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SCENE & STORY

“The dark beer specialists” at Duck-Rabbit have grown their business into a small regional brewery, producing around 3,700 barrels annually and steadily rising. Based in the sleepy town of Farmville (which lives up to its name), it’s really only a small, packaging-only operation built in a light industrial garage, but there’s a cozy new taproom for guests to sample brewer Paul Philippon’s much-lauded creations, like his 9% ABV Baltic Porter and a variety of other stouts and dark beers (he prefers the darker end of the spectrum).

PHILOSOPHY

Dark beer, light heart. Philippon is a former philosophy teacher, and wanted to honor his past by illustrating labels with a classic Gestalt shift diagram, which appears as either a duck or a rabbit, or something else entirely depending on how many beers you’ve had.

KEY BEER

Well, is it a duck or a rabbit? Try the 5.6% ABV Brown Ale, which is nutty, smooth, and chocolate-y without being too sweet.

Raleigh

THE RALEIGH TIMES BAR

14 E. Hargett St. • Raleigh, NC 27601 • (919) 833–0999 raleightimesbar.com • Established: 2006

SCENE & STORY

The hip nonsmoking bar known as the Raleigh Times goes back to 2006 but the building’s history is a hundred years older, having housed the august Raleigh Times—the newspaper—up until its last edition ran in 1989. Part of a small complex of interconnected businesses with a breakfast counter (Morning Times), eatery (Dining Times), and hipper bar (RTBX), the atmospheric Times Bar has high tinned ceilings, old exposed brick walls, and hardwood floors next to a wide, burnished wood bar. It’s timeless; one half expects Atticus Finch to walk in here clutching a story to take up with the editors in righteous fury.

PHILOSOPHY

All the beer that’s fit to drink. While there are only eight draft beers at a time (mostly from area producers), the bottle list has more than a hundred selections, half of which are American craft releases (especially from North Carolina and the surrounding states), and half Belgians.

KEY BEER

The list includes sours and other oddities like Drie Fonteinen Kriek, a Belgian sour beer made with cherries.

Charlotte

GROWLER’S POURHOUSE

3116 N. Davidson St. • Charlotte, NC 28205 • (704) 910–6566 growlerspourhouse.com • Established: 2010

SCENE & STORY

The pace of the Southern craft beer revolution quickened in 2010 with the arrival of Growler’s in Charlotte’s arty NoDa area (North of Downtown). With impressive antique Chinese doors, heavy wood tables, hardwood floors, and chic track lighting, it strikes a classy pose. But the beer and “beer food” are more than window dressing. Choose from fourteen taps and one rotating cask served from a nineteenth-century hand-pump engine, house-made hot dogs, sausages, and an oyster bar with rotating varieties; treats like peel-and-eat shrimp and tableside marshmallow roasting make this place even more fun.

PHILOSOPHY

House-made or bust. Even the potato chips are fried in the kitchen.

KEY BEER

Foothills Brewing Co. from Winston-Salem ought to be on tap; look for their Sexual Chocolate (9.75% ABV), a burly Russian Imperial Stout.

Durham

FULLSTEAM

726 Rigsbee Ave. • Durham, NC 27701 (919) 682-BEER or (888) 756–9274 fullsteam.ag • Established: 2010

SCENE & STORY

Just north of downtown Durham near the corner of Geer and Rigsbee, start looking for a huge backwards “F,” the symbol of this upstart brewery in a spacious, beige brick warehouse with a pub inside. Consider it your duty: North Carolina beer travelers owe a lot to the founders of Fullsteam. For one, Sean Lilly Wilson is the man whose “Pop the Cap” campaign successfully raised the state’s allowable beer alcohol limit to 15 percent in 2005); he joined with former Abita head brewer Brooks Hamaker and über home brewer Chris Davis to launch one of the South’s most ambitious breweries.

The trio’s R+D Tavern (on-site, enclosed in a boxy red room inside the brewery) is a family-friendly tavern/indoor beer garden featuring