We dropped in at Weed on the day they get to use their banned bottle caps again… admire Sierra’s amazing parking lot, lament the Billy Goat’s fate, get to Southern Oregon and more… It was fabulous. Before we forget, here’s the part 2 of our August “sometimes you just have to drive” beer vacation scrapbook.
(Bungie cords and coolers forever – a slow vehicle pulls over to let us pass)
We left Bluesapalooza in Mammoth and drove along high Sierra passes, eventually swinging down to Chico, California, in the north end of the Central Valley. We were looking forward to a meal at the spiffy Sierra Nevada Brewing taproom and beer garden, hoping for some less-widely distributed brews to taste.
Sadly, it was a Monday and they were closed. So we walked over to admire their on site hop gardens, and discovered their utterly incredible solar-panel covered parking lot. What a good use of space and maker of shade in the hot Chico summer.
(Kudos for this Sierra solar parking contraption!)
At a recommended local sports and beer bar, we tried to taste anything other than the usual from the local breweries, but there was nothing unknown from Sierra, and nothing at all from Butte Creek. In fact, the local bartender there said he thought organic brewer Butte Creek was going out of business, which was alarming.
So we drove over there to see what was happening. Butte has no pub, but we found someone on their sales staff and had a good chat. They are making an organic private label beer for Cost Plus World Market, and have plenty of demand. So they were no longer providing kegs to bars locally. A rumor was squashed, but the Chico local beer concept was not playing out.
We headed north toward the town of Mount Shasta, remembering a restaurant up there called Billy Goat Tavern. Turns out they are being sued by some bigger BG Tavern out of some midwestern city and will have to change their name. By any name, this little place always carries beers of interest. We started up a conversation with a patron who turns out to be a young brewer, Josh Riggs, from Mount Shasta Brewing, just up the road in the town of Weed, California. This year they were in the news for being denied permission to use their “Try Legal Weed” bottle caps. Josh informed us that a letter had just arrived from the feds who decided their slogan was OK after all. He invited us to stop by the brewery the next day, where we sampled a big tasty lager and witnessed the joy of the bottling line crew now using their brand spanking new old caps. If anyone needs any plain gold caps, call Josh. He just might have a good deal for you.
Josh Riggs starts bottling with the banned caps; pours Steve a taste
At this point we regretted having decided on an unplugged vacation. Here was “breaking news” that we couldn’t post about without a computer. We headed north into Oregon in the evening, and vowed to find a cafe with a terminal, to tell the story on our blog or to at least email some friends. It’s not easy to find places that don’t expect you to have your own laptop or device these days. Kudos to the Ashland library for a “welcome PCT hikers” sign on the door and free use of computers the following morning. We were not hiking the Pacific Crest Trail this time around, but we were appreciative. William Brand kindly put our “story” up on his blog, by that time a day after the brewery called an AP reporter. Uh, so much for scoops!
Ashland is a nice town. We saw some plays, and we enjoyed a big, lavish west coast hoppy Imperial IPA at Standing Stone, a popular and slightly pricey brewpub where people go to dinner before the theater, the major local tourist industry. Down under the bridge in the original building where Rogue was first started is Siskiyou Pub, a little local restaurant with a good beer bar. We tried the latest from Caldera, the local brewery that is not a pub, and who now can a serious IPA along with their initial canned pale ale, designed for safe river running and other outdoors concerns. (We had carried along some 21st Amendment canned IPA so we were able to pass around some tastes from San Francisco and marvel that there are multiple brands canning hoppy IPAs now. We carried canned beer to share, but no computer. Go figure.)
One thing we tried at Siskiyou Pub that really wowed us was an “S.O.B” Porter – very clean with complex rich roasty, crisp chocolate notes. That silly acronym turned out to be Southern Oregon Brewing, a new operation in Medford, Oregon. After a lovely camping interlude not to be documented here, except to say it took us into Etna, home of the charming Etna Brewing, we eventually came back into Ashland.
The S.O.B. porter was as good as we remembered. We noticed a listing for a beer festival the next day in Bend, Oregon, to the east and north of us. A change of itinerary had to be: Medford was the perfect first stop on a dash to Bend. Tucked away in an industrial building, S.O.B. had a bustling tasting room, room for growth and several tasty beers. The brewer, Anders Johansen, who learned his trade at larger Oregon players such as Pyramid and Deschutes, told us he liked coming to S.O.B. because he doesn’t want to “brew by mouse.” The facility is big, modern, but not fully automated, and it looks like a good place to make beer and lots of it. Anders told us that his beers at S.O.B. are made with “California Common” yeast, like Anchor Steam’s yeast. He was doing a foursome of ales brewed with this “hybrid” lager yeast that is happy at warmer temperatures. The IPA was ok, but the porter is the star. Next time you’re on I-5 going through Southern Oregon, S.O.B. is not to be missed. Judging by the size of their facility, you should be able to try them more broadly, without driving through Medford, in a year or two.
Beer by BART 