Beer Obsessed: Beer and Brewing Journal

So during our last brewer interview tour, we went up to Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and visited their brewpub. I had never been there and it was time to find out all of the great things I have been hearing about it. It was worth it. Here we go:
The brewpub itself is occupies a corner of what looks to be their main building. I don’t mean to make the pub sound small, the building is their “main” building that houses the brew systems and fermentation tanks located on the frontage of their property. Funny, if you look at google maps and survey the area while you are up there, you realize the Sierra bought their property at a time when it was probably the edge or outside of the town of Chico. Today, it is surrounded by the standard outlying and freeway access fare…there are a couple hotels and the typical chain type foods joints (applebees, etc) and all the big stores (home depot, target, etc). It looks like if Sierra want to expand further, they are either getting a different property or they are going up. Fortunately, it looks like they had great vision and everything they have today fits well on their large property, including some fairly large acreage of hops.
We checked into the Oxford Inn which is about a 10 minute walk from the brewpub, perfect location right on the other side of highway 99. After dropping off our stuff and downing a growler of an excellent rye beer from Blue Frog, we headed over to the pub. At 5:30 on a Friday (a beautiful night weather-wise, by the way…about 70 degrees) the pub was hopping and we had about a 20 minute wait for a table. We proceed to the bar and were overwhelmed to see about 16 of their beers on tap (wait….they don’t have that many bottled beers). The brewpub itself, I would call “large brewpub” in size. It is not huge, which Sierra Nevada could have easily done but they kept it as a pub atmosphere and size does have something to do with that. OK back to those beers. Where to start? I love brown ales and they happened to have one so I ordered that. They also had a Brown Saison which Mike ordered. The brown was excellent and I stuck with it most of the night. Malty, balanced, and luscious…exactly what I expect from a brewery of Sierra’s caliber. The brown saison was very basically the brown but with a Belgian yeast. I’m sure there is more to it than that but it worked. Generally, I am not a fan of “throw Belgian yeast into a non-belgian beer” but this one is a winner and does what others don’t: it gelled, melded, coalesced well. While were enjoying this first round, our little coaster/buzzer thing start going off and we were led to our seats on the patio. Another round was ordered and I either got another brown or their bock which I loved as well. I’m pretty new to the bock style so one of the great things that can happen is finding an example of said style that really does the trick for you. I love this beer, very drinkable. Pilsner malt aroma, great body, and a nice hint of toast. Fortunately, they had six packs of this beer in their gift shop so we grabbed a couple the next morning. What other beers did they have? I suggest looking at the photo gallery since there is a great shot of the sampler tray with names and also a shot of the beer list. There was a kellerbier that I would have invested more time in if we were there for another night. Couple of weizen beers, a blonde, and more.
I was happy to finally understand and dispel one myth while I was up there. The going phrase I knew was “you gotta go to the brewpub because the Pale Ale is different up there”. The real story is that Sierra Nevada has different recipes for their draft pale ale and the bottled version. The nice thing about their pub is not only do they have the draft version (of course) but they had the bottled version on draft as well so you can do them side by side. Unfortunately I didn’t do a comparison since I was so enamored with their other beers that are not available anywhere else. Our server said , I believe, that the draft version is higher ABV but I could have it backwards. Anyway, if I was dying to try it, I could set up that side by side back at home.
The food? Standard pub fare plus. I went for the plus and got the fillet mignon tips in fettuccini. The sauce was a light white sauce. Oh baby was it good. Ended up splattering a bunch of it on my new, white brewers association t-shirt. There were other shirts in my travel duffel so good to go.

So Sierra Nevada brewpub? Do it. Pay homage to America’s original craft brewery. I would recommend that if you are a beer lover, that you do two nights up there. You could take the 2pm tour the next day and hit the pub again the next night to finish out what you couldn’t the night before.
Oh and don’t forget to check out the photo gallery.

Auburn Alehouse:
We wanted to interview Brewmaster, Brian Ford but he had surgery earlier in the week and couldn’t make it. We managed to stop at his brewpub (he is also the founder) on the way to an interview later that day. The Alehouse is easy access from the freeway and would actually make a great place to stay as it looks to be in the “old town” area right south of interstate 80. We sampled a few of the beers and the nitro stout and his porter were our favorites. The porter was on the side of coffee, chocolate with good fullness (as opposed to clean, roasty porter). Food was good and we had a couple appetizers while we were there.
Would definitely like to spend more time at this pub in the future so we’ll get back to it one day but wanted to note that it looks like a good stop for a pint. I have a couple shots of the pub at the end of the photo gallery for this entry.

Mighty Brew neck label

I saw photos of these homebrews through my friend Brian a little while ago. I have to tell you these guys are near and dear to my heart as not only do they love homebrew but they love image, broadcast, and web design.
Do you get as excited about adjustment layers masks as you do about mash temps? How about alpha acid levels and addEventListeners? or yeast starters and div class? wait one more….how about original gravity and motion tracking. Ahhh, now I’m there!
Much to our excitement, MightyBrew beers arrived to the west coast to much fanfare. After getting the text from Brian, I showed up at his door step with Nikon in hand. These guys are true to form and there deisgn work shows it. I think the best marriage between beer and design is the Evil Tween beer….a clear reference to Alesmith’s Evil Twin recipe that is all over the web and the act of tweening in Adobe Flash (note: Alesmith’s beer is actually called Evil Dead Red….Evil Twin is based on a recipe by Jamil Zainasheff). Nice work. If for some reason our family ends up in Chicago, the first resume I send out will going to them.

The range of Mighty Brew beers

Review? I’d love to but Brian has a newborn and that mixed up which beer we were trying with googoogaga-ing the baby. Interestingly, we noticed a phenol spiciness in the beers but the label does reference the addition of some spice. It would be great to sit down and do something a little more formal but I never seem to be capable of doing that these days while on the run….when you become a parent yourself, you start heavily multi-tasking everything in your life. We definitely had a favorite but I can’t remember if that was the Amber or the Evil Tween. I’m not sure if the Pale Ale was supposed to be that phenol or not. However, the bottom line is Mighty Brew needs to keep the brewing happening. In fact I would recommend that they brew at work. There is plenty of time to brew while stuff is rendering out and vice versa, there is time to tweak keyframes while you are mashing.

Cheers.