Where it all starts…

Sweetwater Brewing

Howdy.

Let's dive in.

In this week's grand adventure in Brandonland… we find the strange perspective that you inevitably get when you’ve been in the game long enough. You start to see who’s the best and how the field slowly starts to swing up in certain places but in other places… what once worked. Really doesn’t anymore.

I’m not talking about a sport.

I’m talking of course about Craft Beer.

And to really talk about this… we must go back to the beginning of the Craft Beer journey for me… where it all started.

Sweetwater always had beautiful sunsets

When I was a young warthog and just diving into the world of BEER… I was in Georgia. This was waaay back in the Twenty Aughts. Craft Beer is still in its infancy… I know Stone and some of the old Giants had been around in the ‘90s… but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about how the world perceives the overall field. And the world was aware of these places making different kinds of beers… but there was nowhere near the hubbub around them as there is now. Craft beer bars? A rarity. To find one… would be to find something to cherish. Fortunately now… a great deal of places carry Craft Beer… back then. Not so much. I think I got excited when I could find some Stone on draft at a restaurant. 

ANYWHOO.

The Mid 2000s found young Brandon in Atlanta, Georgia looking for that next hot thing. That adventure that no one knew about. It turned out to be a place called Sweetwater Brewing. They too had started up in the late ‘90s and had been providing some great brews for the state of Georgia for sometime. But man… when the Craft Beer craze hit… it hit hard. And the place to be… was at Sweetwater. At least according to this mild-mannered writer.

The weird thing about hanging out at the Brewery was that they couldn’t sell you beer.

Yeah.

They couldn’t…

…in the early-to-mid 2000s.

I still can’t get over that. Even all this time later. But the answer to all that is two words: The South. Yup… the Bible Belt had some insane laws that were still in place because GOD forbid that someone would try to buy beer at a Brewery. It would upset everyone! Back on track - you go to Sweetwater on a Friday and they are only open for three and a half hours. That's it. So you lined up in the parking lot waiting to get in because there were a good amount of people that had the same idea as you. Once you got in… you had the option of buying a Pint glass with 5 tickets. Because… See here… there's some wiggle room in these ancient asinine laws. You could sell pint glasses with tickets and then give away the beer for free… in exchange for a ticket. It was the perfect work around and honestly still baffles people when I tell them about this. This really worked for College-Me because at the end of the night when there was only an hour or so left… people would literally come around and just ask people if they wanted their tickets. And of course… you said YES.

Such good times.

Ohhhhh… Sweetwater

For more on the first paragraph and how perspectives change… please continue to follow for even more fun outtakes on the life and times of moi. And maybe... I will give you more tales from that Beer-tastic 2016 Adventure of mine. They are coming.

I promise.

Slàinte!