Brewery p*rn

Friday night Mike whisked me away for a super romantico weekend away. We drove up to Jenner on the Sonoma coast on Friday night, with a large veggie pizza from Little Star for company. The B&B had a deck with a hot tub overlooking the ocean (ok, actually the Russian River just before it hits the Pacific, whatever) and was freaking sweet.

Saturday we drove along the coast into Mendocino, then inland to the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. And my oh my, do they brew. We went home with a growler of something that was a cross between an IPA and a stout. So tasty, and a good marriage of the two ends of the spectrum - where Mike and I usually sit, wrinkling our noses at each other's beer.

Here is one of their copper mash tuns, brought over from Germany. Please don't drool on the copper.

Ain't it a beaut? The tour of the brewery was led by their maintenance guy, Robert, with whom we spent a nice afternoon talking beer, watching coverage of the Hawaii "tsunami", and listening to stories about his time traveling with the Grateful Dead. Of course.

Here's Mike by the bottling machine, happy happy happy.

I loved the factory episodes of Mr. Rogers when I was a kid - "Come see how candy is made!" Don't mind if I do! So the bottling machine was heaven for me - it had lots of moving parts, just like the machines on Mr. Rogers, but all for the sake of BEER.

That there's a reclamation pond. Anderson Valley, in addition to being 50% solar powered, processes the chemicals that they use to clean the tanks. Beautiful for a cesspool, no? And they have an 18 hole disc golf course!

We'll definitely be going back, probably for their Beer Fest in May.