A Tippler's Roadtrip Part 2: Meandering to Mecca

After a couple of nights in Vegas and a couple in the Bay area, we started up the Northern Californian coast in attempts to be at North Coast Brewing for lunch. the road to Fort Bragg from San Francisco leads you through Sonoma County, which is California's other great wine region. it's a good thing that it was fairly early in the morning when we passed by the wineries as a glass of morning Zinfandel is not as appetizing as a cold afternoon beer. my Dad and I pressed on through to the town of Boonville which is home to Anderson Valley Brewing. I have tried a few of their selections during one of the previous Tippler's Night Out sessions, but I believe that we had limited ourselves to Anderson Valley's IPAs. AV Brewing was very impressive with a full selection of their beer on draught at the tasting bar, a store with beer glasses and accessories, a bottle filled fridge, a cool dog that hung out at the brewery, and an 18 hole FROLF course! of the few samples that my Dad and I selected, the standouts for me were Brother David’s Double Abbey Style Ale and Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout. my Dad really liked their Belk's ESB. if you can seek out a bottle of the David's Double, I highly recommend picking up a couple of bottles. it has really long-lasting tastes of rum and molasses and is high in alcohol, bound to keep you warm over Christmas.

after AVB, I took the reigns on the PAR car (yes, that is my golfing Dad's vanity license plate) to drive through the redwoods toward North Coast. it was on this short drive that my Dad revealed to me that my grandfather's last words before he died were, "bloody good beer". it was a response to my uncle asking why he preferred to go to the pub that further away from his house rather than the one that was across the street. can you believe that? he had never told me this before, and I thought it was an obvious sign that I was meant to be a Tippler.

by the time we got to North Coast it was lunchtime and we were ready to refuel. NC Brewing is in a touristy coastal summer town called Fort Bragg and the brewery & pub seem to be the hub of the town with buildings occupying 3 of the 4 corners of the main intersection. maybe I had built up this trip to North Coast too much in my mind as I was slightly disappointed that the pub didn't have any beers on tap that I have yet to try. that being said they had pretty much the entire North Coast line up on tap, except for a few of their limited releases. the pub always has one cask conditioned beer on the menu and I was lucky enough to be there for the last day of their cask condition Red Seal Ale (a JT fav). being familiar (very familiar) with this beer, I has happy to taste the differences between it's conditioned and bottled forms. the conditioning really brought out the smokey flavour that is much more subtle in the bottled version. the cask conditioning also mellowed out some of the hopiness and, of course, softened it's carbonation. I hit up the souvenir shop for some glasses and some bottles of brew and left North Coast a happy Tippler.

remember in the previous post, where I mentioned that Sierra Nevada was a great, widely available West Coast beer? well, in Northern California and Oregon, there is a second great beer that everyone seems to have - Deschutes. their Mirror Pond Pale Ale and Black Butte Porter were at every gas station that we went too and even at The Apple Peddler, the 24 hour pink neoned diner that was at our last stop of the trip, Crescent City. the Peddler had 4 beer choices, Bud, Bud Light, Mirror Pond, and Black Butte... all $2 each. awesome.

the next day of driving was a long one that found ourselves back in Vancouver by midnight. unfortunately the Tippler Trippler had no time to explore any of breweries of craft beer's homeland: Oregon. we managed to go quickly to the Rogue Brew Pub in Portland to pick up the remainder of my Canadian customs allocated beer supply. this consisted of me quickly picking up some bottles that I have never seen or tried before. I hope that I choose some good ones as sometimes Rogue beer is a bit hit & miss. it's too bad my Dad and I couldn't stay for a meal there as the brew pub was a highlight of a previous Oregon trip. come to think of it, I'm OK with missing out on the Oregon breweries, because that gives me an excuse to go back there in the spring. roadtrip anyone?