Hopping ‘Sideways’

A man vacation to the SoCal Coast.

*Note to Readers: At the risk of sounding like assholes on an infomercial, this will be the last posting about Stone Brewing Co. you’ll see from us for a while. We’ve reviewed, cooked with, and made ice cream out of many of their seasonal brews because we think they’re the preeminent strong-ass beer brewery of its size, and the best chance Americans have to one day be able to order good beer anywhere in this country. In any case, we’re taking a break from the SoCal scene for now.
We were both feeling washed up on the Friday morning we decided to hop in the car and drive south toward North San Diego County. But as we pulled on to the I-5 South, the gray skies started to part and the sun shined through. There were some bombers of beer in the back seat on ice just in case, but we planned on making Stone Brewing Co.’s facilities by early afternoon so we could make their 2 p.m. brewery tour and tasting. We had a camera, a one-hitter and sleeping bags.
It occurred to us at the time that our cute, little man weekend was shaping up suspiciously like the antithesis to that surprise thirty-something classic “Sideways,” the movie that put Pinot Noir on the map. The parallels were both repulsive and extremely hilarious, we thought.
In that crap film, if you haven’t seen it (fuck you, you’ve seen it, c’mon) the story starts with the dried up writer hack played by Paul Giammoti packing his car for a week of male bonding with his old college buddy who was about to get married. He leaves his San Diego apartment with bottles of 40-year-old champagne in tow and heads to Los Angeles to pick up his actor friend before they shoot north to wine tasting country.
If we were subconsciously living out this horrific, clichéd nightmare, we at least like to think we were doing it backward.
Getting off the freeway in Escondido, we found ourselves in a North County suburb about 20 miles outside of San Diego. Close to the coast, the area is pretty, but inland, where we were heading, it looked like shit. In beer culture, unlike with wine, this doesn’t matter a lick though. We forged ahead through the suburban sprawl day dreaming of huge stainless steel vats of boiling barley mash. The idea of pastoral grape vines held no sway here. Total beer country.
Stone Brewing lies at the top of a hill in an unlikely neighborhood of corporate headquarters, Silicon Valley-style office complexes with wide streets and flagpoles. The brewery does, however, stick out like a sore thumb. It rises out of the ground like a fortress of granite, natural stone and wood planks. (We found out later that all the materials used in construction were recycled from demolished Downtown San Diego buildings, awesomely.)
The front entrance, though construction wasn’t complete on our visit, is awe-inspiring. A 50-foot ceiling lets columns of light in like a cathedral does; in the center sits a massive stone boulder. We’ve never felt so small.

The front lobby is also a general store. At the far end there’s a refrigerated aisle of every Stone beer. A maze of kitschy, overpriced merch (Ruination IPA bicycling jersey anyone?) was the only thing between us and a bar made of stone slabs and sleek taps of every beer Stone makes. A surfer dude employee, a young Kurt Cobain-looking feller, started pouring us cups as soon as walked up. We had arrived. The first sips of Levitation Ale went straight to our giddy little fucking heads.
The tour, by the way, is free and comes with a free beer tasting. And raddest of all, the brewery staff loves giving tours and showering visitors with free beer. It’s a win-win situation. They get bragging rights, you get to drink free booze in the middle of the day.
Do you, or someone you know, have a bachelor uncle who is really obsessed with cigars or antique cars or eighties metal and loves to share his useless information in chat rooms? This was the case with our brewery guide for the day–we forget his name, sorry man. He was decked out in black and gray Dickies gear all emblazoned with the Stone gargoyle logo, and big leather boots. We followed him, and the other 20 or so beer geeks who’d shown up for the tour, into the sparkling airplane hangar-sized brewery. Vats the size of nuclear reactors shone above us. A black and white pirate flag waved in the air from one of them. Dudes dressed like scientists jogged around in galoshes, gripping clipboards.

After a lesson on hop varieties and a sampling of chocolate malted barley, our guide showed us a whirring monster vat that, he told us, was filled with the Double Arrogant Bastard Ale that Stone releases for Halloween. Oohs and ahhs oozed out all over the place. We crunched down on some regular barley while our guide informed us about Egyptian brewing techniques. It was like a Natural history Museum for Beer
Somewhere in the middle of this Charlie and the Chocolate Stout Factory Dreamland, a stocky chef with bright blue hair, dressed in an all-black kitchen toque walked up to us and nervously asked if we’d been looking for him. We had. We’d been told to ask for Carlton, the head chef of the soon-to-be-open beer garden and bistro if we came down. We wanted to pick his brain. He graciously offered us a private tour of the huge kitchen and dinging room and we slunk away from the rest of the tour.

Carlton, a righteously supreme dude, has worked for his fair share of big operations and more recently ran his own restaurant in Escondido before being stolen away by Stone. He has, he showed us, been hiding away for months in the big shiny new kitchen of his, scheming the new menu and experimenting with beer cooking (pitter patter, be still hearts).
Everything from the line equipment to the walk-ins to the keg lines to the handmade plate ware this guy is working with made us shit our pants. His menu is nothing to scoff at either.

There is a shortage of serious chefs in this country who realize the potential of beer-cooking, so when Carlton explained that his IPA potato fritter appetizer required one entire bomber of Stone IPA we said a Hail Mary. In fact, nearly a fourth of the dishes on the lunch and dinner menu called for some amount of actual beer.
The rest of the place is no less awe-inspiring.
As we were winding through Carlton’s tour of the kitchen we met the groundskeeper/gardener/janitor for the brewery, a guy named Chili. He was mopping the floor with a silly grin on his face. He showed us a pile of habañero peppers he’d grown in his garden and politely declined a sample. Upon his and Carlton’s recommendation we made plans to drive to a pizza place down the way about 10 miles for their home-brewed beer.
Making our way through the lobby gift shop we made one last stop off at the free beer taps.
“What’s that one?” one of us asked Carlton.
“Order it, tell him I said you could have some,” he said slyly.
The surfer dude looked skeptical but finally poured us a baby cup of black milk.
Our lips started stinging with the sweet sensation of a beer so strong it’s liquor. The hops battled with the malt inside of our brain. Fireworks backfired down our throats.
“What the…?”
“The strongest beer we ever made, you can’t buy it. It’s leftover from a charity event we did and donated the beer.”
Now that’s a good cause.