Family Pictures USA

(bluesy music) Family Pictures, USA. Once you see America through Family Pictures, you'll never see this country the same way again. In Oxford, North Carolina, we meet Stephanie Velazquez May, and her husband Zach May, who works in a brewery and offered us a beer tasting to experience Oxford Beer flavors. So what do we have here? So we've got you of our flights. It's made, as you see, it's in a tobacco leaf as the flight stand, we've got our 565 which is an amber ale, we have the Sea of Paul's which is a brown ale, Kilted Eddie which is scotch stout-- Scotch stout. Mm-hmm (affirmative), so yeah, it's a stout, it's a import stout that's made with scotch and coffee. We have a Tar River's Revenge, which is a double-porter with bourbon, and finally we have the Quad I was telling you guys about inside the brewery there, givin' you a little sample of that as well. Am I gonna be able to walk out of here? (Thomas laughs) Oh, a 100%. And this one is the, ah? So that one is the Kilted Eddie. That is our scotch stout. Mmmm, I like the bitterness of it. Appreciate that. From there, what do you think I should taste? So I would probably go back over to the amber, the 565, which is the one closest to you. I would go with that one and then move down. Okay. Number three. Number three. That's nice, too. Appreciate that, that one's got a good malty flavor to it. It's a medium body beer. And this one is? So that's our tradition brown ale, it's called Sea of Paul's. It's not necessarily a heavy beer like a stout or a porter. It's more on that borderline between an ale and a porter. Okay. So this one is Tar River's Revenge. It's a double-porter that we've added some oak chips soaked in bourbon. Okay, and Tar River? Yeah, Tar River's Revenge. So the Tar River runs through here, and the funny story was the owners were going through a kayaking trip, and people had told them that, "Go on the Tar River." Well, in Oxford, the Tar River is maybe three inches deep, and so they thought they were gonna go out and have a good time kayaking down the river and ended up having to walk half the river. (laughs) That's really nice. So he got his revenge on them. So most of the names have been created right here, in Oxford. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Wow. The experiences, the stories, what brings a lot of the originality to this place. And so this is very different from this lighter one. Oh yeah, it's a completely different mixture, so with the lighter one you have there, it's a different type of grain, a different type of malt, and then also different types of hops. But this guy, this is a completely different bill, we call it bills, by the way. When you look at the malt and the grain bill, this has got a ton of malt and a ton of grain in it, because it's a higher ABV beer, you gotta counteract everything you put into it with a bunch of sugars, so you're gonna get the plum flavors. That one actually kinda gives you a little bit of a tobacco flavor as well. Wow, this is delicious. Yeah, that one's 11%, believe it or not. Alcohol content? Mm-hmm (affirmative) Better stop. (laughs). Yeah, it's completely different. It's a great beer, though. We've had really good reviews on that one. So also the sweetest beer.

ZACH

Super sweet. I didn't think it was gonna be sweet because it's so dark. That's the trick with the higher up you go on your ABV, you've got to counteract it with something, and that's sugar. And that's when the process is going on, the yeast actually eats off that sugar and that's why it gets such a high ABV. A flight on a tobacco leaf with some tasty beer. Thanks so much for opening up the brewery for us to come in and enjoy it and get a little bit of background on Oxford through the lens of its brewery. Thank you so much for coming out. We appreciate you coming by and make sure you come back again. Will do! Thank you.