The Brewgrass Festival is this weekend, so we’re lucky to have a plethora of brewers in Asheville right now. Tomorrow, Dan Del Grande, owner and brewer of Bison Brewery out of Berkeley, CA will be visiting our humble storefront and sampling some of his organic beers for you.

This tasting will be a little different since it’s an off week. Cost for the tasting is $5 with proper ID, but if you make a $20 in-store purchase, including all merchandise (t-shirts, glassware, books, magazines, etc.), we’ll give you that $5 back. Simple as that. Offer valid only on Thursday 9/20.

**$1.00 per person will be donated to Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway.**

The beer flight:

Bison Golden Bock —Golden in color with a creamy head. Well-balanced with a light caramel on the finish. [7.5% abv]

Bison Belgian Ale—”This Belgian-style beer has a subtle sweetness, accentuating notes of plums derived from our Belgian yeast strain.  Unlike traditional Belgian beers, we use cascade hops and coriander (the seed of cilantro) to add a balanced spiciness. One Belgian customer raved that it was a “very good” Belgian pale ale. This organic beer is only available in 22 ounce bottles, but we bring some in kegs to festivals now and then.” [8.1% abv]

Bison I.P.A.—Now part of the Single Hop Series, this batch features all Amarillo hops. “For our 22-ounce IPA, we play around a bit. We use the exact same malt profile, but experiment with a single hop variety in all late kettle additions and dry hopping so that beer aficionados can learn (or remember) what each hop tastes like.” [6.8% abv]

Bison Chocolate Stout—”This richly textured, roasty dry stout has a boost of bitter and charasmatic flavor from the addition of cocoa powder in the mash. We blend five unique organic malts to create Bison’s most award winning beer.” [6.1% abv]

Britain’s ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) has banned another beer ad this year, this time from US Brewer, Miller, and their Miller Genuine Draft product. The ad features a guy stuck in traffic that gets a hold of some rollerskates and gets to his destination through a series of exciting stunts to be rewarded with an MGD. We can understand why they took these scratch-off bottles from the shelves, but rollerskating? (Perhaps Miller is trying to make rollerskating cool again on behalf of Broadway’s new sleeper hit, Xanadu The Musical—based on the somewhat cult classic film with Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelley—and wants to sponsor the run in London’s West End. Okay, that is a stretch.)

Here’s the ruling:

“We considered that the action of roller skating, particularly when combined with the effortless cool of the execution of a series of tricks, was likely to appeal strongly to under 18s.

“We considered that the somersault over a group of dogs, the jump through a tyre and the backwards descent of a staircase constituted daring behaviour, and concluded that the ad associated alcohol with feats that would be considered dangerous, and appeal strongly to under 18s.”

Miller countered by saying they “deliberately” were trying to appeal to “over 25s.” Apparently, there are a lot of mid-20s rollerskating males in England. You can watch the commercial here.

From the Inbox today. Drew is busy.