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!

a brew year, month two.

 

Our 'brew year' started its second month at Boulevard Brewery. I love love love Boulevard beer, especially their flagship brew, the unfiltered wheat --a sweltering Kansas City afternoon just begs to be paired with a cold Bouli wheat (and a lemon wedge perched on the edge of the pint glass)! Despite moving three times since leaving my parent's house in 2006, I've been lucky enough to live in cities that carry Boulevard beer, both on tap at most bars and in liquor stores. . . including the completely whacked drive-thru liquor stores that have sprung up all over my new home state (I. Know. Right?). Boulevard has always reminded me of home even when I was two or five or eight hours away.

You can probably guess that I was damn excited for the tour.

Boulevard's tour was the longer than Goose Island's, as the factory is much bigger and they produce far more beer there. They weren't brewing any that day, but we did get to see rows and rows of fermentation tanks that were filled with Irish Ale for next month's celebration. Pipes crisscrossed the ceilings and led from the very first fermentation space we gathered in to the last lofted factory room.

 

Our guide explained to us that one of the largest fermentation rooms was built with three and four foot deep cement and steel reinforced walls, designed to withstand tornadoes, earthquakes and a category five hurricane -- making Boulevard one of the safest places to be in Kansas City. He didn't mention anything about nuclear holocaust, but I'm convinced the walls were thick enough to withstand radiation (I mean, come on, what better way to go out than with a couple of brews?).

The barrel room holds Boulevard's Smokestack series, a mix of higher quality beer and their experimental lagers. They age anywhere from half a year to one and a half. Also, this room was creepy and dark and smelled like a pirate ship. 

And then we got locked into a glass alleyway with the guide and his mother. The door leading into a tasting room locked behind one of the other tour guides and we were trapped for a while. Granted, we were trapped in a very nice glass alleyway with a beautiful panoramic view of downtown Kansas City, but still. It was February.

No, really, we were locked in right here:

photo courtesy of silvio aeberli

Great views but, uh, that joint wasn't warm at all.

After breaking free, we joined all of the other tour-goers down in the tasting room -- and lemme tell you, if I were a bar, I would be the Boulevard's private bar. It reminded me of the small pubs I visited with friends in Dublin; small and quaint, not enough decor to be hokey and scattered with little round tables and oak chairs. We had enough tokens to sample four brews, but J and I ended up with a few extras from the guide and his mother (score!). They had the usual suspects on tap that afternoon (Pale Ale, IPA, Bully! Porter, Stout) and a terrific twist on the unfiltered wheat, using dry hops in the fermenting process.

The tour completely solidified Boulevard as my all time favorite beer of all time.

a brew year, month one.

It's quickly come to my attention that J and I have fallen into the habit of going on a different brewery tour each month; something I'm definitely not opposed to. Our first foray into the brewery touring world was in Chicago, in January, on a particularly blustery day. Last month's was in Kansas City on an equally cold and disgusting winter day. And later in March we're heading to California where we'll be staying with my cousin and her family and -- you guessed it -- going on another brew tour (sans snow).

This is all fine and well with me, of course, 'cause I love me some beer. And the only thing I love more than, say, drinking beer, is watching it being made and visiting the places where it has been painstakingly crafted (well, sometimes). Taking these tours with J is also exciting because he's been brewing his own beer and learns something new about the process at each one.

So. The Great Brewing Adventure starts in Illinois. In January. On the first day of our trip to Chicago. Our first stop in Chicago was -literally- the Goose Island Brewery in Lincoln Park.

Aaand this is how it begins. iPhoning at the bar, waiting for the tour to start. We ordered a quick lunch (their sweet potato fries and curry ketchup were the bomb) and started with half pints of their 312.

 

The group assembled and we were off. We headed to the factory room, where huge silo-like containers held gallons and gallons of beer, all at different stages of fermentation. The guide did a great job of explaining how each step of the process worked and gave us a little background on the specific beers they make at the Clybourn factory. 

The tasting room was next. We were all gifted a pint class, emblazoned with Goose Island's logo, and six tastes of their beers -- the catch? We had to guess what each beer was, following the guide on the placemats. Our guide had us talk with our neighbors about what each beer tasted like to us, whether we liked it, if we absolutely despised it...and then he revealed which beers were what. 

There was a porter or two thrown in there, which you can see J enthusiastically downed (and took mine, I don't have a thing for porters). And! I found my new favorite beer -- the Sahti. Our guide explained that the Sahti wasn't like any other beer at the factory, because it is highly spice with juniper berries; this gives it a clean, crisp taste and a hint of gin. GIN! If you know anything about me, you know that gin is, hands down, my alcoholic beverage of choice. Both my paternal grandparents love G&Ts and I definitely think my love for gin is just in my genes. The Sahti was my favorite brew of the day, with the Green Line Pale Ale coming in for a close second (J loved that one, too). 

The tour was a huge success and so much fun -- not to mention, we had a great guide that was totally patient with everyone asking a million questions about the beer. J and I had a wonderful afternoon at Goose Island and it was a great way to start off our first trip (ever!) together.