Just got back and most everything was screwed up beerwise due to Brewvival as expected. Friday night we were able to sneak away from the wedding duties to Closed for Business for the Brewvival preparty. After glasses of Sexual Chocolate, we were challenged by two guys at a table of pharmacy doctoral students to a Das Boot! challenge. We figured why the hell not. Apparently it is a communal chug challenge and the guy to the right of the person who finishes the boot has to pay for it. Why they challenged Tara and three large, bearded men to this I still do not understand. I think they realized they fucked up at two points:
1. When I said "Well 2.5 liters isn't a whole lot for six people. Why don't we do two boots and start each one on opposite sides of the table" Me:
Them:
2. Once the boot traveled through two of us one of their friends said with a tremble of fear in his voice "Damn that boot is going fast"
So, we won. They paid and the loser's wife forced him to leave because he ended up spending "all their money".
We hung out with the remaining members of their group for the rest of the night. Although awkward, it was good times.
Saturday was wedding all day. We went out afterwards and set up at a bar called Proof. We chose it because it had both a good spirits/cocktails list and solid bottled beer list. Big mistake. This bar was incredibly pretentious and everyone from the head bartender to the doorman had an attitude from the moment we got there. I guess spending a shitload of money there (my guess is somewhere from $600 to $800) between the 20+ of us wasn't enough, and they were looking for reasons to make us leave. We stuck it out, but it finally reached a breaking point once the bartender got in the face of one of the guys in our group who had to ask 8 times for his check because the bartender was just blatantly ignoring him for an hour. Then the bartender had words with a few ladies in our group and then he proceeded to cuss them out and pushed one. This led to he and I having words (maybe more
) and we decided to relocate before the cops showed up. Naturally we went to the gay bar to close out the evening.
My advice, never spend any money at Proof if you end up in Charleston.
Food Note: We went to Pearlz Oyster Bar for lunch. Highlights included an awesome list of oyster varieties, shrimp cocktail bloody mary, and pork belly with shrimp and jalapeno grits. Highly recommend.
Sunday was brunch and head out. We did hit Charleston Beer Exchange on the way out of town. Nice shop but much smaller than expected. Prices were quite a bit higher on a lot of things, but I guess that is expected considering the rent they must pay for their location. Decent selection but the Brewvival beer crowd had pretty much cleared them out of anything interesting by then. I was able to grab Westbrook's Apple Brandy Barrel Aged Tripel and 100% Brett Lichtenhainer which was nice because those were the two beers I was after.
Overall, super nice beer store. Food note: We went to Blossom for brunch and dropped a bill on the meal but it was totally worth it. Highlights included fresh pumpkin and strawberry bread, shellfish based bloody mary, mango habanero mojito, duck confit skillet scrambler and thick cut brioche French toast. Everything was stellar and it couldn't have been a better meal.
That's about it. It appeared to be a pretty cool town and I look forward to visiting the breweries next time.
