Beer Obsessed: Beer and Brewing Journal

We arrived at the Eel River brewpub in Fortuna on a Sunday at noon. That gave us about one hour before Ted showed up. I had both the blonde and the amber which I enjoyed. Both beers are certified organic as are most other at the brewpub.
When Ted arrived, we were put at ease right away as he is an easy going guy. He loves life in Humboldt county and when he isn’t working hard he likes to have a good time. In most cases that means getting in his fishing boat and heading out into the pacific ocean for some serious fishing. If you aren’t talkning beer with Ted, you might talk fishing…one of his other passions.
For the interview, Ted suggested we all top off our beers and go out into the beer garden as the sun had just opened up. We had a great conversation and hit a few different topics in the interview. After this we went to the brew house portion of the brewery (we topped off our beers on the way). The conversation carried on for a while after the interview and we talked about growing up in the east bay (Ted was born and raised in Danville) and his experiences with the the show Project Green, where his beers were featured in an episode and Ted was in the show as well.
I certainly hope to meet up with Ted again at some point for more conversations and beer. I like his style and his idea of fun. Perhaps a follow up interview at his production brewery in Scotia. We’ll see.
Enjoy.

 
for a photo gallery of the interview click here.

just got back from doing some bottle shopping at Ledgers. First thing I notice was a great deal on Nectar series six packs:

Red Nectar…….5.99
IPA Nectar…….5.99
Humboldt Hemp Ale …6.99

These beers usually are never cheap anyway so this is a great deal. Feels like a big price roll back. It has been a while since I paid only 6 bucks for craft beer.

Ledger’s is located on University Ave. in Berkeley about a block west of Sacramento St.

Happy Thanksgiving

We sat down with Ted at his Brewpub in Fortuna, Ca. It was a sunny August day and we talked about his background, organic brewing, and his production brewery located down the highway in Scotia, Ca.

Audio interview and photo gallery should be available in about a week here and in the iTunes podcast area.

A quick Emeryville History:
The new Bevmo is located in the “old” mall area. Before Eville became the retail store showcase that it is today, there existed one little mall right off of the off ramp. There were your typical stores like Trader Joes (before they exploded), Circuit City, Tower Records, Mens Warehouse, and a Copelands sports. At some point, the people that run Emeryville decided to bring in lots of stores, surrounding this little strip mall area and making it look small in comparison. Nobody else was buying into Ikea but Emeryville said “come on over and we’ll even name a street after you!”. From there it was all over: the gap, old navy, chain style restaurants that you would only see in the burbs. I am not complaining….I think a lot of people are happy that they don’t have to travel to SF, Marin county or Walnut Creek just to shop for a pair of jeans. I know we are! Anyways, look for the non-descript mall area right off of the northbound 80 off ramp….

My quick reviews of Bevmo’s:
Hmmm, well to sum it up. All Bevmos’ are pretty good selection-wise and service-wise, except for the immediate east bay. My local one, Albany really just plain sucks when it comes to register help. A couple of minutes to grab a six pack and 5 minutes to check out. When I talk to other Bevmos about what’s up with Albany, they sigh and say “well it is tough to find good help in some areas”. I hear the Oakland Bevmo is not that great either.
On the other hand you go out to the burbs of Walnut Creek and there is a Bevmo person greeting you at the door. Nice. It doesn’t just have to be the burbs. SF - Bayshore and Colma Bevmos are both great on stock and service.

