I believe it was the musician and obvious Belgian beer lover, George Clinton, who aptly penned the words, “Ow, we want the funk. Give up the funk. Ow, we need the funk. We gotta have that funk.”

Clearly this refrain is an unashamed nod to the wondrous sour beers produced in the Flemish Brabant province of Belgium.

O.K., maybe not, but it should be. 

Lambic

Few would dispute the fact that Belgium produces some of the most complex and challenging beers in the world. And among these envelope-pushing beers, none test the palate and shift the paradigm quite like the traditional Belgian farmhouse lambic. There are only a dozen or so farmhouse breweries in and around the Brussels region that still produce this ancient style of beer, dating back in its extant form better than half a millennia. Often described – sometimes pejoratively and sometimes with keen affection – as funky or horseblankety, traditional lambic is an acquired taste for many and one of the most unusual beer styles in the world.

Located in Meadville, 80 miles North of Pittsburgh, Voodoo Brewery brings it with their unique brand of Black Magic!  And, bring it they do. With beer names like Pilzilla, Wynona's Big Brown Ale, Voodoo Love Child, and White Magick of the Sun, to name a few, Voodoo Brewery would, at first glance, appear to be not for the meek or timid.  However, after a closer look, one finds the opposite to be true.  The names and labels are merely a front . . . A voodoo trick so to speak, to bait you in for a closer look. The REAL magick is held within each bottle.

Each beer is treated with such care and diligence that you will find yourself immediately caught in the Voodoo spell, helpless and unaware that it has a grip on you, and that you are already being converted to the Voodoo ways.  The beers are so full-flavored, yet smooth, that even a novice beer drinker will fall under this Voodoo spell and find himself wandering, like a Voodoo Zombie, stuck on the thoughts of wonderful flavors abound, and subtleties rarely captured in an elixir so readily available.  

Upon closer inspection, the establishment revealed itself to be the Cool Springs Brewery, and the red neon “Open” sign in the front window was lit. On New Year’s Eve some 1,000 miles from my home, Father Time had given me one last brewery visit for 2009.

Inside I met Chris Hartland, who along with his wife, Jane, opened the brewery in September and poured the first pints a month later. They emigrated from the United Kingdom in 2008 wanting to be closer to family and hoping to open a restaurant.

They found just the spot in Franklin, Tenn., at a pizzeria known as Guidos. The owner was looking to sell and Hartland was ready to move in.

As the brewery was preparing to change ownership, the local newspaper profiled Chris and Jane Hartland and that’s how brewer Mike Kraft (pictured below) got involved. He immediately drove to the brewery after reading the article and handed in his resume. A veteran brewer, he worked for a number of breweries in Texas, including a spell as corporate brewer for the Two Rows Restaurant and Brew Pub chain.

Kraft too had returned to Nashville to be close to family and was soon hired as Cool Springs brewer.  Currently he has five beers on tap: Franklin’s First, a Kolsch, BushWacker, an American-style unfiltered wheat, Fatback amber ale, Pecker Wrecker pale ale and a Porter.

Max’s, previously called Max’s on Broadway, is a local icon in the Fell’s Point neighborhood of Baltimore, Md., an area full of shops, restaurants and historic buildings along the city’s waterfront. You know the area well if you’ve seen the TV series “Homicide: Life on the Street,” which was largely filmed just a few blocks from the bar. Max’s has been known as a great beer destination in the mid-Atlantic region for more than a decade now, but it’s really in the last five or so years that the bar has achieved much more wide-ranging acclaim. This is due in part to the incredible success of its Belgian Beer Fest, which draws beer lovers from around the
country each February. 

To give you a picture of the incredible beeriness of Maryland’s premier beer bar, Casey Hard, the general manager, said late last year that the number of beers on draft at Max’s would soon increase from 72 to 100. “We will also add two new beer engines to the three we already have, which will give us five cask-conditioned beers,” he noted. “We occasionally put firkins on the bar for special events as well. And we have over 1,000 different bottled beers.”