a (very late) brew year, month three.

I've been slacking, I know.

So. San Diego, back in March. Visiting my wunnerful, wunnerful cousin & husband and their precious boys (also my bebe cousins). We squeezed in a bunch of sightseeing during that week and we shoveled a ton of amazing food into our bellies, too. Basically, when Josh and I weren't doing this:

that be the Torrey Pines Reserve right there!

Or devouring this:

note my wimpy in-n-out burger, sans onions. wee bit allergic to 'em, I am!

We were drinking and checking out this:

doesn't Josh look like the tour guide? his friends look slightly skeptical. except for the bro in the wwu shirt. he looks mighty interested.

Stone Brewery in Escondido is definitely in the running for my favorite brewery yet. Josh raved about their Ruination IPA (well, all of the Stone brews, actually) for months before we made it out to California and drank a fresh pint of it. I wasn't big on IPAs until I had one at the Stone bar and man-oh-man, did it make my taste buds explode with hop-y goodness. I wish I could remember the ratio our tour guide gave us about how many hops were used in their beer versus the average brew but. . . I'm thinking it was triple the amount. I'd insert a ratio here but all the humidity here has fried my brain. Anyway. Just know that it makes for a gigantic bold, bitter flavor, folks. A pint of the Ruination IPA - and just the regular IPA, too - gave me one of those great 'stick to yer ribs' feelings the way a good, full meal can; the Stone brews were like full and tasty like that.

So.

The REAL tour guide, the guy picture above, led us through the usual run-down: where's the tasting room, what's in beer, what is beer, what are hops, how long til we drink, how do you make beer taste like beer, where's the bathroom, how long do we have to listen to your voice before we get to go try some of this heavenly concoction that you keep shoving in our faces, etc. After a half-hour or so, the guy finally led us back to a long line of taps. Tall taps! Short taps! Big taps! Baby taps!

Which I don't have a picture of. You're gonna have to take my word for it. Or go there. And tell them I sent you. . . which means nothing because they don't remember me. Ey-oh!

when do we get to driiiiiiiink?

(Green note: Stone does not use additives, chemical preservatives or a pasteurization process with any of their brews. We may have inhaled 5,000 liters of smog-filled air out in California but I'll be damned if we drank preservative-filled beer!)

F-I-N-A-L-L-Y THIS HAPPENED!

You can probably tell that the answer to 'can I have one more glass of [blank]' results in a resounding NO from this guy. I think that might have been his name, actually.

Moving on.

Stone Brewery was really damn cool and their beer has the taste to back up any arrogancy they may have written all over their bottles (ahem). Unfortunately for us, Stone isn't sold waaayy out here in the middle of the country so Josh and I figured our last taste of this sweet, sweet nectar was going to be just a favorite memory from our trip to California. And then! We stumbled upon a mound of Ruination IPA six-packs at the local liquor store in Josh's hometown. He was super stoked and snatched one up to savor when we had gone back to our little joint in the Midwest.

It was a birthday miracle!