The Beer Week Chronicles, in which we profile various beer weeks across the country, are focusing this week on one of the United States’ breakout beer scenes: Asheville, North Carolina.
With twenty-seven breweries within an hour of Asheville, it's kind of beer week here every week,” says Mike Rangel, the president of Asheville Brewing Company and one of the founders of Asheville Beer Week. “The Asheville beer climate is changing like crazy. With two of the three top craft breweries within twenty minutes of each other, it’s bringing a lot of attention to this area. Sprinkle in Oskar Blues thirty minutes away in Brevard, and you have a true brewers’ hot-spot.”
In 2012, Rangel became the committee chair for the first Asheville Brewers Week. He and fellow members—Jules Attalah of the Bruisin' Ales homebrew shop, Mary Eliza Lamb of Rogue Brewing, Adam Reinke of the Mountain Ale and Lager Tasters (MALT) homebrew club, TJ Gardner of Sierra Nevada, Anne Fitten Glenn of Oskar Blues Brewing, and Jimi Rentz of Barley’s Taproom and Pizzeria—saw a need for a beer week in Asheville after visiting other states’ beer weeks.