I had escaped the cold and snow of Minnesota. The sun was shining brightly. The temperature temperature in the San Francisco Bay Area was hovering in the mid-sixties with a cool breeze blowing from the west. This was the perfect day for a drive north into the wine country of Sonoma County for a tasting. A beer tasting of course. Today the brewery of choice was Lagunitas in Petaluma. Known for big, brash, hoppy beers, Lagunitas was long one of those mysterious breweries who’s beers we in the land of the cold could not get. In the last year, however, these brews have become available in Minnesota and they are flying off the shelf.

The afternoon at Lagunitas began in the tasting room before moving on to the tour, which started at the bottling line and ended at the brewhouse. I am going to go in reverse. The brewery was much bigger than I expected and much bigger than the pictures on the Lagunitas website would indicate. It turns out that they have not updated the virtual tour on the website since installing a new brewhouse that has dramatically increased their output capacity. The old brewhouse was a 30-barrel system that would only allow them to brew one batch at a time. The new brewhouse is an 80-barrel system with separate mash and lauter tuns, allowing them to have three batches working at any one time. It is the biggest brewhouse that I have seen at a smaller brewery. Another thing that I found interesting about the brewery was that the fermenters are kept outside. They are glycol jacketed to allow for precise temperature control, as are fermenters in most breweries. The mild climate in Northern California allows them to operate efficiently outdoors in a way that more extreme climates would make impossible.

Now on the the tasting room. The tasting room at lagunitas is like a loft version of a fraternity house basement. Overlooking the bottling line, it is full of old overstuffed sofas and chairs, a foosball table, and a bar against one wall a row of with mismatched bar stools. We sampled six beers with fairly generous pours, Pils, Censored, IPA, Hop Stoopid, New Dog Town Pale Ale, and Gnarlywine.

What I know to be my favorite Lagunitas beer, the New Dog Town Pale Ale, was unfortunatley spoiled by the order in which the beers were served. This is a very drinkable American Pale Ale with a HUGE piney hop presence. It is not an extreme beer or a big beer, but it was one of the last two beers served. After sampling IPA, Hop Stoopid, and Gnarleywine I am afraid the Pale Ale was a bit overwhelmed. Because of that, my favorite beer at the tasting was also the one that struck me as the most interesting choice of brews from a brewery known for big hoppy brews. Lagunitas Pils is a wonderful example of a Ceczh style pilsner, with a full sweet/bready malt and loads of spicy/perfumy saaz hops. Easy to drink and tasty.

Hop Stoopid, soon to replace Maximus in the Lagunitas lineup, is described by the brewery as a Triple IPA. Aside from the 102 IBU bitterness rating, I don’t see what makes this anything more than a Double IPA. It’s modest 8% ABV certainly wouldn’t warrant the tripel designation. Whatever you want to call it, it is a nice beer, surprisingly more balanced than the IPA, it has a big grainy, caramel malt backbone to support the gigantic grapefruit hop presence.

The Gnarlywine, an 11% ABV barleywine style, was also nice. Less bitter than I expected, but still bitter enough to call it an American barleywine, this beer has a malty sweet richness that goes down easy. The alcohol presence is apparent, but not hot or solventy. While good to drink now, it will be even better with a year of age on it. Buy a bottle and lay it down for a while.

The Censored and IPA were my least favorite of the tasting. This is not to say that they are bad beers, I just didn’t feel that they held up to the others. I like balance in a beer and I find the Lagunitas IPA to be short on the malt character needed to back up the big hops. Censored, a red ale, just seems to fall a little flat compared to the others. Again, the hops were the dominant note with some toasty malt coming through as it warmed. Perhaps if I were drinking a pint of this beer without comparing it to five other Lagunitas hop bombs I would feel differently. It certainly is not a beer that I would turn away.