Woodruff Brewing – Cask Night part Duex

Well beer fans, I just returned from the second Woodruff cask night at Hard Knox Pizza and I am already looking forward to the next.  If you have not been to Hard Knox and you are a pizza fan you should check this place out.  It resides in the back of Western Plaza on Kingston Pike.  They use only the freshest ingredients and a nice earthstone true wood oven that bakes that puppy at around 750 deg. resulting in one kick ass pie.  All the oak used is reclaimed wood  from lumber production.

The lineup tonight was the Woodruff Kolsch that had been dry hopped with 3 jalapeno and 1 and 1/2 banana peppers.  It takes a mighty ambitious brewer to work with high caliber peppers such as jalapeno but Dave Ohmer is such a brewer.  When you brew with peppers you never know quite what you are going to get and I am speaking from experience (due to many home brewing failures).  Dave poured me a pint and the aroma of jalapenos literally smacked me in the face.  The flavor was WOW, hot stuff.  Lets say I was glad I took my acid re-flux pill today.  It was a bit hard to get a pint down but after some experimental diluting with the straight up Kolsch we ended up with a 4:1 mix and a very tasty brew.  That is how it goes sometimes and that is where the fun is.  You can really get crazy here and you might just come up with something fantastic.  I salute Dave for starting on this voyage and I have a heads up for you BeerSnobs.  Mark October 4th @ 6:00pm at Downtown Grill and Brewery where Dave will unleash his next experimental cask ale.  He will be dry hopping the White Mule Pale Ale with homegrown cascade hops from Dave’s own garden.  Now that sounds awesome to me and yet another first for Knoxville.

Cheers folks.