Best places in Myrtle Beach to drink session beers

In my Weekly Surge column, I recently gave the low-down on session beers and the best places to drink them in the greater Myrtle Beach area. Read it here.

It's going to be BIG

Read all about it here.


Visit the official Web site here.


woo-hoo!

Croissants Bistro & Bakery: New Year's Eve Chef's Tasting Menu

Note the available wine flights, listed at the end -- and, at the very end, the phone number for reservations. -- Colin


NEW YEAR'S EVE CHEF'S TASTING MENU
CROISSANTS BISTRO & BAKERY


Featuring Chef Bryan Bodle

$50

Amuse Bousche
Chef's choice to get you started

Appetizers:
your choice

Malpaque Oysters on the half shell, Bloody Mary Sorbet, Shaved Cucumber

Crepe Florentine, Light Tomato Cream

Preserved Duck Leg and Forest Mushroom Spring Roll, Sweet and Sour Au Jus

Salads:
your choice

Classic Caesar, shaved Parmesan, Thyme Garlic Bruschetta

or

Organic Baby Spinach Salad, warm Shallot, Bacon Vinaigrette,
Baby Tomato, Honey Pecans, Crumbled Clemson Bleu Cheese

Entree:
your choice

Pan Seared Yellow Fin Tuna "Au Poivre"
Nicoise accompaniments

Petite Filet and oven roasted half tail of Maine Lobster,
Saffron Potato Puree, Ratatouille Vinaigrette

Grill Roasted New Zealand Rack of Lamb
Soft herb creamy Polenta, fine roasted Bell Pepper- Olive Relish

Dessert:
Featuring Culinary Institute Student, Sara Johnson

Chocolate Hazelnut Crepes

or

Egg Nog Creme Brulee

Wine Flights available for additional charge:
Wine selections by Stephen Stroman
Champagne Flight
White Wine Flight
Red Wine Flight

843-448-2253
call for reservations

Michelob Craft Collection on shelves now

Michelob's Craft Collection has three 12-ounce bottles each of Pale Ale, Irish Red, Porter, and Marzen.

I saw it at the Bi-Lo on 38th Avenue North (in Myrtle Beach) for about $11.99.

New South Brewing Co. to start canning

New South Brewing Co. in Myrtle Beach, S.C., will begin canning beer in March.

Dave Epstein, owner of New South, said the canning equipment will arrive in January.

New South provides kegs to bars and restaurants in the Carolinas, especially in the greater Myrtle Beach area.

Epstein displayed possible can designs during New South's recent 10th anniversary celebration.

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beer
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Beer tasting today (Saturday, Oct. 11)

Jim Varcadipane recently purchased Atlantic Discount Spirits at 2901 U.S. 17 South in Garden City Beach, and today is the final day of his BeerFest, which has featured some local and regional distributors.

Varcadipane said each distributor should have approximately 12 different beers. Here's a look at today's schedule.

3:30-6:30 p.m., Saturday (Oct. 11): Advintage Wines of North Charleston and Aleph Wines of Columbia have the wares, along with regional distributor Republic National.

Call 357-6232 or visit www.atlanticdiscountspirits.com for more information.

Blessing of the Beasts in Albuquerque

Mark Goodman, our former rector at Trinity Episcopal here in Myrtle Beach (and a treasured friend of mine), is now dean of the Cathedral Church of Saint John in downtown Albuquerque, N.M. Here is KOAT-TV's video clip of the pet blessing service Mark held today in honor of Saint Francis.
http://www.koat.com/video/17627147/

Two special events at Atlantic Discount Spirits in Garden City Beach this weekend

Later today (Friday, Oct. 3), Atlantic Discount Spirits will have a tasting with Crown Royal, Cask 16, Zwack, and Kettle One Citroen. The tasting runs 3:30-6:30 p.m.

And on Saturday (Oct. 4), also 3:30-6:30 p.m., the store will have a tasting with Forty Creek Barrel Select Whiskey and Charter 101.

