Journey to the Center of the Barrel – Part 1

Right up front, I have to inform you, the reader, that you are going to be hearing A LOT about Firestone-Walker in the coming days here on the BSP blog.  This will be part 1 of a series of posts about a recent trip that FW hosted for the L.A. Beer Blogger community.

Our writing and photo crew left Saturday morning from Union Station (LA) headed north to Firestone-Walker (Paso Robles) for the 1st stop of a beer tour of epic proportions.

The weather and scenery was gorgeous as our large bus navigated ever smaller roads on our first leg of our Journey to the Center of the Barrel, our lunch destination, Windrose Farms.

We reached a fork in the road where we needed to go right on but the prudent bus driver was not going to go all Dukes of Hazard on us.  We rolled to a stop and waited.  What was the plan?  Then we see David Walker riding to us on a tractor!  We hopped onto the back of a flatbed towed by a tractor driven by Bill Spencer.  The owner of Windrose Farm himself.  Now I am not a country boy.  Far from it.  But that lazy, bucolic ride with the David Walker which ended at a table of Firestone-Walker Bretta Weisse was beyond cool.

Bretta Weisse is a new beer in the Berliner Weisse style with an addition of Brett.  (It may become the house beer for the Barrelworks location)  It pours a hazy orange/yellow and has a rounded flavor of toast, sourness and a smidgen of funk in there too.  Very refreshing and it clocks in at 3.4% abv.  This would not be the final time, I was lucky enough to taste this offering.

Then we got a talk about the methods and philosophy of Windrose Farm from Bill.  Most in our group (and I include myself) almost forgot to drink their beers as he described bio-dynamics or the 45 varieties of apples with book suggestions too!  We headed deeper into the farming operation for lunch after that and were greeted with a wild menagerie of salad greens and Chef Arlis Borden of the Taproom Restaurant.

Our four course lunch included four rounds of Firestone-Walker beers.  I saw the Double DBA with DBA caramelized apples and vanilla ice cream for dessert and knew that this was going to be good.  Our main course was lamb braised in Walker’s Reserve accompanied by Parabola Russian Imperial Stout.  I could have drank the whole bottle.  It was viscous and sweet and beyond tasty.  But the best of the lunch were the two salad options and that is saying something because I tend to avoid the green spectrum of the food scale.  But braised greens with Wookey Jack was one of the best pairings that I have had.  The lettuce stood up to the Black IPA.  The first salad was fresh picked greens.  Literally steps from where we were sitting.  It had a Union Jack vinaigrette and was paired with Double Jack IIPA that was bottled the day before.  That is seriously fresh!

Combine the setting with the great beer and the great food.  The freshness of both and the passion that both the Spencer’s and Firestone-Walker have and you can begin to imagine how great this lunch was.  If I had been driven home at that point, I would have been more than happy.

But more awaits!  Including a trip to the top of the brewery, wine and blending sours!