This past weekend, I drove up to Stone Brewing Company in Escondido. I really had no idea of what the experience would be like since I have been only to Bootleggers in Fullerton and Alcatraz at the Block in Orange. It was much more than I expected.
These are my buddies Charlie and Zach while we waited in line for tickets to go on a tour of the warehouse and brewing facilities.
The main part of the building is their bar and restaurant with almost all of the taps at the bar dedicated to beer that is made on location. They had a few odd styles that I hadn't heard of or seen at Total Wine which was kind of a surprise. The first one I tried was their Black Double IPA. It was nice, thick and still had the IPA taste along with a bit of a chocolaty flavor. and the other was the 15th anniversary Imperial Black IPA. if you couldn't tell, I love most pale ales. I'm no beer connoisseur so i wont pretend to be one. I love drinking beer as long as it tastes good and that is all that matters.
I managed to take a great shot of their bar. What I didn't know until I developed these pictures was that I got a great shot of their logo that was stamped on the wall in the back.
We went over to the garden next, but unfortunately all of the pictures I took on my 35mm weren't too hot. I took a set on my Lubitel which I shall be developing in the next day or so. When I have those pictures, i will make a specific post for that, since their garden over there was amazing.
When we got to the brewery, we had set a reservation for their restaurant and it turned out to be at least an hour wait to get a table. So, around this time our buzzer went off and we finally sat down. The interesting part was when we got tickets for the tour, they were for the tour two hours in advance and by the time we sat down, we only had an hour to eat.
This restaurant is really expensive, IMO. The cheapest item on the menue was 15 bucks and everything averaged between 17 and 25 bucks. The reason these places cost so much is that everything was made and/or produced in San Diego County, where Stone Brewery is located. I went with a $17 buffalo burger. It was pretty darn good, but I expected it to be a giant sized burger. It was just a normal sized one.
By the time we got our food, it was about 15 minutes before we were to go on the brewery tour. Needless to say, we shoved the food down our throats and got in line for the tour. Unfortunately the tour only had three stops and we didn't get to go up on any of the catwalks, presumably for safety purposes. I did manage to squeeze off a couple of good shots while on the tour
This was at stop Number 2. Behind us, there were these two kegs on a lonely pallet.
Well... That was how I spent my last Saturday. If you would like to check out Stone Brew Co, head on over to their website here.
