The Stone Brewery

As Ferris Bueller once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and take a look around once in a while you might miss it”, I intend to kick it into a lower gear for the next few weeks and get back to being Bobby G. Since the last time I posted I’ve been enjoying Los Angeles very much. So much in fact I haven’t had much time to write or do pretty much anything else. I have gathered some good stories and been to some wonderful places in the past few weeks so we’ll start with The Stone Brewery.  

Located in sleepy Escondido, California, the Stone Brewery is home to some of the best Pale Ale’s available in the good old USA. Premium Shih and I decided to head down there a couple of weeks ago to check out the operation, sample some beers, and learn a little more about brewing. Above you can see the wonderful beer cooler located in their company store (I apologize if the pictures are a little blurry….we had been drinking after all).

Not only is Stone Brewery home to their brewing operation but they also have a bistro on site with a great selection of food and beverages. After signing up at the company store for our tour we headed into the bistro to grab a couple of pints and grab a snack. One of the great things about the bistro is that they have a wide selection of beers from around the world. It was very nice surprise to see that they embraced beer outside of their own. Each beer on the menu was accompanied by the location it was brewed at as well as the percent alcohol by volume. We sampled the Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale and a barley wine to get a little bit of bang for our buck.

After enjoying our pints and grubbing on some beer battered mashed potatoes we headed into our tour.

Going in, I did not expect this to be a ‘mom and pop’ type of brewery, however; I was surprised at the magnitude of their facility. If my memory serves me correct (which it probably does not) at full capacity they can produce around 500,000 barrels of beer each year although they currently run at about half of that. 

Our excellent tour guide gave us the quick and dirty lesson of brewing. Basically boil some water, add some barley and hops, and you got yourself some beer. I’ll spare you the whole story but it was very informative and a lot of fun.

Bourbon Casks Holding Delicious Anniversary Ale

Keg Maker

At the end of our tour we were taken back into the company store for our free tasting. We received 4 samples of beer (Pale Ale, Smoked Porter, IPA, and Arrogant Bastard Ale) as well as a 5th of our choice as a special treat. Premium Shih was not feeling the bitter beers so I got to do A LOT of tasting. Afterwards we each picked up a growler and headed back to Los Angeles. 

I had been wanting to take the tour for a long time and it was well worth the wait. The tour is free and so is the tasting. You basically get a free pint of beer just for walking in the door. I recommend getting there a couple of hours before your tour, sign up right away, and head into the bistro to have lunch and a couple of beers before your tour. They have a fun and laid back atmosphere in the bistro so killing a couple of hours was no problem.

In the next week or two I’ll give you a review of the new Father’s Office, located in Culver City, and bring you a review of my first night of the Summer at the Hollywood Bowl with Thievery Corporation. Until then I’ll be enjoying the start of the Summer!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 11:19 pm and is filed under beer, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.