Atlantic Discount Spirits is located at 2901-A U.S. 17 South in Garden City Beach.

Mellow Mushroom's brew list continues to grow

Last week, a friend told me that Mellow Mushroom here in Myrtle Beach has been slowly but surely adding more and more brews -- beers on tap, to be more precise.

Anyone out there tried some of the local Mellow Mushroom's recently added beer offerings? Care to comment?

By the way, the friend who told me was Michael Wood, who has done an outstanding cover story on the Myrtle Beach underground music scene for the Weekly Surge. Read the article here.

Quote of the Week

In the "hot pour" interview column in the current (Sept. 4) edition of The Weekly Surge, Christian S. Gore interviews Jessie Leeson, 28, a bartender at the local Gordon Biersch restaurant and brewery.

Christian S. Gore: Have you ever thought about what it'd be like to work a shift on LSD?

Jessie Leeson: Every shift I work I feel like I am on LSD... Myrtle Beach is a trippy place."

Beerman has gone to every-other-week

To the readers of my Beerman column in The Weekly Surge --

If you haven't noticed yet, the editor and I decided to make Beerman an every-other-week kind of column.

I will continue to update this blog between columns.

Send me news when you have some!

cheers,
Colin

Hanna knocks down a big tree

Here in Briarcliffe Acres, S.C. --

The evening news with WMBF, Myrtle Beach's first NBC affiliate

Danner Evans is the right woman for the anchor seat in the WMBF local news operation: she's crisp, quick, charming and attractive.

WMBF is the new -- and the first -- NBC affiliate in the Myrtle Beach-Florence market. Friday (August 8) was the local news operation's first day on the air.

But even with Evans' solid handling of the co-anchor position with Michael Maely, the WMBF 11 o'clock news on Friday evening(running late due to the NBC coverage of Olympic opening ceremonies in Beijing) brought these questions to mind:

1. The segment with the Internet reporter is a smart idea, but will the camera get close enough to the screen, or will the screen become big enough, so that the viewers can see what is on the displayed Web sites? CNN has an Internet reporter who does the same thing, and it can be an effective and useful segment, but the CNN screen is larger, and the viewers can see what is on the Web sites.

2. Tonight's opening report, regarding the Olympics, was broadcast live from a local sports bar. The report had only one bar patron talking on camera; the rest of the report was a voice-over of the reporter talking while the viewers watched mundane shots of the people sitting around inside the bar. Will WMBF generally avoid mundane footage?

3. Was everyone a bit nervous tonight? The introduction to a segment on counterfeit bills was awkward and repetitive. Another segment about air quality in Beijing included a fumble with graphics and video. That's all understandable. After months of build-up, the big day was here, and the folks in the newsroom knew they were riding the NBC legacy. It was truly a big day. Brian Williams, reporting from Beijing, gave a shout out to the new WMBF during NBC's Nightly News.

All that being said, hats off to Justin Felder for two good stories about local Olympic athletes -- crisp reports with charm.

And, WMBF's graphics, color schemes, and set are appealing and engaging.

Only good can result from another news operation in the area.

The new NBC affiliate will make WPDE and WBTW work even harder -- and that's important when broadcast journalism's usual crib sheet, the daily newspaper, in this case The Sun News, has gone through a recent round of counterintuitive layoffs and belt-tightening.

Maybe the cuts were not so counterintuitive. Maybe locals just prefer TV news (the short version with bright, spiffy graphics) to newspapers (the in-depth, and best-reported, version), but Horry County, the so-called Independent Republic, needs all the public accountability it can get.

Even if every report ends with the reporter saying "live, local, and late-breaking." Which brings me to:

4. Will WMBF really end each and every report with "live, local, and late-breaking"? Really? I mean, time is everything on television, right?

#

Newcomers to the area might not understand the significance of a local NBC affiliate. Since I moved to Myrtle Beach in 1996, I have had both the Columbia, S.C., and the Wilmington, N.C., affiliates available on my local TimeWarner cable box. Meanwhile, WBTW 13 (CBS) and WPDE 15 (ABC) both have been covering the Myrtle Beach-Florence market for several years now.

