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.

A visit to Minnesota’s smallest commercial brewery.

While in Winona, Minnesota on business for a couple of days, I did as I always do when on the road, I searched out places to find good beer. This is not exactly an easy task in Winona. The choices are rather limited. However, while eating lunch at Culver’s, I looked across the parking lot to see that the bowling alley sign also read “Wellington’s Backwater Brewing Company.” Back in my hotel room I looked it up online and sure enough, there is a brewpub in the bowling alley. Of course I had to check it out.

That night I went in for dinner. I immediately ordered a sampler of all the house brewed beers which included a wheat, a pale ale, and a nut brown ale. They also brew an oatmeal stout, but that was out. Sadly, with the exception of the wheat, the beers were all very dissapointing. Each had a slightly vegetal and stale taste that was not pleasant. So, I ordered the wheat to accompany my BBQ sampler platter. The menu says that the wheat beer is a Kolsch style. I think I would classify it more as an American wheat, as the body and overall flavor profile were not as delicate as I would expect from a Kolsch. Whatever you want to call it, it was pretty tasty and went very well with the fine BBQ. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw the brewer, Chris Gardner in the brewery and took a moment to introduce myself and arrange to meet with him the next evening.

The next night Chris filled me in on the history of the brewpub. The bowling alley had been started by Chris’s father in the 1960’s. The idea for the brewpub came in 1995. At the time Chris was homebrewing and working at a liquor store/homebrew supply store connected to the bowling alley. One day while reading the Midwest Brewing News, he saw an ad for a 1-barrel brewhouse that Bell’s Brewing was selling. He talked to his brother, by then the majority family owner of the business, about buying the system and adding house beers to the menu. This was at a point in history when brewpubs were popping up all over the place so it seemed like a natural. One year and a lot of money later, the brewery was operating. Chris, a graduate of the short course at the Siebel Institue in Chicago, has been producing four house beers and an occasional specialty ever since. He brews once a week for a total annual output of around 55 barrels.

I tried all four beers again on this visit. I must say, they were all much fresher tasting. Chris explained that he has a hard time getting the staff to run the beer out of the lines at the start of an evening. I suspect that the samplers I had were first pours that consisted of beers that had been sitting in the lines overnight. The stout, that Chris took straight from the bright tank, had a rich, creamy mouthfeel and nice chocolate and roast malt character. The pale ale tasted very fresh with a bright citrus hop character and underlying caramel malt. The brown was toasty and lightly bitter, but seemed a little on the sweet side for my taste.

I very much enjoyed my visit to Minnesota’s smallest commercial brewery and my conversation with Chris. While none of the beers are outstanding, if you find yourself in Winona looking for a decent beer, I would recommend a visit to Wellington’s Backwater Brewing.

Took a trip up north today into wine country to have lunch at Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa, California. Best known perhaps for their exemplary Double IPA Pliny The Elder, brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo also brews a full line of other ales including an extensive selection of barrel aged Belgian style and sour beers.

Russian River is one of those breweries with a reputation that far exceeds their production capacity. A very small brewery that distributes in only a few states , their beers are known and sought out by beer geeks across the country. In this case the reputation is well deserved. I enjoyed a sampler tray with lunch that included all eleven tap beers. Of the eleven, there were only two that were disappointing…and these were good beers, just not quite up to the standard of the nine others in my view. So let’s run down some of the highlights.

First, the two that I found less sumptuous. The Damnation, a Belgian Strong Golden Ale, was not bad, but seemed to lack the fruity/spicy complexity of other Russian River Belgian ales or similar beers from other breweries. The OVL Stout, an Irish Dry Stout, had a nice creamy mouthfeel and some nice coffee/roast malt notes, but was again, nothing to jump up and down about.

Now to the great stuff…Of the nine remaining beers, my favorite was Pliny the Elder. You can read about it in my reivew, but it bears talking about again here. This is a wonderfully crafted beer. Bright, bold hop bitterness and flavor with deep balancing malt. If this were the only beer Russian River brewed, it would still be worth the visit. There were two other IPAs in the selection, Blind Pig and Russian River IPA. Of the two, I preferred the Blind Pig. It again had a good hop/malt balance with nice caramel and biscuit character in the malt.

Of the Belgians I tried, I loved Salvation, a strong dark ale with rich dark fruit and characteristic Belgian yeasty phenolics. It weighs in at a sneaky, drinkable 9% ABV. Sanctification, a blond ale fermented with 100% brettanomyces wild yeast was also nice. Breattanomyces is a wild yeast strain that is a major part of what gives Belgian lambic and Flemish ales their characteristic sour funk. Light and tart with a touch of horse blankety wild funkiness, Sanctification has all the qualities I would expect from a brettanomyces beer, but have not found in some others I have tried. I also enjoyed the Perdition. Called a biere de Sonoma, it is a dry and bitter Biere de Garde style with rich toasty malt to balance the spicy Belgian yeast.

Also of note were Aud Blonde, a light blond ale with nice bready malt and bright spicy hops, and a nice creamy/caramelly porter.

The food was good too. We each had a calzone full of pesto and rich creamy cheese. If you happen to find yourself in the Bay Area, its worth a trip up to wine country for a Russian River beer.