Epistemological Despondency b/w Lagunitas Tour
Epistemological Despondency
My manic depressive posting tendencies are showing up again. I start a-bloggin’, then next thing I know I’m asking myself “why?” And I stop. Then I want to post again. So I’ll post…
Lagunitas Tour
We did a 3/5 Beercraft Lagunitas Brewery tour yesterday. Somehow it seemed appropriate to be touring Lagunitas on 4/20. It was a very fun tour. Last time I was at the brewery, The Bavarians were there, installing the new system. They were testing the centrifuge. If something had gone wrong, and the centrifuge had blown up, we could have died. Generally, though, if something goes wrong, and something blows up, that’s a risk, so it was worth it, and besides, now we’re heroes, grimly staring death in the eyes and asking where he got that cool robe and if it was as expensive as it looks. This time, all the new stuff was up and running. Brewing was happening. Bottling, too. The smell of malt was in the air. I saw boxes of hop pellets (Cascade, which I’ve heard is popular amongst California breweries).
We were watching a machine autoload pallets of empty bottles into the bottling line, when Matt (of the Smoketown Gamblers) motioned us over. He showed us the bottles filling (one of my 5 gallon batches could be filled and capped in just a little under two seconds). Then he told us to come check out the coolest thing we’d see on the tour. It was a gate kind of thing straddling the conveyor belt with all the bottles coming through it. Bottles are filled to the point that foam is coming out the top (to push out the oxygen), then capped, then they go through a washing doohickey, then they get to that gate. The gate has a laser. If the laser doesn’t like what it sees (a half-empty bottle), as the bottles are moving along at a nice clip, there’s another little gadget a couple feet down the line that literally punches the bottle off the line into a little naughty bottle penalty box, where it is ignored. It’s the kind of thing that fascinates three year olds and me (and all my friends, it seems).
I also noticed, the second time passing them, a bunch of barrels lined up against a wall. They said things like “bourbon” and “saison mutant” and “brown shugg” and “pinot” and other such mouthwatering things. Jen and I plotted, but couldn’t figure out a way to roll one of those “saison mutant” barrels out of the brewery without being noticed, 4:20 or no. Sigh.
I highly recommend the Lagunitas tour. Aside from the essential creepiness of touring a working brewery (how would you like it if a bunch of drunk strangers came up and gawked at you while you were working? I know I wouldn’t react well), it’s a lot of fun. It’s a small brewery, but the equipment, to these naive eyes at least, is top of the line. And there were, what, five beers on tap? And more in the fridge.
Which reminds me, we tried the next seasonal - the 2009 Correction Ale (which includes a sad-but-funny-but-really-mostly-funny rant about the current economic “correction” we’re in). It’s similar to the new, improved pale ale, but different hops - tastes like Simcoe, Centennial, Columbus to me. By which I mean it has that chewy, thick hop flavor of a Pliny or something similar. I look forward to seeing that one in stores.