By Dathan Kazsuk | November 18, 2016
Twitter: @TriangleAT | Facebook: Triangle Around Town | Instagram: @trianglearoundtown
I’m not one to wake up early. I’d rather stay sleeping in a warm bed then get up at anytime before 8 a.m. You won’t catch me up early to go jogging or to hit the gym. You won’t even see me up early to make breakfast for my wife if she needs to leave town for work.
Because of this reason, I’ve never been found of getting up early just to stand in line for beer. So when I decided that I was going to get up at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of November 12 and drive 2.5 hours west to Hickory, North Carolina for a bottle release – Jen must have thought I was crazy.
But that’s exactly what I did. Along with my friend, we hopped in my car and were on the road at 5 a.m. on the dot.
Our conversations were based mainly on beer, which was a good thing. It kept me motivated as to why I was up this early. That, and the beer we were going to get was Olde Hickory’s Event Horizon stout … but with a twist. The folks at Olde Hickory took the stout (which is by far one of my favorite stouts in the state) and divided it up four ways – known as the Event Horizon Spectrum.
Spectrum No. 1 was blended with coffee and cinnamon. Spectrum No. 2 was blended with orange and cocoa. Spectrum No. 3 was blended with coconut and vanilla. And Spectrum No. 4 was blended with espresso and mocha.
It was a few minutes before 8 a.m. when we arrived at the brewery. The doors were to open at 9 a.m. and I knew there would be some die hard beer drinkers out there who probably set up camp at around 3 a.m. – but I wasn’t expecting the line to be what it was when we arrived an hour before the posted time.
From first glance the line didn’t seem that long. Just right down to the corner of the street. But the closer we got to the brewery we saw the line turned up the road and kept going and going and going. I wasn’t sure how much beer Olde Hickory had on hand, but deep down, before we even said anything to one another, we were already thinking, “Did we leave to late?”
For almost two hours we stood in line waiting to get inside. The brewery then handed out 240 wristbands, that guarantee the full allotment of beer (which was 3 of each one of the Spectrum releases). We did not receive a wristband – falling 9 back from the last wristband distributed for the day. So the two of us started counting people coming out of the brewery with open boxes. In our reasoning, that meant they probably didn't purchase a full allotment.
But all seemed well when we saw Olde Hickory's head brewer Steven Lyerly look over the last of the crowd and mention to us that we'll all get our full allotment. Now we were able to relax!
Once we bought our beer and took them back out to the car, it was time to come back to the brewery and try what we've spent 5 hours in line and in the car to come and get. We were not disappointed! Each beer had nice flavors – some, like the coffee and cinnamon might need to rest for anywhere from 6 to 12 months. But others like the orange and cocoa tasted great freshly opened. Out of the four we drank that day, we both agreed that the espresso and mocha stout was the best of the Spectrum.
We have enough to try these beers at 6-and 12-months of aging and are looking forward to the day these will be opened to consume. Until then, I'm always OK opening other OH beers such as Lindley Park, Event Horizon, Wavell Gun or Death by Hops.