Thank you for your wine, California
…your Barley Wine that is.
San Francisco and the Bay Area
After the shenanigans of Colorado (see earlier post and beerambassadors.com), and now that the Beer Ambassadors were 4 again, we were all looking forward to a relaxing time in San Francisco.
Our hotel seemed to be in the area known as Civic Center but which we fondly remember as Crack-Town. For a bunch of sweaty, hungover aussies it wasn’t a great introduction to the what San Francisco has to offer. Still, we made the best of it. Laundry, showers, walk around in the sun and it was time to visit the first 2 locations we had ear-marked: A beer-bar called Toronado; and a brew-pub called Magnolia in the Haight-Ashbury area.
The next day, after the first full-night’s sleep in an age, we were ready to get serious again. Jaime Jurando from the Gambrinus Company, who had kindly offered to be our tour guide in the bay area, extracted us from Crack Town and took us to a great bay-side hotel in Berkeley. He then gave us the best tour of San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and the general bay area that we could have asked for - including a number of beer-bars, the old naval base, a private tour of the Trummer Pils brewery in Berkeley and a tasting at a Sake factory.
We also visited two Apple stores in search of an iPad but they couldn’t be had for love nor money…
Beer Ambassador Miro enjoys a San Francisco Cioppino…
Our last day in San Francisco started with a ferry ride across the bay and a trip to America’s oldest craft brewery - Anchor Brewing in San Francisco, home of the famous Anchor Steam Beer. Before setting off we met up again with Jaime, and Darren and Lars from Trummer, for lunch and then hit the road to Santa Rosa…
Or so we thought.
Some technical difficulties with the tom-tom meant that we drove 45 minutes south towards LA before doubling back…
Santa Rosa
Our next stop was Russian River Brewing Co in Santa Rosa, northern California. The boys were pretty excited about this one as it included one of their favourite beers, Pliny the Elder. It was a good, fun pub but whatever you do watch out for the “Savage” wings!
Chico
Another day, another drive north. Today the destination was Chico where we’d arranged to meet Terrence Sullivan from the Sierra Nevada Brewery - the largest, privately owned, craft brewery in the US. The Sierra Nevada setup was much bigger than anything we’d seen before and Terrence gave us a great tour through the facilities including tasting a number of beers fresh from the tanks.
Using a combination of solar panels, fuel cells and CO2 reclamation they actually generate 83% of their total power requirements on-site.
Full beer-nerd details available at BeerAmbassadors.com.
Beer Ambassadors video interview with Terrence, explaining the Sierra Nevada beer bike.
Eureka, Arcata and back to the coast
The next leg of our journey was a driving paradise. An undulating, windy road over the mountains to get us back to highway 101, via Lost Coast Brewing in Eureka. A few tasters and some oysters with buffalo sauce and we were back on the road to drop in on Terrence from Sierra Nevada’s brother Dutch in Arcata. Dutch and Andy showed us around their bar, Humboldt Brews (no longer a brew-pub, unfortunately) and we got back on the 101 and said so long, California. Thanks for the beers!
