Once a year at the N.C. General Assembly, beer and politics and the politics of beer blend like a summer shandy at the “Rush the Growler” party.

For me, it’s a can’t miss – combining my “day job” covering politics for the newspaper and my “night job” writing about craft beer. And the growler event showcases the evolving mindset at the Statehouse toward beer – particularly craft beer – since 2005 when lawmakers “popped the cap” and lifted the alcohol limit from 6 percent to 15 percent. Click here to read the column and get an update on beer-related legislation this session.

Few people in the beer world are more recognizable than the man with the easy grin and salt and pepper beard. Charlie Papazian looks a bit like the “most interesting man in the world” character from the Dos Equis commercials. And he is a star in a mostly anonymous industry. I talked to him about the North Carolina craft beer scene in this week's column. See link below.

Also: Mystery Brewing opened its long-awaited tap room last week in west Hillsborough. The Public House, as founder Erik Lars Myers put it, “will serve as the main public face of Mystery and carry every beer we produce.” It also will serve other craft beers from around the world, a testament to Myers’ refined tastes. It is open 4 p.m.-midnight weekdays and noon-midnight Saturday and Sunday.

The other big news from Mystery: It’s going primetime. The seasonal-only brewery is a contestant on a new CNBC show called “Crowd Rules,” in which emerging businesses compete to win $50,000. The show debuts Tuesday, and Mystery Brewing will compete in the second week, May 21, against two other businesses.

Read more in this week's Pintful column.

This is a guest post by beer columnist John Frank. Read his Pintful column HERE.

What's on Tap:

Grand Opening Party at Steel String in Carrboro
6-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday at the brewery
Steel String Craft Brewery officially opens Wednesday, but it will celebrate this weekend with two days of craft beer, music and food. The parties require $25 tickets. The brewery’s regular hours: noon-2 a.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-10 p.m. Sunday. Info: steelstringbrewery.com

Olde Hickory Tap Takeover
Friday, Village Draft House in Raleigh
A special cask of the Hickory craft brewery’s acclaimed Death By Hops, with added Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand, is the featured beer. Others from the eclectic brew pub’s lineup on tap, too.

Triad Craft Beer Week
Through Saturday
Greensboro and Winston-Salem are showing off their craft beers this week with a variety of events. On Saturday, City Beverage in Winston-Salem will offer a cask of Liberty Steakhouse, big winners in the recent Carolinas beer competition. Check other Triad breweries for more events. Info: triadbeerweek.com

From behind a concrete bar shaped like the body of a guitar, the first Steel String craft beers are pouring in Carrboro.

A fiddlin’ tune played in the background as Cody Maltais, one of the four Steel String partners, said music helped inspire the beer. For years, Steel String was the invisible Carrboro brewery. The partners brewed at home and hyped their beer at festivals and local bars, handing out stickers, koozies and coasters well before they landed a commercial location for the operation.

The new seven-barrel capacity brewery opened Wednesday, but it took only the cracked door of a soft opening last week to draw hundreds into the antiqued, exposed-brick storefront in the heart of downtown. Read the full Pintful column here-- including big expansion news from Triangle Brewery in Durham and a tasting from Southern Appalachian Brewery in Hendersonville.

Addendum: Steel String is still rolling out it's full beer lineup (check back next week for more details). But I enjoyed Rubber Room Session Ale, a rye pale ale. I like the big grainy mouthfeel of a rye beer and the Motueka hops provide a nice flavorful touch.

The Charlotte beer scene is growing so quickly it's hard to keep up. I wrote about this in a prior column -- and saw it first hand at last weekend's Hickory Hops Brew Festival. Most new brewery tents I visited had one thing in common: Charlotte.

A handful of Charlotte breweries are starting to appear more regularly in the Triangle. Beer Study in Chapel Hill is a good source for Olde Mecklenburg bottles and NoDa taps. Even the new Steel String Craft Brewery in Carrboro has a full slate of guest Charlotte taps for its opening, including Triple C. (More on Steel String in next week's column.)

To help get you up to speed, our colleague at the Charlotte Observer has a good primer of the seven breweries now in operation. Bookmark it for your next trip.

No Pintful column today -- due to my furlough last week -- but two beer events this week I can't let pass without a mention.

The first is Casks for a Cure 4 at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Big Boss Beer in Raleigh. The event -- which costs $10 -- raises money for the state's Leukemia and Lymphoma Society chapter. Top area homebrewers and Haw River Farmhouse Ales will offer a number of interesting brews. Here's the beer lineup:

--From Haw River Farmhouse Ales: Cask of Vuilaard, a sour-tart Flanders Oude Bruin.