So how about the new Emeryville Bevmo?
The place is new and I don’t know if people have realized it is there yet. Again, I think people are driving right by this little mall area on their way to Ikea and the Gap. I would imagine it will pick up a little though over time.
I consider this Bevmo of “standard” size. Not as small as Orinda (I do like the Orinda Bevmo) and not as big as the Walnut Creek Bevmo but typical of most other Bevmo’s I have seen. The selection is good and “standard” as well. The cooler space is a hair larger than some Bevmos and has a decent range of six pack and bombers to choose from.
This particular Bevmo has a “Bevmo University” room where it looks like Bevmo’s own critic, Wilford Wong, will be giving classes on wine (sorry, no beer program). The room had tables and chairs, lecture hall style, and a sink and storage area. They listed several wine education classes for the rest of the year with a cost of about 30 bucks a head on up, depending on the varietals they are serving for the particular class.
I am concerned that this location will be affected by the same slow register disease that I have experienced time and again at the Albany Bevmo and what I hear about the Oakland Bevmo. There was a line of 3 folks in front of me and three clerks standing around about 10 yards away. Sorry, my pet peeve is having to wait for no reason. Again, if I was at one of the better Bevmos, someone would have come up right away to knock the line down quickly.

So will I go to this Bevmo?
Probably not too often. The freeway right there is always crowded and so is Emerywille in general. No need to add stress to my life. I would rather take a lesurely drive over the east bay hills and hit Orinda instead (where good help is guranteed). So this location does feel a bit cutoff and I believe will only serve very local customers…assuming there are some. The wine classes may be a hit as well. I actually wish more Bevmo’s had this sort of official area for education.

This is the interview that almost didn’t happen. We were scheduled to link up with Briar at 5pm on a Saturday. After a long day, I didn’t call in to him until 4:30. No answer. Tried his cell at 4:45pm and no answer. I figured we missed him and we decided to just go to the Lost Coast Pub and roll through some of their beers and have some food.
The pub was fanstastic. It was packed at 6pm and so we got seats at the bar. We noticed two or three beers that we hadn’t ever seen in bottles so we gravitated towards them. I don’t have any notes on this but they had a Scottish Wee Heavy that was tasty and straight up to style. They also had a chocolate porter that was extremely tasty.
After about three rounds of beers and a big plate of fried oysters my cell phone starts ringing. I answer and it is Briar. He was apologizing profusely as he was at an all day wedding and I hadn’t called earlier to verify that I truly was up in Eureka. I thanked him for calling and told him everything was fine and that we can catch up some other time. The food and the beer were plenty good so we were happy. We said our good byes and we got back to our great beers and food.
A short while later the phone at the bar rings and the lady said it was for me. Huh? I go around and it is Briar on the line. He said he felt bad and that he was coming down to the pub to give us a tour. Fantastic! I send Jonny Audio back to the hotel (5 blocks away) for the audio gear. A short while after Jonny gets back, we were joined by Briar and his Wife. With our bellies full of great beer, we hop in Briar’s truck for the short ride down to the production brewery, about 5 blocks away from the pub. It was a dark and quiet area of industrial Eureka. Not scary dark, more peaceful dark. We unload and went through a door that led us into there office area. We chatted for a bit and got the recorder rolling.
When we opened the door to the brewery, the lights were off and it was dark. Briar found the switch and lo and behold right in fron of our faces were a couple of grain silos. The interview went well and it was great to learn all about Lost Coast Brewing with the unusual treat of dong our tour in the night when the facility was closed. Outside of some glycol chiller compressor noise the audio came out well.
I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think. Cheers.

 
for photos of the Lost Coast Brewing tour go to the photo gallery.

Our next interview in the take it to the brewer series is with Lost Coast General Manager Briar Bush. Briar is the front man for all things Loast Coast. While we almost missed out on this interview due to a schedule conflict, Briar was gracious enough to hook up with us after he spent the day at a wedding. Prepare yourselves as we tour the Lost Coast production brewery in the night. We stumble around and look for light switches and learn plenty about brewing at Lost Coast.
Look for the interview to be posted in about a week and a half.

