Fullsteam has been invited (READ: we pestered until they said yes) to the Southern Foodways Alliance annual symposium this weekend! The event is held each year in beautiful Oxford, Mississippi. Chris and Sean will be serving samples of our experimental "Southern Agribrewing" test batches to around 300 attendees.
It's especially fortuitous that Fullsteam can attend this year's SFA symposium: the theme of the conference is "Southern Drinkways." With our focus on local farmed ingredients -- and the SFA's focus on Southern drinks -- serving our beers at this conference was a must.
Thankfully, SFA director John T. Edge and associate director Mary Beth Lasseter were very receptive to our "please please please can we serve our beers please please please" email a few weeks back. (Hey, I've got to be honest: it's not like they invited us and we looked at our calendars to see if we could make it. It was polite persistence on our part -- you've got to be scrappy when you're starting out.)
Chris has been furiously brewing over the past month or so in preparation of this weekend's big premiere. Thanks to him, we're serving:
- Fullsteam (what we expect will be our flagship Carolina Common),
- a Hickory-Smoked Porter,
- a Sweet Potato Amber (no pumpkinish spices in this one...we're letting the sweet potato flavor come through), and
- an open-fermented Scuppernong White Ale.
We'll be sure to twit some pix and update the website on our first ever Fullsteam road trip. I know we haven't been blogging as much over the past few weeks...we're trying hard to nail down our location and shore up our financing.