Omnivore Atlanta

With all the new breweries that have come to Georgia in the last two to three years, the trip to the beer cooler at your local package store can be somewhat intimidating. Add to that the increased price of craft beers, and it can be difficult to plop down $8-10 on a 6-pack of an unknown quantity. That’s where beer tastings and beer dinners come in. For little or no money, you can sample new beers and get a sense of both the styles and brands that are worth your hard-earned money. There is no shortage of opportunities to sample beers in Atlanta. Here are a few regular or semi-regular tastings that are going on around town, along with a few upcoming beer dinners.

Hop City Craft Beer & Wine store hosts free beer tastings most every Wednesday at Octane Coffee Bar & Lounge across the street from their retail store. Magic Hat beers will be featured at this week’s tasting (July 15). In two weeks (July 29), sample beers from Sierra Nevada. Hop City has also teamed up with neighborhood caterer Figs & Honey, who operate Tiny Bistro, to host wine and beer events. Sign up for Hop City’s email list or become a fan on Facebook to get updates on the featured beers. (more…)

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Looks as though Matthew Broderick stopped by our favorite coffee house over the weekend…

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Hey, look — it’s my Powerbook and a triple espresso macchiato. The picture was taken at Octane, the Westside coffee shop whose “Thursday Night Throwdown” invites baristas to compete to create artsy forms like the heart atop my macchiato.

The espresso here may be the city’s best — rich, almost oily, with layered flavors. The shop also serves real pastries and sandwiches.

But the really cool thing is that they offer free wireless internet service (WiFi) and — get this — it actually works!

My usual coffee hangout is the Ansley Starbucks but, once again, their WiFi doesn’t work about half the time. Never mind that I pay T-Mobile $30 a month to use it.

The latest problems began when they started offering two-hour blocks of free wireless through AT&T, as well as the T-Mobile service. For several weeks now, neither service has worked consistently. Moreover, nobody knows how to get it fixed. The Starbucks peeps say they don’t know what to do about it. Call T-Mobile or AT&T and they apologize, tell you they are working on it — and nothing changes.

Because my gym is an apple fritter’s throw from Starbucks, it’s more convenient for me to use. But I’ll be spending more time at Octane until Starbucks gets its WiFi fixed, which shouldn’t take more than 2, 3 or more months and 10 zillion phone calls to AT&T and T-Mobile.

You can find a mixed-media account of a Thursday Night Throwdown here.

(Photos by Cliff Bostock)

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I stopped by Star Provisions today for a sandwich, cup of coffee and a bottle of wine, which are the three things I usually go to Star Provisions for. In fact, when driving up Marietta and trying to decide whether to continue up Howell Mill to Star Provisions or stop at Octane, the toss up was between Octane’s cappuccino and Star Provisions’ wine selection. Both places have good sandwiches (although, to be fair, Star Provisions has REALLY good sandwiches as opposed to Octane’s decent ones). Anyway, wine won out over cappuccino today. But alas, I was thwarted. Star Provisions has stopped selling wine! The whole wine room was just sad, empty shelves.

The woman I spoke to who works there said it is a permanent business decision, based on the fact that they “just can’t compete” with the large wine retailers. Even if their wine sales don’t make up a huge portion of sales, I do wonder how many people, like me, stop in for wine and do other shopping and lunching there as well.

Luckily for me, Toscano and Sons, across the street from Octane, has a good Italian wine selection. So now I guess I’ll be able to have my wine and cappuccino, too.

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