Piss Pour Performance
By Ian Guevara
I’ve been asked several times by several of our avid readers if I have ever written or will write a negative review about a brewery. To be honest, I haven't really come across any brewery that I genuinely dislike.
I didn't start this blog to be a critic or to act as some yelp-like gatekeeper of breweries and beer. I do this purely out of joy and to have fun. Sure I would love to make a living off of this (you all could send me more money! I kid, I kid) and I do daydream of the possibilities, but often I have to remind myself to stay grounded in reality.
However, occasionally I do run across a brewery so bad and so atrocious, that I’m bereft of any positive notes on which to hone in. Native American Brewing Company is such a brewery that literally left a bad taste in my mouth.
It’s been a week since I left Asheville. I returned to Bryson City and spent the week falling into a solid little routine of exercising daily in the morning, eating lunch in town, sitting in one of the three coffee shops, and writing as much as I could. It was rather enjoyable.
I made Nantahala Brewing Company my pseudo home bar as I made friends with one of the bartenders, Brock. Every evening after writing a story and before heading back to Deep Creek Campground, I stopped at Nantahala Brewing and downed a beer or two and chatted with Brock and the other bartenders.
By midweek, Chuck and his son Bryce joined me. Old friends from the New Orleans area, Chuck and his family over the past few years have become one of my rotating summer camping companions. We spend the latter half of the week tubing on Deep Creek, whitewater kayaking, and hiking around the park.
On the final day we packed up the campsite and began our journey to Elkmont Campground on the other side of the Smokies not far from Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I was excited. After a little respite from reviewing breweries I now had three more to which to look forward.
Heading up Highway 441, we cruise through the Cherokee reservation. I was looking forward to visiting Native American Brewing Company. It’s a practically brand new brewery, however I could not find any information about when the brewery opened or how long they’ve been operating. Infact, I couldn’t get much of anything at Native American Brewing Company.
This was quite possibly the most miserable experience I’ve ever had at a brewery.
If there is any indication of how poor my experience is, all you have to do is look at my notes. Nearly 40 pages of notes fill up a legal pad. Nearly every page is covered from top to bottom with observations, quotes, story ideas, and general information on the breweries I visit.
On Native American Brewing Company’s dedicated page, the notes are sparse:
“Tourist Trap”
“Native American Applebees”
“Not intimate, not organized, just very impersonal”
“Seems like this place was built solely to take money from tourists”
Those are not flattering notes. When I tell you this place was awful, I mean it. When we walked in at noon on a Friday, it was empty. Not a good sign. The restaurant is rather large with a massive and pretty outdoor area. But as we sat at the bar, something felt off. Then I realized it, there were at least 15 staff members in the restaurant, which is empty by the way, and at no point in the first five minutes of us sitting at the bar were we ever greeted.
Most of the servers were very young, late highschool early college, and they were either chatting with each other or on their phones. Another bad sign. The other older staff members just zipped back and forth across the restaurant space for seemingly no reason. They neither possessed food to run nor pads for taking orders.
Ten minutes passed. How does a manager look at four people sitting at a bar, twiddling their thumbs and not greet us or send a server or bartender to greet us?
Fifteen minutes passed. Finally the bartender, who was maybe late for work or in the back of the restaurant doing God knows what arrived. I was happy they had flights and asked for a menu to take a look at the options.
“We don't have any beer menus,” she answers, “but all the beers are posted on the board.”
One of those liquid chalk boards lit up from behind displays the beers written in some form of letter from the phonecian alphabet.
“What can you tell me about Smoke Signals?” I asked.
“Huh, well… I don't really drink beer, so I couldn't really tell you. Sorry.” At least she apologized for her incompetence.
This place sucks, I said to myself.
I should have just gotten up and left, but Chuck and I were thirsty for a beer before we traversed the stretch of Highway 441 that winds through the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Bryce orders some potato skins as a snack… this place is absolutely the Cherokee Reservation’s Applebees. In an empty restaurant with nearly fifteen front of house employees and what sounded like an active kitchen, it took nearly half an hour for six potato skins to make it out of the kitchen.
I don’t even bother trying to start a conversation with the bartender or asking about the history of the brewery. The employees here seem uninterested and I can assume know very little about the history of this place. The beers most certainly reflect this lack of attention and care. Not one beer was particularly good and some were downright terrible.
At least this place has creative names for its beers.
My first flight was filled with “Smoky Mountain”, “The Warrior”, “Woven Walnut”, and “Sunrise Hard Vanilla”. Smokey Mountain is a Golden Ale displaying a dandelion color and a bready aroma. It possesses a light malt sweetness with a somewhat balanced finish. The Warrior is a Blonde Ale showing a bumblebee color with a neutral scent. It’s light and airy to start, finishing slightly hoppy.
Woven Walnut is a Walnut Stout revealing an umber color with a roasted malt aroma. It’s rather light for a stout, starting with an overly sweet maltiness and finishing with a roasted caramel flavor. Sunrise Hard Vanilla was vile. A Cream Ale manifesting a daffodil color with a cream soda smell, Sunrise is incredibly sweet, but to the point that it's not even a beer. The vanilla flavor is too much here and tastes synthetic.
My second flight flowed with “Flaming Arrow”, “Smoke Signals”, and “Native Girl”. Flaming Arrow is an IPA exhibiting a straw color with a sweet and hoppy smell. It’s light and bitter throughout with a sweetness to balance the bitterness. Native Girl is a Pale Ale conveying a butterscotch color with a piney and floral fragrance. Slightly sweet to start with a splendid hop hit.
The “best” beer of the day was Smoke Signals. A hazy New England Style IPA, Smoke Signals appears with a classic mellow yellow hazy color and a citra smell. It’s fairly juicy and light, possessing a muted bitterness at the end.
Look… just don't go here. I’m not even bothering writing out its business hours, website, or social media accounts. There’s always the possibility that I visited on a bad day, sure, but I don't think that’s the case here. This place just felt like it advertised that it didn't care about its service for products and that it exists just to make money off of the thousands of tourists who visit Cherokee, North Carolina.
