Sierra Navada Here We Come

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Matt, there's no way in hell Liam and I could break Ross and Dave's record, they were insane beer-drinking-monsters when they did their trip.
Damien, I've put Luche Libre on the list and hopefully we'll get there.
Wade, make sure you drop by Liam's first, he has ALL the travel docs, mine included!
 
When I think about the term "..... camp" I keep thinking of the movie American Pie :p

Cheers

Paul
 
Tony and Liam, congrats guys. Sooooo jealous. Have a blast. Think of us poor IBU guys sitting at home calling you #!%#s :D

bah
 
If you are going to RRBC and can make the half hour drive, go say g'day to expat brewer/owner Pete at Stumptown.
Only an Aussie could make a beer called "Blimey the Wanker" half an hour away from "Pliney the Elder".
 
Have a great trip guys; looking forward to hearing all about it!

Cheers,
tallie
 
hope you're going with an airline with good beer allowance; I mean baggage allowance!

Enjoy
 
You will be living the dream everyone of us has.

Don't drink so much you forget it tho.
 
We are sitting in LAX waiting for our flight to Sacramento, we have just come from Carlsbad in San Diego. We kicked off on arrival by driving down to San Marcos and The Lost Abbey where we had a brewery tour and some nice west coast IPAs. The stand out beer being Lost and Found strong brown ale brewed with a whack of raisins. Then after being awake for 30 hrs we headed to our hotel for a nap then it was off to Stone. Words cannot describe this place, it is a palace in honour of craft beer. Liam and I had tasters of pretty well every Stone beer on tap, we agreed the stand out was a strong ale with the unlikely name of "beer brewed to age in a cave" the gift store was massive and the beer garden complete with flames coming out of huge rocks. The next morning we headed to Rip Current Brewing, this is a new brewery due to open in 4weeks time. It's owned by one of the guys attending beer camp with us. We got the royal tour then had a tasting of a few beers including a sour stout that was pretty interesting. Then we headed to Ballast Point and worked our way through their beer list sitting in the beer garden while the Blue Angels flew in tight formation overhead. Then we headed over to Alesmith, their range was fantastic with a lot of barrel aged beers which were simply awesome their nut brown barrel aged was sublime. We drove down to Carlsbad where we went to Pizzaport for dinner where we met up with some fellow campers for dinner. We shared a massive pizza and a couple of jugs of pink IPA brewed for a breast cancer awareness campaign. We are looking forward to a bit of a rest before hitting Sierra Navada, our luggage is getting heavy with glassware and beer, more to follow.
 
Good stuff. Stone is pretty impressive - who was driving afterwards? :)

No sleep on the long haul flight? Too excited?

Do the west coast IPA's taste better when you're on the west coast?
 
Geez boys. What with leaving BABBs, winning comps, and buggering off to the US... Well.... I hate youse guys right now....


But seriously, with this thread and the FB posts it looks like you're having fun! Bastards!
 
Have a good one guys - you'll love it!
Try not to come back yellow :ph34r:
 
When you drop in on Anchor be sure to try their spirits. They do some wicked gins and whiskies. Check out the rye whiskey. Unreal. :eek:
 
Bastards!!! :D

Remember you are representing Australia. Drink long and be merry!
 
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
 
Scott the brewer in charge was really knowledgable and I learned some stuff about oxidisation that is going to help me back at home.

It could help us all. (<=hint).
 
OK, I'll try and get some pics and info up tonight, my mission this weekend is to get my new brewery up and running.

cheers

Browndog
 
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