THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY COUNTRYSIDE

Good morning 62! A lazy start, a few cartoons and a shower and we were off on our adventure once again. Out the driveway, turn left and… oops, isn’t that 2^nd Hand Store open already?  Down the street a few blocks for a breakfast of doughnuts and we are off north thru town toward lovely Merced, California.

50 miles of land that looked way too much like southern Idaho and we were in Merced looking for West 18^th Street and the Firehouse Brewery. We found it easily enough and there was still outdoor seating that looked vaguely line a fire truck, but alas, Firehouse was closed and Bubba’s BBQ Brewhouse was not yet open… just a matter of piss poor timing.

At this point we would have headed for Kelley Brothers Brewing in Manteca, Ca if a little internet wandering the night before had not shown that it, too, was dead and gone… it happens. Once we hit 5 in a row in one day and they were all DOA.

Happily, all of this sorrow and heartbreak was easily washed away by a stop in the tiny town of Turlock.

I have learned that all of the microbrewery world can be divided into 2 distinct categories… beer makers that serve food and restaurants that make beer. Not by any means mutually exclusive but it is almost always one way or the other. I am glad to say that Dust Bowl Brewery is one of those places where they make beer and then back it up with really good food.  We sat out on the sidewalk since there was enough breeze to keep it cool without raising the particulate matter too high and I managed to guzzle down a pint of Galaxy Pale Ale without effort. All the wait staff knew their beer and, as we feasted on freshly in-house made potato chips seasoned with garlic and parmesan cheese, our guy insisted I try their flagship, Hops of Wrath… well, okay, I’ll have a taste.  He then shows up with 3 samplers... their Scotch Ale which was yummie, the aforementioned Hops of Wrath which, though it is an IPA, was properly hopped through the entire brewing process and, therefore tasted like beer and not shrubbery, and a (in my opinion only…) nasty little bit of business called Super Tramp which is fruit infused (I call ‘em beer coolers…)  To compound this crime against nature the fruit of choice was strawberries… oh, the horror.  Good thing I had real beer left to cleanse this abomination from my palate. 

That small incident aside, This place is in my top 10 of the ongoing California Brewtour.

Next stop, Modesto…  A tangle of streets broken up by freeways and rail yards left us wandering aimlessly in circles until Tama’s smart phone led us to St. Stan’s Brewing Company and it’s bar called Heros.  Oh, boy… a sports bar.  Filled with us, an off duty employee and a remarkably indifferent bar maid who couldn’t be bothered to get engaged in a conversation about beer.  No doubt there was some really great sporting paraphernalia among the tons that covered every wall on up into the high ceilinged darkness but for the beer curious… well, they had only 4 hand-made beers and a mile of guest taps that ended with Bud and Coors Light. We split a tasty Thai Chicken salad, I had a pint of Red Sky Ale and we gazed thoughtfully at the two monster TV’s hanging side by side over the bar… your choice of golf or octagon cage fighting.  Ummm, let’s go find Stockton, shall we?

A few more miles (hey, aren’t we lucky that the new car has air conditioning?) got us safely to beautiful, the wrong side of the tracks Stockton and the quest for the elusive Motel 6.  Oh, there it is on the other side of the freeway… gotcha.

A little siesta to beat the heat, a side trip to BevMo for a bottle of Boodles gin and we were off to the Valley Brewing Company for a light birthday dinner (we could still hear BBQ sauce sloshing around our insides…)

Now Valley Brewing is one of those restaurant then brewery kind of places where the guest taps outnumber the in-house ones.  But the food was great, we dined outside, the service was good and the local beers I sampled were tasty and very well crafted.  I started with the intriguingly named Red Neck Red moved to a pint of their London Tavern Bitter and ate my salad with a pint of Luna Blanca.  All this just proves that there is nothing wrong with either side of the 2 categories I mentioned in my earlier blog posting.

There being a Baskin Robbins two doors down, we ate desert in a sugar cone and rolled back to our room for some R&R.