Our flight from Chico to San Fran has a 3hr delay so its time for an update. After a day in Sacramento where we visited River City Brewing an Pyramid Brewing. We caught the bus up to Chico for Beer Camp. People words cannot describe how cool beer camp was. We met for dinner at the Sierra Navada pub with host Steve Grossman filling us in on the 20 odd beers that were on tap while we dined on excellent food from the breweries restaurant. It happened to be my 49th birthday an things got very hazy after I finished off 3 big foots at 10.5 percent. Friday morning saw us meet with the brewer from the pilot brewery to discuss our recipe. We had decided on a brown IPA hopped with simcoe for bitterness with late centennial and citra. The beer would go through the torpedo with a 60-40 mix of galaxy and citra after fermentation. Once we had fine tuned the recipe we started our tour of the brewery visiting the hop storage area to rub some hops, what an experience that was, our hands were covered in resin and took quite some washing to get rid of the aroma.then we checked out one of the QA labs and went for a walk around the fermenters and grain storage area. We then went on to visit other areas of the brewery, we were impressed with their massive wet mill which has a glass pane so you can see what is going on inside it. At the end of the day it was back to the pub for more beers then a night out at a local restaurant for an awesome meal. The pub had DFH 90min and Ballast Point Sculpin pale ale on tap that made a nice change from the SN beers. After dinner we went back to one of the campers hotel room who had read Liam's ultimate beer list and had brought about 20 bottles with him in a big esky. Saturday morning we went to brew our beer in the pilot brewery, 10 barrels worth. Scott the brewer in charge was really knowledgable and I learned some stuff about oxidisation that is going to help me back at home. After lunch we jumped on the famous bar bike for more beer while peddling around the brewery. We checked out the hop farm and vege farm and then the giant legging and bottling line that bottles one million bottles a day......massive. After that we went to some more QA labs for some 3way blind tests that were pretty tough, one thing I learned was that instead of the usual cooked corn, I perceive DMS as garlic. After that we tried some oak aged SN beers, I really liked the quad. Then we were in for a treat, they took us down to "the cellar" to sample some celebration beers that had been single hopped, we tried centennial, citra, crystal and magnum hopped beers straight out of the bright tanks. We went to the gift shop and then back to the pub for more beers then the end to our camp. From the pub we went out to a for want of a better word "cowboy bar" where we had a great time. . So when our plane eventually arrives we are off to Russian river, we should be drinking Pliny the elder on tap by later tonight. That's all for now.
Browndog
