My tour of Oregon and Northern California continues.
As I write this I am in Healdsburg, CA — home of Bear Republic Brewing. I stopped by their Brewery and Restaurant today and had a Peter Brown Tribute Ale. It was delicious and entered my belly rather quickly. I’ve had a few other good beer-related stops including the Barley and Hops Tavern in Occidental, CA where I had a Pliny the Elder (my first one) and a Death & Taxes from Moonlight Brewing in near-by Fulton CA.
I had a few good local Portland beers as well and it seems that craft beer logos are on every set of tap handles I see. Today I stopped at the Hop Kiln Winery which — before grape vines grew a-plenty in Sonoma County — used to dry hops from local hop farms. The main building should be my Wordless Wednesday tomorrow.
At another winery I got to taste the grape “wort.” It is the juice from the crushed grapes before fermentation. I expected it to be sugary and hard to drink but it was delicious, perhaps more so than any of the wines I sampled today.
So far so good. Six days to go.