I finally got a chance to check out the actual BREWERY instead of just the pub!
Of course, beforehand I had to fuel up in said pub. I can’t go on a brewery tour without fuel. I’m not completely insane.
There was a big group of us and they assigned ordering to me. I closed my eyes and pointed. Roasted potatoes with soy chorizo and vegan ricotta. Surprisingly pleasant, even for someone who lives for bacon!
Vegan wild mushroom fritters with vegan pimento – for someone who hates mushrooms and loves pig, also surprisingly pleasant. One might even say delicious!
Pretzel with non-vegan cheese. Two vegan options are more than enough in my opinion, no offense to all my vegan/vegetarian readers out there!
We topped it off with the charcuterie plate full of cheese, grapes, spicy peanuts and cured meats. Okey, fueled up. Tour time.
We made our way through Chloe’s – the exclusive club for all those who love beer.
As you can see, I hadn’t quite gotten my lens repaired/been able to remove the lens yet…
We made our way into the gigantic offices/cold room. Don’t worry, these are separated. They don’t actually cryogenically freeze the employees. Yet.
This be a pretty big walk-in. I be pretty jealous. I become pretty chilled…
That ought to satisfy the LA consumers for a few days…
Once we got back into the warmth, we were greeted with all these empty cans, waiting to be filled with Wolf Among Weeds.
And finally, into the brewery!
They had to remove the roof of this building in order to lower these fermentors in by crane.
They’re kinda big…
And finally, a glance at the 50bbl brew system. Fifty. Barrel. Brew. System.
They run their wort through the hop dosing system before sending it to the boil kettle.
Instead of filtration, they have a separation tank. This spins the chilled wort around and all of the solids are brought to the center and removed – basically a second whirlpool tank, but faster and cooler looking.
The canning machine! We didn’t get to see this in action, but that makes for easier pictures anyway. These are spun around, sanitized, purged with CO2, filled and capped/clamped.
The quality assurance room/lab. If anyone for some reason calls in about their beer having an issue, the Golden Road team is able to come in here and taste that exact same batch to see if it’s a problem based on brewing or by handling. I think I’d be good at this part of the job.
I’m checking out how good I am at quality assurance right now.
In other news – I took my camera in to the repair shop and after a lot of hammering from the backroom and me cringing as I listened to each bone-shattering crack, the shattered cover was removed and my camera is at the ready to take some more awesome pictures!
Tag Archives: vegan
Golden Road Brewery Tour
Filed under beer, brewery, brewery tours
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!
Filed under brewery
Vegan Attempt/Fail
Sometimes, you just to have a meat-free, dairy-free, good ole fashioned vegan breakfast.
Modified from my Peach Pie Pancakes – subbed in dairy-free chocolate chips for peaches. Chocolate matches PERFECTLY with the cinnamon on a chilly, marine-layered morning! And then I also subbed in sour cream for some of the almond milk. Oops.
After such a wonderfully vegan attempt start to the day, you may want to keep up with that attempted vegan streak. I, however, went out for a big pulled pork sammich.
Oh, yes! The stuff of my dreams!
After YOUR vegan lunch (obviously you didn’t cave to the call of the pig as I did), you may decide that a day full of only vegan food is indeed possible. If you happen to be looking for a simple, delicious vegan tortilla soup recipe, Angela created one the other day that is to die for!
The most difficult part of the process is the chopping, and even that only takes a few minutes!
Add some chopped avocado and vegan sour cream and you’re good to go! Unless you’re like me… Then you may decide that this tortilla soup needs a little protein boost…
You can try as I did and roast your own chicken. I’d never roasted one before, so I winged it. I washed it, dried it, sprinkled lemon pepper and salt all over and stuffed with with onions, carrots, celery and two lemon halves. Then I stuck it in the oven and went to Twitter to find out how long I should bake it for in order to not die of salmonella or E. coli. The answer is two hours at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Just in case you also wanted to not die.
This time, I added regular sour cream to pair well with my chicken tortilla soup. It was awesome.
If you want to expound upon your newfound veganism, you could get a gluten-free, vegan amber ale. This was… interesting. I can’t really compare it to other gluten-free beers since I haven’t tried any, but it wasn’t too bad… I ended up opening a Sierra Nevada Tumbler right after. Whoops. I’ll definitely need to find some others to try out so I can give Amanda some recommendations. Trying beer for a friend – the ultimate sacrifice.
Hopefully your attempt at a vegan day is more successful than mine… For now, it’s 10:20am and I’m already cracking open a bottle of beer so I can make my cheat version of Oatmeal Stout Brownies with Caramelized Bacon for today’s brew day at Enegren Brewing Company.
My day = Massive vegan fail.
Butternut Squash and Leek Soup
It’s been quite a while since I’ve actually had the time, or been home long enough, to COOK something! My sister-in-law made this soup when we visited in May, and my entire family fell in love with it! Yesterday, she e-mailed the recipe. I did a happy dance in front of my computer. It’s THAT good.
Butternut Squash and Leek Soup – (Photo Courtesy of Lee Harrelson because I was too lazy and hungry to make mine look pretty before I slurped it directly out of the bowl…)
(Adapted from VegWeb.com)
1 medium butternut squash, halved and seeded
4 large leeks
1 whole head of garlic
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
1.5 tsp ground nutmeg
1-2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground pepper
1. Place the butternut squash halves, cut side up, on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. At the same time, remove the papery skins from the garlic, then wrap the entire head of garlic in foil.
2. Bake squash and garlic at 350 degrees for 60-75 minutes, or until fork easily pierces through the thickest point of the squash.
3. Let butternut squash and garlic cool while you prepare the leeks.
4. Trim, wash and thinly slice the leeks.
How the leeks arrive…
After trimming at the base of the dark green leaves…
Separate each layer to rinse thoroughly.
THINLY sliced leeks!
5. Saute the leeks in 1 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat for 5-10 minutes.
6. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the casing and into the pan with the leeks and saute for another 5-10 minutes.
7. Add the cubed butternut squash and saute for 10 minutes.
8. Add the vegetable broth, water, ground nutmeg, cayenne and ground pepper. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for 20 minutes.
9. Take an immersion blender and puree the soup into a creamy consistency. If you don’t have an immersion blender, ladle the soup into a blender and blend until smooth, then pour back into the pot.
10. Slowly stir in salt, pinches at a time, until you reach the desired taste.
This soup is SPICY and slightly sweet and full of vegetables and heavenly! If you need to clear out your sinuses, this is the soup to make! Not only are you getting massive amount of Vitamin A from the butternut squash, but you also hike up your metabolism with the cayenne. Either way, who cares? It’s freaking delicious!
I highly recommend serving this with a smooth IPA…
Mission Street IPA. Nice and gentle for relaxing after a 6 hour drive down from Los Altos.
Thanks for sending the recipe, Janna! This soup plus the chilly (65 degree) night feels just like Colorado again 🙂
Filed under recipe