Tasting Three Beers from Nantahala Brewing Company

First impressions can be a tricky thing. There’s so much pressure built up around that first encounter, that it can be downright impossible to overcome a poor showing. Personally, I have a hard time getting past that first encounter. TV pilots, my brother’s girlfriends, restaurants…if I don’t like something after the first five minutes, I’m not likely to give that thing another shot. Life is short, there’s no reason to waste your time on a girl who wears gloves in the summer, or a restaurant that overcooks pork. But here’s the thing about first impressions: sometimes, people have off nights. Sometimes, it takes a while for a restaurant to get its shit together. And if you judge a person/place/thing strictly on that first, brief encounter, you might be missing out on something great.
Case in point, Nantahala Brewing Company, which holds down a corner of Bryson City, North Carolina, right on the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The first time I had one of their beers several years ago (I think it was an IPA), I thought it was…fine. Not bad, but not worth going out of my way to track down. I tucked Nantahala Brewing (NBC) into that “fine” category and moved on, never giving them a second thought. Fast forward several years to a party where I’m given one of NBC’s stouts, and I’m absolutely blown away. Not only is the beer better than just “fine,” it’s the exact stout I’ve been looking for at this moment in my life. A soul mate stout, if you will.
What changed between my first impression of NBC and this killer stout? Hell if I know. Maybe NBC has hit its stride. Maybe they had an off batch so many years ago, or maybe I was having a bad day and nothing was going to taste great in my mind. Or maybe, over the past several years, they’ve upped their game. Brewing is as much of an art as it is a science. The more you do it, the better you get, so it makes sense that some breweries will simply get better over time. I think that’s the case with NBC. Age and experience has worked in their favor.
So maybe first impressions aren’t that important after all. Maybe it’s the second, or third impressions that really seal the deal. With that in mind, I gathered a few limited release, big bottle beers from NBC to taste, all of which confirm my second impression of this brewery: they make damn good beer.
Nantahala Pale Ale