Saturday Brewery Adventure - NorCal

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 

Saturday was a pretty fantastic little adventure day… and it started off with a trip to Hendy Woods State Park just north of Philo, California. This is a relatively small state park & is primarily a nice little camping ground… but what it lacks in size it definitely made up for in beauty and was just a wonderful little, quiet area full of redwood trees and great little paths to wander through. On this trip, there was also no rangers, the visitor center was closed, and the only humans we saw were two joggers off in the distance briefly… so yeah, just serene & awesome. Here are some pictures…

 

Of course, what brought us to the area wasn’t just a great hike, but also a great brewing company about 15 minutes away in Boonville called Anderson Valley Brewing Company. It’s a bit of a destination as you’d have to go a bit out of your way to see it (nearest big town is Santa Rosa about an hour away) but the drive is absolutely gorgeous & there’s a great small town feel (only about a thousand people in Boonville). The grounds have goats in the fields (Dizzy loved that obviously) and there was a Great Hall area that was surprisingly empty for a Saturday (then again, it was just after noon when we got there) and we were greeted by Luke… the black lab who, from what we could tell, basically runs the joint. There were also two nice bartenders that we chit-chatted with but Luke definitely kept getting our attention by little barks or nudges when he wanted us to throw his ball… or a random leaf.

 

The brewery started in 1987 out of a ten-barrel brewhouse as a dream of brewmaster Kenneth Allen. Over the next decade, he made some great recipes & by 1998 he was up to 15,000 barrels, double the previous year. Demand was still growing though, so they kept expanding and expanding into a separate larger brewhouse by 2000 using some great copper kettles that he was able to acquire from a defunct German brewery. By 2010, Ken retired… and the new brewmaster Fal Allen (no relation oddly enough) took over… and they’ve been continuing the past brews as well as expanding into their Bahl Hornin’ Series, their barrel aging program & are still growing at a pretty rapid rate. Not bad for a guy in a small town, right? The tour took us through the brewery… and yeah, it’s pretty large. Here are some pictures…

 

Ah... the coveted Golden Bear...

We shall have one soon methinks...

This copper-laden board is just for show now...

but it's still pretty, shiny & cool...

Interesting twist: This is how they hop their beer...

They run the wort through this hot tub filled

with hops to maximize utility of the flavors

They got hops like Michael Jordan...

As for the most important part, their beer is also pretty fantastic. We tried a variety of samplers including their Winter Solstice (very malty session beer), a barrel aged stout & a few others in between… and they were all pretty good. Their staple drink that I’ve found mostly in Bay Area bars is Boont Amber Ale, and it’s a fantastic staple ale… but you can also find their IPA and others around town as well, mostly in tap rooms as it’s not quite one of the big local boys like Anchor Steam. I highly recommend taking a little road trip by Anderson Valley if you get the chance & sampling their selection. I’m sure they can also be found in Bevmo and other retailers.

 

After grabbing some great barbecue at Hamburger Ranch in Cloverdale…

 

We headed to Russian River Brewing in downtown Santa Rosa. However, because it was playoff time, RR is EXTREMELY popular locally & we were running a little behind, we basically just stopped in… grabbed a few bottles for the road… and were off to our next destination. That being said… we fully plan on checking out this brewer’s delights on a separate trip because downtown Santa Rosa seemed like a nice little place… and they had a WIDE array of interesting selections and samples seemed to be a dollar, which is pretty fair so that we can give them a fair assessment. That being said, the three kinds in bottles that we tried were Damnation (golden ale), Supplication (Belgian dark sour aged in pinot noir barrels with sour cherries) and their flagship brew Pliny the Elder, which is basically the quintessential Double IPA. It’s basically the ONLY beer that I’ve seen with a full 100 rating on ratebeer.com and was even mentioned in a Christmas present beer guidebook of mine as a “Must seek out & drink” where I only found about five in the whole book with that rating. They were all pretty fantastic… but we will have to elaborate on them more in a future post to give them due credit. So until then… here are a few pictures…

 

 

 

 

  

We headed to Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma in time for their final brewery tour of the day at 5 PM. We got there about a half-hour early, so attempted to get a sampler (took a while due to packed house, packs of arrogant douchebags trying to casually push in front & the bartenders apparently focusing on growler filling) but eventually got a nice sampler of eight of their brews and finished them up just before the tour started. Fantastic stuff & a great variety. First off, the brewery started in 1993 with a gentleman named Tony Magee who… after only ten batches of homebrew… decided that he wanted to open a brewery. After refining his recipes over the first years, they QUICKLY took off and they’ve been rushing to expand ever since. They’re even opening up another brewery in Chicago just as large as their current one (I think about 160,000 barrels in 2011) to both meet their current demand as well as expand into the Midwest & East markets. I’m thinking that Mr. Magee is pretty well-to-do right now… but here are some pictures from the tour…

 

Live entertainment most weekends...

Barrel aging beauty...

Not a bad biergarten area...

As for their beer selection, they have some amazing staples like their IPA, Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale & Pils that you can find at most bars here in the area. However, they also pride themselves on producing some unique batches. For example, some of their new biggest hits… were basically from brews that fell on adversity. For example, once while making their barleywine… there was some ingredients missed originally… so they made a few changes… and out came their Brown Shugga (which is fantastic). Then during another situation where they couldn’t meet demand on Brown Shugga due to construction issues, they received some adverse feedback from a pretty big distributor… and so their response was a seasonal brew called “Lagunitas Sux” which is a little different but still pretty good. In 2005, they received a 20-day suspension due to an undercover sting operation revealing that they were running a “disorderly house” under some Prohibition days law (California had to get their cut) but out of that time off, they came up with a highly-regarded Spring seasonal bitter ale called “Undercover Investigation Shut Down”. Through adversity, there’s always great beer to be made. I like that attitude… and it has obviously served them well. Check them out if you’re in the area… or you can certainly find them around.

 

So there you have it… a little Saturday road trip adventure in January in Northern California. Hope that you enjoyed it as much as we did… and if not, it’s probably because you’re just reading about it instead of experiencing it… so get out there & have fun. Have a great day everybody!!!