#

Late update: Conan O'Brien just did a shout-out to the new WMBF on his Late Night with Conan O'Brien show.

-Colin Foote Burch

Definitive review of Myrtle Beach's beer now online

Hey folks -- my Weekly Surge cover story about Myrtle Beach's locally brewed beer was published on May 29, but the newspaper's Web site didn't seem to have a permalink for story until recently. Now, at last, you can find it here. Note that at the bottom of the main article, there are links for two related stories that ran with the same package.

The main players are:

1. The microbrewery New South Brewing Co. in Myrtle Beach;

2. The brewpub Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery at Broadway at the Beach in Myrtle Beach;

3. The brewpub Quigley's Plate and Pint in Pawleys Island;

4. The new Gordon Biersch brewpub at The Market Common on the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base.

Chuck's Steakhouse and its 28-ounce Michelob

I was wrong about big domestic beers.

There, I said it.

They're not all bad.

In fact, Michelob Lager has more to offer than I expected.

Having been a bit of a brew snob lately, I have not tasted much in the way of big domestics, not for a while. I think the last time I drank a big can of Budweiser was more than a year ago, at the House of Blues, when the band Drive-By Truckers was on the stage, and I was afraid I would get my ass kicked if I bought Heineken.

So I had written off the big domestics in favor of microbrews and imports.

Until I dined at Chuck's Steakhouse on Restaurant Row here in Myrtle Beach -- twice, recently.

My wife and I like to eat there when we can; it's got an excellent, old-school steakhouse touch to it. I even like the fact that their salad bar isn't a mile long; it's something more typical of the era before salad bars mutated and took over the restaurant industry.

Anyway, Chuck's has only one draft beer, Michelob, plus a tap for the beer substitute Michelob Ultra.

The folks at Chuck's will sell you a big frosty goblet containing approximately 28 ounces of Michelob for $5.50.

I noted that the Michelob had interesting, hoppy characteristics, followed by a pleasant dryness.

This was not the blandness I had come to expect from big domestics. Michelob had something going on. It showed up. It had something to offer.

Perhaps all the time I have spent focusing on the imports and microbrews, and learning about their characteristics, helped me understand what there was to appreciate in that Michelob.

Because after I made my favorable assessment of Michelob, I looked up the company Web site, on which -- it is claimed -- that their lager is made with "European noble aroma hop varieties" and "a 100-percent-malt blend of the finest two-row and caramel malts."

Damn, it really makes a difference, especially when compared with Bud.

Hmm, I'm sounding a bit sappy here. But then again, I'm now determined to give Coors and Miller another go. Maybe there's something I've been missing -- whoa, did I say that?

Stay tuned.

-Colin Foote Burch

Best locally brewed beers in the Myrtle Beach area

Hey folks -- my cover story in the Weekly Surge will be available at this link for about three more days. Check out my picks from Myrtle Beach / Pawleys Island microbreweries and brewpubs. If you are a beer drinker who lives in the greater Myrtle Beach area, or if you are planning a visit, this article is a must-read if you want to make the most of your beer-drinking dollar.

Myrtle Beach Moment No. 13; traffic backs up for holiday weekend

The view, about mid-afternoon, from the former Caddyshack restaurant, next door to Hooters at Colonial Mall in Myrtle Beach. The foreground is U.S. 17 southbound, and the background is the ramp from S.C. 22 down to northbound U.S. 17.

In this cropped view, you can see the Tanger Outlet in the background, and vehicles waiting either to exit onto Kings Road or onto U.S. 17 northbound. The ramps are the end of S.C. 22.

Myrtle Beach Bike Week 2008 continues

An impromptu bike crossing on Restaurant Row yesterday.

This is not how I would welcome most bikers to Myrtle Beach Bike Week 2008

Impromptu bike crossing