Melissa found Foothill Regional Park, right by the town of Santa Rosa where the brewery is located. We drove over to Sonoma County to the park, and while it was raining intermittently, it was a nice hike. Climbing up into the rolling hills and landscape of the north bay we quickly left highway 101 behind us and were soon peeking over hilltops towards free range cattle, forests, and rolling hills of vineyards. The landscaped was decorated with young, gnarled oak and the occasional madrone and manzanita tree. In the rain, the green of new winter grass
made for a beautiful hike. (So much so, I forgot to take pictures and instead have just copied these instead.) Before the land was made into a state park, three lakes were created and stocked with fish. These still greet you at the bottom of the park, when you first enter and begin climbing into the hills and are still used for recreational fishing. The perimeter of the park offers a great, but quick, ~3 mile hike and it is definitely worth checking out if you are ever in the area, which you should be...So why the Russian-River Brewery?
Some of you may have seen an earlier post about my experience at the Davis Food Co-op a couple of weeks ago when I asked an employee about the empty row of Pliny the
Elder bottles of beer. After asking an employee to check in back if there was any more, a case was brought out from the storeroom. At this point, what began as a Reg and myself standing in the beer isle had added three others also hovering around. The employee opened the case asking, "Is this going to be enough for you?" revealing three bottles of Pliny the Elder inside. I reached down grabbing two bottles., one for Reg and one for myself, and replied, "Yes, this should be just fine. Thank you." By the time I had finished saying fine, a hand had reached into the box and removed the final bottle. The now small crowd which had gathered around the un-boxing uttered a collective sigh and began to scatter. As Reg and I finished to shop, no less than three times were we asked hastily, "They have Pliny?" "When will they have more?" "Do you know where else I could find that?" We returned home and enjoyed our Pliny, perhaps a bit over hyped but a really good beer none-the-less.Pliny the Elder is a double IPA, and a pretty damn
good one at that. However through two key actions, (1) making a very good beer and then (2) have purposefully inconsistent and spotty distribution, the brewery has made Pliny the Elder a real hot item. Chris, a friend of mine who had introduced me to the brew has also told me about a limited release of Pliny the Younger which was going down all this week for SF Beer Week starting on Friday the 5th. Pliny the Younger is a triple IPA and a strong 11% ABV, or in other words, a great sipping brew. So of course we wanted to get in on this release of the Younger, the brewery figured they had enough to last all week... they sold out on Friday. ALL of it was gone on the first day. However we still wanted to go to the brewery and try their other brews and still do the hike so away we went.
The brewery was still packed and we waited about 20 minutes for a table we only got because someone grabbed us as we were walking around and said they'd give us theirs when they were done. Score. When we sat down we were treated to some good pizza (I know, a lot of pizza this week. But the smell was so good, and we were so wet and hungry, we couldn't pass it up.)The other cool thing about this brewery is, besides making the hot Plinys, they also do some really interesting brews featuring fermentation in old wine barrels to give the brews a whole new flavor. Unfortunately the one I really wanted to try, Beatification was not currently available. That brew features no added yeast whatsoever. Instead it is uses only the wild mix of yeasts from the air (akin to sourdough) and is aged in old oak barrels that no longer contribute oak or wine flavor but rather have their own unique mix of yeasts. We'll be going back to try that another time.
The brews we did try consisted of:
Russian River Porter (41 BU's, Bitterness Unit)- Not bad but not great, smooth like on nitro but it wasn't and seemed a bit flat.
Happy Hops (32 BU's)- a "hoppy pale ale", but really not that hoppy. Like a traditional english pale ale.
Blind Pig IPA (72 BU's)- this is more like it. Lots of that pine flavor but not killer hops. If IPAs are a bit too hoppy for you sometimes, this has a flavor like the Elder (95-100 BU's) but not as much bitterness.
Concesecration (10% ABV, 17 BU's) - This was a cool one. A dark sour ale fermented in Cab Sauvignon barrels. I liked this one but Melissa and Reg favored the other.
Supplication (7% ABV, 27 BU's) -
The ladies liked this one. A dark ale aged in French oak Pinot Noir barrels with three strains of yeast and sour cherries. Pretty cool to try these out. In the end though, as you can see in the picture posted above. We came home with a growler of Pliny the Elder.
A New Foster Dog...
Also, this evening after returning from the hike we picked up a new foster dog. The SPCA just got her today, and we having been looking forward to taking another foster. She is a very sweet, small, cuddler, but unfortunately has very matted hair which makes he shy away in pain when you pet her on the head. She is going to the groomer Monday and I don't think she will be around long based on her very sweet temperment.
No comments:
Post a Comment