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WE SAW YOU: 901 Hot Wing Festival

Fifteen teams competed at the second annual festival at Grind City Brewing.

Stewart Guenther recently had people in tears. And it wasn’t because of a funny joke he told.

Guenther, who participated in the 901 Hot Wing Festival, let people try the wings he cooked using a wing sauce made from the Carolina Reaper pepper. That pepper, one of the hottest in the world, is only surpassed, according to a Google search, by one known as Pepper X.

Guenther’s team, Whiskey & Swine, was among the 15 teams participating in the event, which was held November 2nd at Grind City Brewing Company. “We mostly compete in barbecue contests, in which chicken is one of the categories,” he says. “We do chicken, but it’s always chicken thighs. We’ve never turned in wings for competition except at this event.”

Grind City owner Hopper Seely created a new brew — Cranberry Beret —for the occasion. “It’s a cranberry seltzer, but it uses real cranberry juice,” Seely says.

Cranberry Beret is available in the tap room, he adds. 

By Michael Donahue

Michael Donahue began his career in 1975 at the now-defunct Memphis Press-Scimitar and moved to The Commercial Appeal in 1984, where he wrote about food and dining, music, and covered social events until early 2017, when he joined Contemporary Media.