Son of the Palmetto State

It has been almost four months since I last published a post. I am also months behind on updating my Beer List. I recently started working to add all the backlogged brews to the list. The list is currently up to 725 entries, and I have worked my way up to November 14. On that Thursday, I attended a college football game. My sister April was in town. We grew up in South Carolina, and April went to college at Clemson University. The Clemson Tigers had been recovering nicely from a disappointing blowout loss three weeks earlier to rival and eventual national champion Florida State. April and I drove down to Clemson to watch the Tigers continue that recovery with a blowout win over Georgia Tech. The game was broadcast nationally on ESPN. Clemson would go on to finish their 2013 season with a 11-2 record, ending the regular season with loss to their intrastate rivalry game with the South Carolina Gamecocks, and then a win in the Orange Bowl against Big Ten powerhouse Ohio State.

However, this post is about cleaning up the backlog of Beer List additions. The 726th entry will be a draft of Son Of A Peach from RJ Rockers Brewing Company located in Spartanburg, South Carolina. While Georgia is the Peach State, South Carolina is actually second in the United States for peach production, ranked behind California and ahead of Georgia. Therefore, it is not too surprising that a South Carolina brewery has a peach-flavored brew. The interesting thing about this beer is that it will be the first from a South Carolina-based brewery to be included to my list. I currently live in North Carolina, and as a point of comparison between the two states, of the 725 brews currently on the list, 145 are from the northern neighbor. Represented on the list are 26 separate breweries located in North Carolina: Aviator, Beer Army, Big Boss, Boone (aka Blowing Rock), Carolina Ale House, Carolina Brewery, Carolina Brewing, Deep River, Duck-Rabbit, Foothills (including brews from the former Carolina Beer), French Broad, Front Street, Fullsteam, Gizmo (previously Roth), Green Man, Highland, Lonerider, Mash House, Mother Earth, Natty Greene's, Olde Hickory, Railhouse, Raleigh, Red Oak, Triangle, and White Street (whew!).

Interestingly enough, Son of a Peach is not actually the first beer on the list to originate from the state of South Carolina. As I mentioned in a previous post, Evil Twin Brewing is located in Denmark and/or Brooklyn, New York. However, their beers are brewed by Westbrook Brewing Company which is located in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. The gypsy nature of Evil Twin is addressed in an article from USA Today.