Hitting The Road For A Beer Vacation

A year ago my friend Steve and I (also Steve) embarked on an interesting journey to Northern California. The main reason was to do a little rafting up near Sacramento, but I used that as an excuse to leave a couple days earlier to stay in Santa Rosa to visit the Russian River brewpub. Even though I had previously had a handful of Russian River beers, the experience just blew me away.

This year I planned a 4 night stay in Santa Rosa from Tuesday June 10th to Saturday June 14th, just to experience it without interruption. Whereas last time we stayed less than a mile away (a nice walk) at the Marriot, we are going with the Hyatt this time which is basically in the exact same location the Marriot is. I foresee a bit of stumbling from brewpub to the hotel again this time. It's me and Steve again this time, but we got a nice surprise that our friend Brian from Baltimore (formerly Pensacola and San Diego) is flying out to take the trip with us. He has yet to have a beer from Russian River but has probably heard me talk about them way too much. In fact I almost feel like I would be setting him up for a letdown, although I'm figuring that's probably not possible with Russian River.

We're going to leave Los Angeles early, although since we're leaving on a Tuesday and have to make our way through LA, it might be best to wait until morning traffic dies down. We'll stop in San Francisco at the Toronado for a couple beers and a sausage and then make our way up to Santa Rosa after that and let the fun begin. We also plan on making visits to Bear Republic, Lagunitas, and maybe Third Street Aleworks over the next couple days. Of course there will also be one or two stops at The Flavor Bistro for their Moonlight Brewing selections.

I'll most definitely be blogging away our experiences during the trip.