Tag: Firestone Walker

As threatened in previous posts, Firestone Walker gave the humble L.A. Beer Bloggers the full red carpet treatment from Venice to Los Olivos to Paso Robles.

Here is the re-cap of what happened over the three-day weekend…..

Our intrepid group was picked up at the corner of Lincoln and Washington at the future home of what will become the southernmost outpost of the growing Firestone Walker brewing empire.  It isn’t much to look at now.  Two unused white buildings with a weed choked parking lot.  The location will need to be transformed with their typical classy design touch.

Imagining how it would look is a lot easier than imagining a 405 Freeway with movement.  What was in store for us on Friday and Saturday night was kept under wraps  After a stop to gas up and stretch our legs, we finally arrived at our destination in the wine country near Los Olivos.  From this point on, it was one pleasant surprise after another.

It was hard to pick one highlight.  The dinner was marvelous, as was scenery.  More importantly we were afforded looks into both the past and future.  The name Andrew Murray Vineyards may not mean much to beer geeks.  But he is a vintner who is also currently fermenting in what was the ORIGINAL Firestone Walker brewery.  This square building in the middle of fields, far off the beaten track was where DBA started.  We heard tales from David Walker about the balky equipment and the good ol’ days while sipping on wine.

From the future came a bottle of Bretta Rose which won’t be released to the public (in limited amounts) until the 17th.  This beer pours a lovely dark pink and has all the farmhouse funk you can handle plus so much raspberry that you will wonder how they did it.

We also were treated to two experimental beer/wine “hybrids” that had such great aromas it was hard to drink them.  These are still in the early stages but I will keep you informed if/when they come around.  Let’s just say that wine drinkers will think that beer was added to wine and beer geeks will say that wine was added to their beer.  Divisive.  But in a good way.

The next day, our bus zoomed up the 101 to ground zero.  The Paso Robles brewery.  In just a year, the place has changed in big ways.  A new building houses the canning line.  Their is a new store in the back.  An old building has been torn down and a new one is coming.  It seems that if you blink the place sprouts another building. We got to sit down with Norm Stokes in their QC division who ran us through a gauntlet of off flavors and a very eye-opening look at how even just 1 month of aging changes an IPA.  The take-away?  Drink IPA’s within a month of bottling.

Saturday night was an eye opener that I will save for another post.  Suffice to say, Opal soaked octopus was on the menu.