We will be closed on Wednesday, November 27, and Thursday, November 28, 2019, in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Have a GREAT Turkey Day, everyone!
Holiday Hours
NEWS
Agua Fresca Ranked #1 in Taste Test
With summer heat on the horizon, many people are looking to find a refreshing, low-calorie alternative to the standard choice of cracking a cold beer. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, this summer is set to be the summer of hard seltzer. Consumers have recently been lusting for these alcoholic carbonated water products, causing sales to spike 169% in just the last year.
As beverage companies race to cash out on these clear market trends, your typical grocery store has become rife with different brands, colors, and flavors. Luckily, amidst all these confusing choices, the Inquirer took the time to investigate which seltzers are actually worth buying.
A panel of twelve judges were gathered together and asked to both taste and score thirteen different seltzer brands.
The clear winner of this bubbly battle was the Golden Road Agua Fresca, which garnered a score of 16.33 out of 20. This is exciting news for Harris Beverages, a proud distributor of Agua Fresca.
Tasters enjoyed the “pleasant tartness” of the seltzer, and one even exalted, “I could chug this!”
Don’t know if you should believe the hype? Pick up a few packs of Agua Fresca and conduct your own taste test. We promise, it’s all in the name of research.
Source: https://www.inquirer.com/food/hard-spiked-seltzer-brands-white-claw-truly-hard-two-robbers-20190619.html
Online Ordering is Here!
For all of our tech-savy customers out there, we’ve just launched our Retailer Portal for online ordering! This tool will give you immediate, accurate information on pricing for all products we currently carry. It will also keep track of previous deliveries for you, whether submitted through the portal or not, and show you when you can expect your next scheduled delivery. You can submit orders from your browser or mobile device quickly and easily, and it will even warn you if any of the items on your order are temporarily out of stock.
We’re super excited to be able to offer this service to accounts. You can find permanent links to the portal at the upper right corner of our website, under the “Customers” tab. If you are a current customer of Harris Beverages and you’d like to get started with online ordering, click “Request Account” on the customer page.
Congratulations To Our Winning Partners!
We’re super pumped to call out a few of our partner breweries for their recent wins at competition.
World Beer Cup
Last week at the annual Craft Brewers Conference, judges from around the world adjudicated the premier beer competition: The World Beer Cup. With 8,234 total entries from 2,515 breweries in 66 countries competing across 101 style categories, this year’s iteration of the bi-annual competition was the fiercest ever. Which is why we’re over the moon proud of Lonerider, Golden Road, 10 Barrel, and Hoegaarden for their wins in the following categories:
Category 4: Fruit Wheat Beer
- Gold – Mango Cart, Golden Road Brewing
- Silver – Passionate Envy, 10 Barrel Brewing
Category 54: Berliner-Style Weisse
- Gold – Baywindow, 10 Barrel Brewing
Category 59: Belgian-Style Witbier
- Bronze – Hoegaarden White, Hoegaarden
Category 67: Belgian-Style Tripel
- Bronze – Hoegaarden Grand Cru, Hoegaarden
Category 68: Belgian-Style Pale Strong Ale
- Bronze – Julius, Hoegaarden
Category 78: English-Style Brown Ale
- Bronze – Sweet Josie, Lonerider Brewing
Carolina Championship of Beer
Additionally, on April 21st the Carolina Championship of Beer took place at Hickory Hops festival. Aviator Brewing Company and Carolina Brewery both received multiple medals for the following beers:
Gold Medals:
- Aviator Devils Tramping Ground Tripel
- Aviator Black Mamba Oatmeal Stout
- Aviator Pumpkin Beast
- Carolina Brewery Toffee Stout
Silver Medals:
- Aviator 3 Bones Kolsch-Style Ale
- Carolina Brewery Copperline Amber Ale
- Carolina Brewery Oatmeal Porter
- Carolina Brewery Honey Brown Ale
- Carolina Brewery Schwarzbier
Bronze Medals:
- Aviator Hog Wild IPA
- Aviator I Would Go Hawaiian Style IPA
- Carolina Brewery American IPA
- Carolina Brewery Sky Blue Golden Ale
Congratulations to all!
We’re In Love!
We just got to try SweetWater’s newest seasonal, and we’re in love! Tropical Lover is an easy drinking berliner-weisse that’s been brewed with mango, guava, and passionfruit. It’s refreshingly tart, with a solid fruit backbone that makes you feel like digging your toes into a sandy beach. And better yet, it comes a can, making it the perfect beer for summer afternoons poolside or that weekend trip to the beach!
On the business side of things, Tropical Lover was launched last week in Atlanta in anticipation of 420 Fest. Already, it’s blowing expectations and breaking records for a SweetWater seasonal launch. We’re pumped to have the beer in house, and can’t wait for local beer consumers to give it a try!
Chefs For Change
Did you know that there are nearly 900 evictions filed in Durham every month? Local nonprofit Families Moving Forward knows it well, and works to coordinate a series of locally-based support services to help families that face eviction. Through our support of their signature event, Chefs For Change, Harris is helping that cause as well.
