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| - After stopping in at Cabarrus Brewing, we saw High Branch and decided to head over there after our sampling a flight at Cabarrus.
The tap room is located on the second floor of an old mill - they have a large wooden deck you can walk up to from the parking lot that is open to the tap room. The tap room looks nice, with wooden chairs and some tables lined up. The bar is copper, and everything looks like a high class bar, not a tap room or brewery. With your back to the bar - you can see the entrance to the deck area, as well as the opening to the brewing vats, it's a small area and they seem to have produced some volume with them.
That is where the experience went down hill for us - first the tap room looked nice - too nice. The bartender also had the attitude of a over confident snob, he had an attitude the entire time we were there. After approaching the bar with a smile, I asked how much were flights. He looked at me in disdain with his comedic strong man mustache, and said "we don't serve flights," like I was the crazy person for entering a brewery and asking for a flight!
Any brewery or taproom that does not offer flights will NEVER get higher than a 3 star review from me - you're a brewery, and the tap room is there to SAMPLE beers! High Branch lost more due to the terrible attitude the bartenders. It was the last of 4 breweries we visited that day, and easily the worst. Having endured the bartenders attitude, I made him give me a sample of every beer on-tap that they brewed. The had a lot of guest taps, but I wanted to sample beers I didn't get elsewhere. There was only one beer that was good - it was a Coconut Pounder, and I did like it alot. While I would have liked to take some home, I just didn't care to support the brewery.
I was hoping for a good homey brewery that was welcoming and fun. Instead, I felt like I walked out a pretentious hipster version of Mean Girls...with beer....it just did not make sense to me and I don't plan on returning. If you are in the area - goto to New Sarum or Cabarrus instead - if you are not in the area, don't bother making the trip.
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