue with this designation. Other tap offerings were predictable, Harp and the budmillercoors mix. We were there on a Tuesday night and live music that consisted of an eclectic mix of Jimmy Buffet, Arlo Guthrie, and Irish revolutionary music was also on tap (all this from one guy!). After restraining me from requesting 'Stairway to Heaven', the woman I travel with suggested that we move on.

We did move on to the other Irish pub in town, the Riv Ra, located coincidentally around the corner from the Southend Brewery. A slightly more up-scale interior, but the same chilled Guinness (they too had mysteriously been awarded the 1998 Raleigh perfect pint award).

To the west of Raleigh, Chapel Hill has one brewpub, the Carolina Brewery. The woman I travel with and I stopped in for a pre-dinner drink and found their choices to be an amber, a pilsener, a brown ale, a stout, and the apparently prerequisite 'golden ale'....a somewhat disappointing selection as their signage around the bar would indicate that they also brew an oktoberfest, a trappist, a dunkel, even a lambic, amongst a host of others. I had the brown ale, which was a respectable beer and I determined we would return later. Our real reason for making the trip to Chapel Hill was the existence of the Pyewacket restaurant across the street from the Carolina Brewing Company. 'Pyewacket' being the name of a recently acquired kitten at the Lincolnwood Manse, the karmic implications of a restaurant of the same name seemed too powerful to ignore. The food at the Pyewacket was an American Nouveau type of thing, but excellent....and they did have bottles of Pinehurst Village Brewery's Double Eagle Brown Ale that I would have to rate as the best of the several brown ales I had in the area. The Double Eagle Brown Ale is also available at most local grocery stores. After dinner, we returned to the Carolina Brewery and I had a chance to try their very tame stout and a very good classic American pilsener. The brewery is clearly catering to the adjacent UNC campus and, consequently, if you're looking for adventuresome brewing, you'll probably not find it here. None the less, if the beers are predictable, they are also well-made.

Our various travels in the Raleigh-Durham area were centered on the town of Cary. The reasons for my staying in Cary needn't concern the casual reader. Suffice it to say, it was necessary for the business aspects of the trip and that Cary is to Raleigh what Schaumburg is to Chicago. In spite of the surrounding suburban nightmare, there is a zymulurgical gem here. The Fox and Hound is located in MacGregor Village, an upscale Cary strip mall. In spite of this, the owners have gone to some pains to recreate an English pub and have succeeded fairly well. The decor and menu are both very pub-like and the beer selection is good. The tap selection was not extensive with Fullers ESB and the best Guinness I found in Raleigh being the most notable. However, the bottle selection is impressive: Marstons Pedigree, Speckled Hen, Brains Welsh Ale, Belhaven Scottish Ale, and Smiles Heritage, among others. Not everything they have is on the menu and even the bartender does not seem to know what is there, so pay attention to what's on the shelves when they open the cooler. The Fox and Hound also had one cask-conditioned ale, a pale ale from the Carolina Brewing Company (not to be confused with the Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill). I had the CBC pale ale and found it disappointing to the point of being almost undrinkable; there was a very distinct soapy taste that dominated the whole flavor profile. Badly kept or badly made?

One final note: CBC is a brewery (not a brewpub) that is a 'four person operation in Holly Springs that is independent of any other brewery or brewpub with the "Carolina" name'. They have a pale ale, a nut brown ale, and a lager that are generally available in grocery stores in the Raleigh area. Their beers are decent, if not especially notable.