Well, this was a true micro-brewery. Their 30 bbl brewery consisted of two large rooms located in the basement of Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria. The first half was the brew house including the equipment shown above. Just about all of their equipment was used dairy equipment. In the second half was their fermentation room which consisted of several ice cream tanks that they had converted to fermentation tanks.

It took us a while to find the place, especially since apparently the city of Asheville doesn't believe in road signs. By the time we found the place I was a little ticked off. We walked right in the back of the brewery and met up with the UNCA students who were going to be touring with. They were handing around samples of their beer as I walked in and one of the students turned to me and asked if I wanted him to pass me one back. I said sure and he handed me, what I think was their Oatmeal Porter. So, my "ticked off" mood quickly faded. The beer was pretty good. After touring we went upstairs to Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria, where they have 40 ~ 50 beers on tap and several more in bottles. The first beer I tried was the "Rogue John's Locker Stock #18 Harvest Ale". I believe they said this was an IPA, and I would believe it. It had a HUGE hop flavor. The description on their beer menu was this:

"This release is the 4th vintage of Rogue Ales' Harvest Ale using wet hops. John Maier arranged to pick up 1000 pounds of Newport hops which were being picked as he arived... 11 Burlap Sacks were transported to the brewery where Chris Spollen (#2 brewer at Rogue) and John "more hops" Maier pitched 150 pounds of wet, freshly picked Newport Hops into the kettle... the rest is history... four batches were brewed in total."

The second beer I had was a "Thomas Creek Dopplebock". This was a good beer as well. It's the first Dopplebock I've ever tasted so I don't know how much to style it was. It tasted a little like a wine to be perfectly honest. It was still a good beer.