--From the homebrewers: Paul Hobson and Lara Murphy: Blood Orange Saison; Dan Caswell: Chocolate Brown Ale; Matt Shellington: Farmhouse IPA; Allan Mason: Robust Porter; Andrew Turner: Top Withens, a strong pale ale.

And this weekend is the big Brewgaloo 2013 event in Raleigh's City Plaza from 3 to 9 p.m. The event features North Carolina craft breweries, local food trucks and bands.

Among the breweries: Big Boss, Lonerider, Aviator, Natty Greene's, White Street, Duck-Rabbit, Railhouse, Starpoint, Deep River, Four Friends and Bombshell. Buy tickets online and get more information here.

With about 40 North Carolina breweries and dozens of rare offerings Saturday, the Hickory Hops Brew Festival reaffirmed its status as one of the state's best craft beer festivals.

About 2,000 craft beer lovers attended the six-hour event in Hickory on a gorgeous sunny day in the downtown square -- including a number of familiar faces from the Triangle area. Bill "QB" Quattlebaum said the event appeals to the true craft beer enthusiasts and is well worth the drive from the Triangle.

The festival showcased the true explosion of new breweries in North Carolina with at least a dozen rookies attending, including Deep River in Clayton and Trophy in Raleigh.

A number of local brewers took home medals in the Carolinas Championship of Beer, a competition for breweries at the event. (Read more below for full list of winners.)

From John Frank, our Pintful columnist:

Lob questions at six local brewers with beers in hand and you’re sure to get a lively discussion about the craft beer industry.

As part of N.C. Beer Month, the Durham-based All About Beer magazine gathered such a panel last week to take craft beer enthusiasts behind the scenes.

North Carolina brewers are still riding a high from the national Craft Brewers Conference in March, where the state’s booming scene received quite a feting. “We were the stars,” said Brad Wynn, the brewmaster at Big Boss Brewery in Raleigh.

Find out the brewers' biggest surprises, answers to the saturation question, the scoop on North Carolina hops and the next big thing in this week's Pintful column here.

Take the best of the Triangle, Fullsteam and Bull City beers and mash them together. What do you get? The first-ever collaboration ale from Durham’s three craft breweries.

The trio came together on the unique project for N.C. Beer Month in April, said Seth Gross, owner of Bull City Burger and Brewery. The concept was simple: Take the signature grain, a specialty malt and the dominant hop from each brewery, at equal proportions, and make a beer. The end result is a hop-forward, copper-colored beer with roughly 6 percent alcohol. “It’s not any particular style,” said Gross, who is brewing the beer at his restaurant. “It’s representative of what the three brewers embody.”

The project also represents a movement gaining steam in the craft beer industry: the collaboration ale. The whole idea of multiple breweries putting their creative minds together to produce a single, often nouveau beer under a joint label sets the craft industry apart. It’s the tangible result of the camaraderie you hear so much about in the industry.

Gross said the Durham collaboration – which will debut April 3 at each brewery’s tasting room – is still a work in progress. Once the initial fermentation is completed, the brewers may add another twist – a dry hop or possibly a specialty ingredient, such as rosemary from the bush on the nearby street corner, Gross said.

In the meantime, the breweries are soliciting a name for the beer. The brewers will considered top five “liked” names submitted by March 31 on Bull City’s Facebook page. Read this week's Pintful column here.

The concept sounds silly to some: beer tourism. What kind of nerd travels across the state – let alone across the country – to drink a pint of beer? Ahh, hmm, err ... me. On my honeymoon to northern California a couple of years ago, my wife and I visited six breweries. (She’s a goddess.) We hit four Michigan breweries during a recent trip to see relatives. And I’m far from alone.

At North Carolina craft beer events, it’s not unusual to meet enthusiasts from outside the state. Take, for instance, the Florida couple I met who drove all night long for the Foothills Sexual Chocolate release in Winston-Salem or the guy from Atlanta who came to North Carolina three times in less than two months for beer events.

All this is to say it’s not a surprise to see the N.C. Division of Tourism as the driving force behind the inaugural N.C. Beer Month, a celebration of the state’s craft beer culture in April. “The idea came about as we reached this critical mass of breweries,” said Margo Metzger, a spokeswoman for the division, which is part of the N.C. Department of Commerce. “We have been promoting craft beer for several years now, but we saw this great momentum building. ... We definitely thought craft beer was hot.” Read this week's Pintful craft beer column here.