On Friday, I headed up north to Sunnyvale in the San Jose area for another show. We arrived around 4pm, with plenty of daylight left to go explore the area. Since I am a food/brew research-aholic, I’d already found the place to explore, just minutes from the hotel.
Rabbit’s Foot Meadery. Ora and I arrived at this unassuming building, wedged in the middle of a business district, and parked our gigantic van on the street (the parking lot is quite dainty). I didn’t get a picture of the building or entrance, so let me paint you a picture with words: Once we found the tinted glass door, we walked into a cozy, inviting space. The tasting room consists of a long bar, one slightly tattered fabric chair in the corner and a dartboard hanging unnoticed on the wall. Seeing that it was Friday night, the place was relatively full, and had the slightly stale smell of sweat and sugar. Not the most appealing, but that’s what you get for visiting an extremely popular local brewery on a Friday night.
We stepped up to the bar, hung our purses on the handy hooks that were hiding underneath, and were greeted by Mark, the friendly and knowledgeable Australian wearing a Utilikilt. He is my hero.
Although he was incredibly busy, Mark immediately started us off with a tasting, free of charge. All of their products, except for the port, is made onsite.
First was the original Sweet Mead. Mead is a honey wine made from water, fresh honey and yeast. It’s possibly the easiest “brew” that you can make: Heat some water, add honey and stir, then reduce it to 70-75 degrees, pitch the yeast and wait. I’m tempted to get a mini carboy just to give it a try!
After we tasted the sweet mead and the raspberry mead, Mark moved on to the Melia – an ice wine. This and the sweet mead were my personal favorites. They taste light and flowery, not syrupy sweet like I expected. The raspberry mead was a little too acidic for my taste. Apparently, I’m a purist.
We moved on to the ciders next. Pear and raspberry were the ciders on tap, and while I absolutely LOVE their black cherry cider that I’ve tried from BevMo (the one place they distribute to in my area), the pear and raspberry tasted very light and almost bland.
BEER! We tried four of their beers on tap.
First was their Biere De Miele. This is a VERY light golden ale that has honey added to the boil in addition to the malts. A good beer, but as I said before, VERY light.
The Honey Red came next. I wouldn’t quite call this a RED persay, but it had quite a bit more malty flavor and a hint of more hops. My personal favorite was their Diabhal (not pictured thanks to blur) – a Belgian-style ale made with rock candy. We liked it so much that we ordered a full glass post-tasting. After that came their stout (also not pictured)- a rich, full-bodied stout that tasted very toasty and full of coffee.
Finally – the Chocolate Raspberry Love. This port is POTENT. I could actually smell and taste the chocolate coming through the alcohol. I don’t have much experience with ports, but this one was very tasty. More than this taster would have been too sweet and overpowering to handle.
I came home with a bottle of their original Sweet Mead to share. Well, MAYBE I’ll share it… It’s pretty freakin’ good…
A BIG thank you to Mark for being so willing to answer all of my questions about the process, history and brewery!
Camarillo State Mental Hospital (Now known as California State University: Channel Islands).
All of these pictures were taken at the South Quad, where the school hasn’t quite gotten around to fixing things up, or the buildings have been deemed unstable.
This mental institution opened in 1936 and housed mentally ill and disabled people up until 1997.
This is a look inside one of the many, many bedrooms that housed anywhere from 2-6 patients. In a lot of the buildings, there are still tattered curtains hanging on the windows.
Above many of the patients’ rooms, there are alarms and lights that designated when the door to the room was locked.
Now, there are tons of windows that have been shattered either due to the elements of nature, or due to the rocks and beer cans thrown through them.
This old courtyard has been completely engulfed in grasses and weeds. Sigh, I’m in love! LOVE LOVE LOVE abandoned buildings and cities. The history that lived here is fascinating!
Everywhere I walked, something else stood out, begging to be seen and photographed.
If you’re interested in some of the history, there are tons of great links HERE and HERE and HERE.
