Tag Archives: brewniform

Golden Road with the Girls!

Happy Tuesday!Beautiful day to be alive, isn’t it? Today, I met up with my best friend from way back in middle school at Golden Road Brewing.
Adore this girl. You may remember her from my visit to Craft & Commerce in Little Italy back in May.
Oh, how I’ve missed my fellow TAG (Talented and Gifted – yes, we were nerds back then… still are…) friend!
They don’t have any taster flights yet, so I got a sip of all the house beers on tap and then settled for the low ABV Hefeweizen. Delicious and perfect for a 70 degree day in Los Angeles.
We decided to split a whole mess of deliciousness. This was the Rosemary Turkey Club – peppered bacon, white cheddar cheese and beer-braised turkey with parsley aioli. This was demolished.
I had to order the Coconut “Noodle” Salad again. This is so flavorful and full of happiness and health. This negates every calorie I absorbed today. Cuz there are vegetables in it. And it’s vegan. End of story.
These deep-fried wild mushroom risotto fritters were totally cancelled out by that salad above! I had the maple fritters the first time, which were delicious, but these knocked those babies out of the ballpark! Full of earthy mushroom flavor and topped with vegan pimento cheese, fried to a fluffy crisp. I can honestly say that I had NO IDEA that the dip was vegan! I may have scraped the remains out with a spoon. And by may, I mean I did.
Deep-fried deliciousness. My fingers were smothered in that “cheese” sauce.
The orzo pasta – also vegan and delicious! The perfectly tender roasted veggies and orzo pasta are lightly tossed in a fresh olive oil and balsamic dressing. I tend to avoid vegan foods in rebellion of my bro and his wife being vegan (I’m ridiculous and crave excessive amounts of pulled pork when we go to visit them in Colorado), but Golden Road has completely changed my perspective!
My gorgeous cousin, Allie, stopped by after her nursing class! They weren’t perturbed by me taking mass amounts of pictures at all… Two of my favorite girls in the entire world. Insert smiley face here.
(This picture is so awesome it needed to be used twice)
Kim ordered a gigantic soft pretzel (they were out of the “small” pretzels) that included more of that delicious vegan pimento cheese and the HOTTEST horseradish mustard I have ever tasted. Kim took a bite and turned bright red with watery eyes to match. Please use with caution.
Delicious pretzel face – a little over the top with salt, but once you scrape that off, it’s perfectly soft and surprisingly flavorful.
This was recommended to me by Michelle, who stopped into Enegren Brewing’s tasting room a few months ago. Thank God for Twitter, eh? BLATANT ADVERTISEMENT TO FOLLOW – MY TWITTER, UNTAPPD and FACEBOOK PAGE! My apologies.
Let’s take a closer look, shall we? Croissant bread pudding covered with brown sugar, salted caramel (an actual OMG moment – and I HATE it when people say OMG) and fresh whipped cream. Michelle – from the bottom of my heart, thank you for encouraging me to order this! We ordered a second one after we’d finished licking the plate. I’ve said this a few times, but this is the most up-to-date BEST BREAD PUDDING I’VE HAD! I’m willing to try more to make sure that this claim is true…

And that was my Tuesday! The brewery visit was necessary in order to recover from last night – working an event for Enegren down in Oxnard for The Kitchen which was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives! What an amazing party!
I wore my brewniform…
…served tons of beer samples to the gigantic crowd…
…and have a huge list of people who now want to come visit the brewery! If you’re up for it, tasting hours are listed here!
And here’s a random picture of my early morning hike. Just because. Happy Tuesday!

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Brewing at Enegren!

Yesterday I awoke at 4:30am, made a gigantic mug of coffee and rolled out the door over to Enegren Brewing Company for brew day!
When I got there a few minutes after 5am, Chris and Matt were already set up, prepping for the mash in.
In order to fill one of their 6 barrel fermenters, Enegren has to brew TWICE in one day. It’s a crapload of work and makes for a long day, so I tried my best to help out in any way I could, as well as not get in the way.
And this is just the first batch.
Here’s what’s in one of those buckets that Matt’s lifting. There were five buckets of this size. TWICE, they lifted five of those to the mash tun. Macho men.
Delicious oatmeal breakfast mash! Such a heavenly aroma.
While the mash tun does have a thermometer on the side, it isn’t the most accurate way to read temperature since there can be hot pockets and uneven heating througout. Matt, Chris and Joe use a long harpoon-style thermometer to check for those hot spots and make sure their readings are accurate.
Checking the pH.
While they did the scientific stuff, I stirred in my required brewniform.
Tacky boots were a necessity – of course.
In my attempt to be helpful, and since the brewers were excessively busy with creating delicious beer, I filled these kegs with beer from Joana – the fermenter full of their California Alt beer.
So. Many. Kegs.
They showed me how to fill, and after a getting soaked by a few minor beer showers, I finally got the hang of it.
Lauter tun with a false bottom, extracting the sugary wort from the mash.
Once all the liquid is extracted, they open the door to a wall of caked grains, and try to get the bucket underneath before it spills all over the floor. They succeeded – this time.
I think I need to do more weight lifting if I’m going to be in the brewing business…
11am rolled around, so I changed out of the brewniform and stepped behind the bar with Brie to help serve the masses of craft beer lovers that stopped by.
Wave after wave of groups came in to taste, fill growlers and chat with the brewers. They stayed for a couple of hours, but I don’t think they really enjoyed themselves or liked the beer that much… The couple in the center is actually getting married soon, and Enegren will be serving their beer at the wedding! I guess they do kind of like it after all.
While brewing is a very, very serious business, there’s ALWAYS time to play Whack-a-Mole when Chris is cleaning out the mash tun.
Brie has had serious training when it comes to Whack-a-Mole.
You can never practice too much when it comes to Whack-a-Mole.

I lasted until 11pm before I decided that I wanted to survive the drive home and not fall asleep behind the wheel. The guys were getting close to finishing up the second brew, but still going strong when I left. It was a LONG, exhausting day for me – the fact that the brewers hold 9-5 jobs AND do this on the weekends astounds me. I’ll be back there as much as possible, until they kick me out. And just to end this post on a gratuitous note:
See you guys soon!

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