Yesterday Dave and I took a field trip to the Carolina Brewing Company for one of their weekly tours. We had a nice time (without the kids).

Dave did a description of the brewery and nice review of their beers here.

I just can’t believe we’ve been living right up the street from the place all this time and never thought to do this. It’s a great free activity for when family or friends come to visit.

Every Saturday afternoon from 1-3pm (perhaps even 4pm) they open up the taps for free “samples”, although you’re basically getting full pint glasses and you’re welcome to get as much as you like. Needless to say, we saw a lot of college kids.

Get there early, though…Dave and I arrived at 1pm exactly and there was a 10-15 minute wait before we made to the taps the first time. And we went straight back to the end of the line after we got our first pint, because we had drained our glasses when we got back to the taps (another 15 minutes). The taps are turned off during the tour portion itself, which is about 1/2 hour around 1:30-2pm.

We bought a set of 5 pint glasses, each of them featuring a different one of their beers. I was really wanting one of their Groundhog Day Imperial Stout glasses (go figure!) and the gentleman said they were out of new ones for me, but if I mingled among the crowd and found someone with one for their free samples, I could provide a clean drinking glass and take the used Groundhog’s Day glass. So that’s what I did! (I had 1 1/2 beers in me by this time, I had no problem batting my eyelashes at a guy to do it).