Sierra Navada Here We Come

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I was just about to write something very similar!

Very interested on that info if you're happy to share, browndog.

Same here. I bet you picked up some great info! This has me looking forward to March next year for my own trip even more so now. Especially with a day in SD planned.
 
Personally after being spammed by Liam's facebook page for weeks I can do without any more pics. Bastards! :)
Hard to think if two QLD brewers better suited for this particular trip though, well done fellas!
 
Sorry Folks, I've been putting a heap of hrs into getting the new brewery up and running and have slacked off as far as AHB is concerned. Fear not, my assignment for tomorrow night is a full report. See you then.

-Browndog
 
Sorry Folks, I've been putting a heap of hrs into getting the new brewery up and running and have slacked off as far as AHB is concerned. Fear not, my assignment for tomorrow night is a full report. See you then.

-Browndog


You have received an F for this assignment :angry:
 
A brown dog ate my homework :(
 
An F.... but but but.. I really have been flat out, the other night I resized a heap of photos so the post won't take an age to load, I'll get them up after the kids have gone to bed.

promise.
 
Honest...

I ran out of gas.

I... I had a flat tire.

I didn't have enough money for cab fare.

My tux didn't come back from the cleaners.

An old friend came in from out of town.

Someone stole my car.

There was an earthquake.

A terrible flood.

Locusts!

IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!
 
OK, we will kick off with Liam (center) with the Boys from San Diego, the big fella is a Grand Master and currently building his own Brewery, Rip Current Brewing. I hope we some of his beers out here.
outside.jpg

Next we have the Tap house an restaurant, the food is awesome and there are about 20 beers on tap, A couple of the taps are rotated on a daily basis.
tap_house.jpg

We took a tour of the brewery on foot and for obvious reasons can't post all the pics I'd like but here is the working hop freezer where we rubbed different varieties of hops and played with them like kids.
hops2.jpg

Hops.jpg

Dry hopping sacks, more of them later.

dry_hopping_sacks.jpg

The bottling line was massive, they bottle 1 million bottles a day as well as doing kegs and cans.

Bottling_line_2.jpg

Yeast propagation tanks.

yeast_room.jpg

This is a Torpedo being emptied.

torpedo.jpg

The Pilot Brewery where we brewed our beer, a Brown IPA called Simmer Down Brown.

Pilot_brewery.jpg

The Pilot Brewery controller program.

Controller.jpg

Taking the hops up to the Pilot Brewery for our brew, we bittered with simcoe and had late additions of centennial, cascade and simcoe and further additions in the hopback. After fermentation the beer will go through the torpedo loaded with 60/40 centennial and galaxy.

hops_for_brew.jpg

Loading up the hopback.

Hopback_1.jpg

And me, hosing out the mash tun.

hosing_mash_tun.jpg

Here is the famous bike, it was bloody hard work peddling it for an out of shape bloke like me. Fortunately we were able to refresh ourselves with SN pale ale as we peddled around the brewery and out to the hop farm and organic vege garden.

The_bike.jpg

A nice truck

nice_truck.jpg

What would a brewery tour without a glass of beer from the bright tank be. Liam caught me poking out my tongue at the world.

bright_tank_beer.jpg

We got a real treat a trip to "the cellar" where they had celebration ale and celebration ale single hopped with all its hops, from memory there was magnum, crystal, centennial and Doh, I forget.

Celebration.jpg

A nice drop with some nice growlers.

nice_drop.jpg

With Pliny the elder being $4 a bottle, why wouldn't you fill your fridge with it? (not ours, the San Diego boys)

Plinys.jpg

Every evening when the taphouse shut we would head back to the San Diego boys motel room for tastings. They had brought an awesome selection of their beer stashes. if you look hard you might notice an aussie touch there.

tastings.jpg

These were the kind of beers we were drinking

Firestone.jpg

And finally a shot of the beers we bought to bring home, you can't see the box of Sierra Navada Camp Beers we bought to bring home with us.

beers4home.jpg

Oh yes, hop sacks..... 24 of them coming out the bottom of an empty fermenter.

birthing_hop_bags.jpg


Well that's about my 2mb limit gone, so I hope you all enjoy the pics.

cheers

Browndog
 

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Brewing on the new rig this saturday Cocko ;)

Its been a long birth Browndog, I'm sure the bling machinetm will be worth it.
Photos or it didn't happen :p
 
Browndog I am so god damn jealous....

Please chuck up a post with the new rig details on it with plenty of photos!!!
 
I was thinking the same thing. 2.25L limit, per person, isn't it? Did you just have to pay duty?
Whenever I come back from NZ, once or twice a year, I have on one or two suitcases full of beer.

I get the 2.25l thing, but no one ever seems interested in the beer, even when I tell them. Might be just luck, I don't know.
Same on the way to NZ, I've come over there with two 5L kegs of beer in the luggage plus the full spirit allowance. No one cared.

I think into germany you can officially bring in spirits plus 16L of beer.
 
Looks amazing guys. Did you have any trouble with customs bringing that many beers back?

Customs Officer: How much beer have you got?

Us: about 24 bottles each.

Customs Officer: you know you are only allowed to have 2.25L per person.

Liam: Yeah but that's just spirits right?

Customs Officer: No, it includes beer too, now next time you go to the States remember that. Off you go and have a nice day.

And that was that, they didn't look in our bags or anything. A big win for us.
 
How were the SN beers in the bar off the tap, PA, Porter, Stout etc? :icon_drool2:

The beers off the tap were so fresh (obviously) and very sessionable. There were no big bad west coast hop monsters and unfortunately Hoptimum wasn't on tap while we were there. When first arrived for a meet and greet and dinner in the arvo, I got into a shout with the San Diego boys and Liam. Being my birthday I was pretty geed up and at the end of the second shout I was ready to go one up on them. I quipped to one of the San Diego boys whos pint was about a 1/4 gone "would you like me to stick a teat over that for you" Bad mistake, after dinner I had 3 bigfoot barleywines at 10.5% in front of me. I thought bugger this I'm not going to put the Aussie boys in a bad light so I skulled one after the other. Needless to say, I really didn't remember the rest of the night at the taproom till closing nor the tasting session at the boys motel room after.
 

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