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Terrapin Beer brews its magical potions in the hip college town of Athens, Georgia. The brewery's legacy began with a kickass Rye Pale Ale and, a mere six months after its commercial debut in 2002, that sole effort won a gold medal in the American Pale Ale category at the Great American Beer Festival.

In 2004, Golden Ale was introduced, winning a silver medal at the World Beer Cup. India Brown Ale and Sunray Wheat Ale have since been added to the brewery's standard repertoire, as well as the Monster Beer Tour - a seasonal collection with bolder character (and more alcohol), including Rye Squared, Wake-n-Bake Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout, All American Pilsner, and Big Hoppy Monster. The most recent addition to the seasonal Monster Beer rotation is Gamma Ray, an 11% ABV wheat wine that was initially brewed as a one-time release.

Rye Pale Ale is easily in my top five favorite beers ever produced by humans on Earth, but what really tickles me as a beer fanatic is the impressive regularity of playful small batch goodness undertaken by brewmaster Spike Buckowski and head brewer Brandon Stull. Terrapin's Side Project endeavor is a series of one-time release brews representing a huge range of geekable beer styles - Belgian IPA, smoked beer, chocolate porter, scotch ale, saison, and strong ale brewed with 30 different ingredients and aged on oaked spirals. The brewery also utilizes oak by wood aging batches of its Rye Squared and Big Hoppy Monster. And then there's the Midnight Project, a recurring collaboration with Left Hand Brewing. Depth Charge, an espresso milk stout, will be the sequel to the rye schwarzbier Terra Rye'zd, the project's introductory brew.

Last year, Terrapin cranked out around 12,000 barrels of superior craft beer, with 15,000-16,000 barrels anticipated to be brewed and distributed throughout the southeast in 2009. The 45,000 sq foot Terrapin fortress includes offices, a tasting room, a two acre outdoor beer garden, a huge cooler for storing and cellaring, and of course, the brewhouse, which smells like sweet delicious mash.

Towering, shiny fermenters are positioned next to a huge bottling line, adjacent to bags of grain stacked nearly to the ceiling. Palates galore are piled equally high with empty bottles waiting to be filled with various brews, empty boxes waiting to be filled with bottles, and full cases wrapped in clear plastic ready to be shipped out to distributor warehouses.

Terrapin is all about green business and making use of existing materials. An open bay door receives the back end of a dump truck whose bed is full of spent grain. This motherload will be delivered to local farms so that restaurants in Athens can serve meat products that are locally raised and sustainably fed. An additional portion of spent grain is reserved inside the brewhouse; this stash goes to The Trapeze, a most excellent beer bar and restaurant in downtown Athens that uses the grain and mash sugar to bake a yummy bread served with orange infused honey butter.

Terrapin also joins forces with Jittery Joes, a local coffee spot that roasts and blends the beans used to craft Wake-n-Bake Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout and the upcoming Depth Charge Espresso Milk Stout.

Each week, around 1,000 people visit Terrapin on tour days - walking through the brewing space, sampling beer from 6 taps and a hand pump in the tasting room, whose bar is constructed from recycled palates once used in the Terrapin warehouse. The outdoor beer garden sports another 8 taps with plenty of space for lawn games, dogs, and barbequing. When new brewing equipment was installed, a stage for live music was made out of concrete slabs removed from the brewhouse floor. Newly planted hops vines crawl up the side of the building, delivering robust cones despite their young age. Around the corner, a grain silo filled with 2 Row Pale, the brewery's base grain, stands like an inverted rocket, ready to blast me off into the most exciting places in the beer universe.