A River Not Worth Crossing

We made our first field trip this weekend. This was not a class-sanctioned trip but something that a few of us just cobbled together on the fly. Sometimes spontaneity can be a good thing. And sometimes it's a mixed bag.

We got lost twice trying to get out of Davis. Which is pretty embarrassing since we had 4 smartphones, an iPad, and a GPS unit in the Jeep. Eventually we made it out of town but not on the interstate. This was OK because we were able to make a pit-stop at Berryessa Brewing Co. and played some monster Jenga.

A two hour drive to a brewery is enough to warrant a break along the way to the to get a beer. And Berryessa had a decent Saison so I'm not complaining.

After Berryessa we figured we may as well stay on the back roads. The idea was to save distance and travel time because I-80 was backed up with traffic. There wasn't any traffic but we had some hills to deal with.

Norm drives a Jeep. When we couldn't find the switches to roll the windows down he pointed out to us they are on the center console because the doors are detachable...as is the roof. Norm likes to hug the turns and there was plenty of hugging to be done on this road. That's what the road looked like for about an hour. By the time we stopped, I was not in the mood for a second beer.

When we arrived at Fogbelt Brewing Co. we got a nice little tour from owner/brewmaster Remy Martin. He is a past Davis graduate. We're starting to find lots of people all around who went to Davis. He made a comment about becoming intimately familiar with their homemade keg-washer if one of us got an internship with Fogbelt. Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass Remy.

Fogbelt runs a 7 bbl brewhouse with two 7 bbl jacketed open fermenters and one 15 bbl custom fabricated unitank where they do their conditioning. They brew once per week and they are still ironing out some of the kinks but their beer was decent so I wish them the best.

We swung by Russian River Brewing Co. They just released Pliny the Younger which is their annual triple IPA seasonal. People are fanatical for it out here and they were waiting in line for 5 hours in the dark and rain to get a pint of it. It must be really good. We didn't get out of the car. That river was not worth crossing.

Instead we drove to Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petuluma which was on the way home for us since Norm was merciful and agreed to take the interstate back to Davis.

Lagunitas has a giant greenhouse beer garden thing that holds about 300 people and it was packed. Eventually we found a table (it's seat yourself) and managed to get a beer. Some of their beers I really like and others I was not fond of. But overall I was impressed with their operation. They had about 20 beers on tap. About half of them were pale ales or IPAs but there was some good variety.

I was a big fan of the Lucky 13 and it was cool to see a brett beer and a Roggenbier on the menu. The main problem was that they were out of about 1/2 of their food menu and then at 7:45 they announced the last call. It seems like a lot of lost profit if you have 300 people drinking your beer on Saturday night to just kick them out at 8pm. Maybe there is some kind of City ordinance I don't know about.

All and all the trip was worth it but next time, maybe we'll do some planning. Now back to reading about chilled liquor treatment. Don't you wish you were me?