The Beer Garden of Eden

Our 2nd day of the Beer Ambassadors at large tour of the states started innocently enough.

While the rest of us got our bags packed, Barney walked down to the hire car place to get us some transportation to our next destination - Escondido.

4 guys, all slightly hungover, with bags. We’ll need a nice, big comfortable family sedan right?

But Barney had other ideas and decided that we needed a bit of style. He returned with a tribute to the american auto-industry’s form-over-function attitude - a Dodge Challenger.

Our destination was Stone Brewery in Escondido, home of The Arrogant Bastard Ale.

Ken Wright, from Stone, gave us a tour of the facilities followed by tastings of all the different brews they had. A big thanks to Ken, it was very interesting - even for a non beer-nerd like myself. And the choice & quality of the beers was awesome, the Arrogant Bastard and the Stone Porter were both stand-outs.

The building and grounds themselves were amazing - it flowed from the industrial area of the brewery, through the stone, wood and old metal decor of the shop, lobby and restaurant and out to what could only be described as the Beer Garden of Eden.

After the tour we got ourselves a nice table in the southern californian sunshine, a beer & food menu, and enjoyed the afternoon, and into the evening…

Thanks to our waitress Jamie for being so patient with a bunch of drunken aussies.

Full set of photos are available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/laazyj/BeerambassadorsUsaJune2010

As usual beer details + videos are available at BeerAmbassadors.com.

Mountain Goat Tom, Beer Ambassador Miro & myself