We had to get to this interview at 10:30 AM in the morning after a night of drinking at the North Coast Brewing brewpub (Fort Bragg). Everything actually went well until we hit highway 1 going back inland. By the time we got to highway 101 me and Jonny the audio guy were pretty green. We continued to haul ass up 101 to hit our scheduled interview. Amazingly, we were within a minute or two of our 10:30 time. Whew!
We were feeling much better by the time we got there and we were greeted by Bob in front of the brewery. As I said before, Bob is a very smart and business savvy man. He was also very nice and a pleasure to hang out with. After the interview, he invited us into the tasting room where we tried a few beers. When Bob walked into the tasting room an Extra Pale Ale was poured for him without anything said. This is Bob’s go to beer. I am happy that this beer got GABF gold this year in the Blonde category. I’m sure Bob is proud to post another gold medal next to his gold medal from last year.
After we said our thank yous and good byes to Bob, we hung out with our beer while the lady who was working in the tap room was busy vacuum sealing 4oz bags of cascade hops. Why? They were for the local homebrewers. Yeast pitches and grain are available as well. I noticed while interviewing up here that the pro brewers were very accommodating to homebrewers. Very cool. While working through a scotch porter, one of the brewers came in with a keg that he hooked up….it was a pilot batch of this year’s John Barleycorn. We got to try some and it was young, rough, and delicious. They switch up who brews it every year and this brewer was commenting on how he was going to “back off on the chocolate malt so that the caramel malt comes through a little more”.
Blus Lake is a small town east of Eureka, it is slow going and Bob and his staff love the area. I would have loved to have spent more time there and will get back there in the future for sure.

for photos of the Mad River brewery visit the photo gallery

….and available for online streaming or download at the take it to the brewer page.
The interview should be available for iTunes subscription within an hour or two.
Photos of the interview at Mad River Brewing will be posted to the blog tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Thanks for your patience!
This is interview is coming out about a week late due to the length of the material. Run time of the interview is about an hour and a half…..so there was a lot more work than I originally thought. Edits and voiceovers are done and I will master down for web today. I just need to organize the photos after that.

This is a great interview as Bob talks all about beer history in Humboldt county from the beginning of the craft beer movement. He originally bought his homebrew supplies, for the Humboldt Humbrewers Guild, from Ken Grossman. Ken had a hombrew supply store prior to starting Sierra Nevada. Bob also talks about his GABF gold medal winning barleywine, John Barleycorn. Also, if you didn’t know, his brew system and bottling line came from Sierra Nevada Brewing. The mashtun, hopback,  and boil kettle are the original pieces that Ken and company welded up out of parts.

Stay tuned for a great interview to be posted here for download or streaming and also to the iTunews store.

An unfortunate victim of the bad loan/housing crisis/whatever you want to call it, was the Elk Grove Brewery. They had to shutdown earlier this month. I have family in Elk Grove that we visit on a regular basis and when driving around town, you see a foreclosed upon suburban sprawl nightmare. At one point this last summer, it seemed every third house, anywhere, had a “bank owned” for sale sign on it.

I first heard about the closing from William Brand’s blog. Bill also put up another article in memory of the brewpub here. I don’t know exactly what happened with the brewery, I’m sure the local economy had something to do with it but I won’t go there. Although, here’s another clue that Bill has in his article:
“Elk Grove is drowning in suburban sprawl. Where are the new-resident  customers? If you’ve ever lived in the slurbs, you know the answer: They’re at some chain restaurant, sucking on Bud.”

I had the opportunity to visit back in August with my Father in law. It was a posting that I never got around to but now, in memory, I’d like to get some photos and story up. 

I didn’t know what to expect of the brewery when we went. Elk Grove isn’t on alot of peoples’ map and I hadn’t heard anything about the brewery. I was pleasantly surprised. From their beautiful copper clad brew system right out there on the restaurant floor to immediately realizing the head Brewer Bill Wood had won many awards, including GABF (how ironic that he received two medals last week at the GABF for a now closed brewery), many state fairs, and this year at the world beer cup for his bock. After sharing the wheat, pale ale, red, and pilsner with my father in law, I knew I wanted to interview the brewer for my take it to the brewer series. I hope that Bill Wood lands solid on his feet after this, he is a telented brewer who specializes in lighter, central valley heat beers and the whole Sacramento and San Joaquin valley NEED him brewing beer. I’ll be looking out for you Bill.

UPDATE: William Brand sent me a note that Bill is now working at the Auburn Alehouse

All photos in this article will open up into a photo gallery that you can click through. Enjoy.