Chefs For Change is a series of 5 fundraising dinner events that each feature a different local restaurateur. Kicking off the year on March 12 with Charlie Deal (proprietor of Dos Perros, Juju, and Jujube), this year’s lineup looks to be killer. We feel like it’s kinda the perfect combination of great food from amazing local chefs, excellent company, and a crucial cause for our community. Along with great beer, of course!
Durham is a dynamic and quickly growing community that we’ve been proud to call home for a long time. Recently that growth has had an increased impact on some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Through our support of Chefs For Change, we are proud to be a part of the efforts that directly support nearly 100 families in our local community, and coordinate help for many others beyond that. From sheltering families and children while helping parents find permanent housing, to coordinating with other local resources to help prevent families from needing emergency housing in the first place, Families Moving Forward has been an essential resource for people in need that call Durham home.
This charity is an essential part of our community, and we couldn’t be prouder to support them during another year of Chefs For Change.
Bull City is Almost Here!
We’re incredibly excited to be partnering again with the 6th Annual Bull City Food & Beer Experience. For three hours this coming Sunday, February 25th, our brewery partners will be paired up with some of the best restaurants in Durham. Each pairing will present a unique combination of beers with truly amazing food. Behind the scenes, we’ve spent the last month coordinating with chefs and tasting through beers. This event is one of our favorites, and if you’re one of the lucky ones who was able to snag a ticket before they sold out, you probably already know what we mean.
Plus, all benefits from Bull City go to the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. This association is actively working to nurture a living creek, connecting human and natural communities in Durham. So we get to drink delicious beer, eat incredible food, and it all goes to a great, local charity?
Sunday can’t get here soon enough!
Enter the Woodlands
Want to try a beer beloved by wine lovers? Keep an eye out for SweetWater Brewing’s new release, Cambium, a foeder aged sour. Wine Enthusiast says it’s a “tingly tango of stone fruit and funk.” Sound crazy for a beer? Well, this isn’t your standard fare for SweetWater, this is a specialty from their Woodlands.
About a year ago, SweetWater unveiled the newest addition to their brewery: The Woodlands, a specially designed wing for aging beers in wooden vessels. For a brewery like SweetWater who has built a reputation on having hoppy, snappy beers that are the freshest around, this was a bold move. The wild beers and big stouts produced at the Woodlands take time. Sometimes a lot of it. But when given the right care and conditions, and plenty of patience, the beers that come out are phenomenal. From mouthwatering bouquets of funky acidity to creamy blends of coffee and vanilla, SweetWater is producing some truly remarkable beers.
Check out the Wine Enthusiast article on Cambium here. And for more insight on the process of making Cambium, check out what Beer Street Journal has to say here.
And keep an eye out for plenty more where that came from.
Spend a Night Out on Lonerider
If you’re like us, you haven’t thought at all about your plans for Valentine’s Day. Luckily enough, Lonerider Brewing Company has you covered!
For all you Sweet Josie lovers out there, Lonerider is offering a night out in Raleigh for a lucky winner and their +1! All you have to do is post a picture of your love for delicious Sweet Josie Brown Ale on social media with the tag #JosieIsForLovers to enter. Lonerider will choose a winner among the bunch on February 11th, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
The lucky winner will receive the following:
- 1 Free Night Stay at The Sheraton Hotel in the center of downtown
- Dinner and drinks for two at Gravy Italian Restaurant
- Uber Gift Certificate
But how do you win, you ask?
The rules are simple:
- Post a picture of your love for Sweet Josie on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook (yes, you can do all three) and tag #JosieIsForLovers.
- Follow Lonerider on the social media platform you posted the picture on. @loneriderbeer
Sounds easy enough to us!
Dogfish Head Hires New President
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery announced this morning that they’re adding a man to the management: George Pastrana.
Who is that, you ask? Good question. George Pastrana is an unknown in the craft beer world. Having spent the last six years working for ACH Food Companies, manufacturers of consumer packaged goods like butter, pancake syrup, baking oil and the like, George would seem like an unusual move for a craft brewery. But Dogfish Head is not just any craft brewery – they are one of the originals. CEO and founder Sam Calagione is among the founding voices of the Brewers Association, and his brewery has been a pioneer in inventing beer styles and other innovations (think fruit infusions in IPAs) that the larger industry now almost takes for granted. So where do they go from here?
If you’re a brewery like Dogfish Head, it’s probably about time to start looking outside the often insular craft beer industry to find new inspiration and chart new directions for your now mature business. From that perspective, George sounds like a great pick. He has experience in a part of the food industry that creates basic consumer goods. Those goods are staples in both grocery stores and the food service industry alike. George also comes with various levels of degrees in both Marketing and Biomedical Engineering. So while George may not have worked in beer directly, it’s no surprise that Dogfish Head’s 12-month search for new leadership would result in the hiring of someone with his background. He appears to have the right mix of food chemistry knowledge and marketing prowess that will help push Dogfish forward in the increasingly competitive beer market.
And we won’t be surprised when this type of hiring choice is just another trend in the beer industry with Dogfish Head at the front end.
For more details from Dogfish Head directly, click here.