The Bruery, Placentia, CA

 

On a recent anniversary trip to Disneyland, I discovered that one of my favorite breweries was a short cab ride away from our temporary home of the Grand Californian Hotel.  I have tried several of The Bruery's amazing beers over the past few years, but there is no Minnesota distribution, so they are hard to get my hands on.  Their most sought after beer is probably Black Tuesday--an insanely strong and sweet bourbon barrel aged Imperial stout.  The oddly spelled name stems from the owner/brewer's name: Patrick Rue.

The view from our section of the bar...

Taking a break from the (dry) Disneyland fun on this particular Sunday, Sj and I hopped in a cab for the short jaunt to the small industrial park where the brewery is located.  When we arrived we asked our driver what the best way to get a cab back would be.  He said he could wait an hour for us (which seemed strange) but we didn't want to tie ourselves down on time.  More on this later.  The simple but large tasting room was fairly full when we arrived, but we were able to snag a couple of seats at the long bar.  Nearly everyone there had wooden sample tray in front of them, almost no pints of beer were being poured--very different from the average tap room.  Near the entrance they had a sign up for tours and sheets of paper with written descriptions of the 32 tap beers and another for their bottled options to take home.  Tastefully framed versions of their bottle labels decorate the walls behind the bar...and not so tastefully slapped all over the place in the bathrooms.  Behind the bar they also had a not-so-secret stash of bottles to be bought for on premises drinking--including some pretty hard to find stuff like the barrel aged Bois.

Stainless and bottles...so many pretty bottles!

Our servers were awesome.  Instead of rolling their eyes at us for waffling on our sampler orders, we received great advice, and perfect hospitality.  Frankly I am seldom confused by beer menus, but this thing was so huge and many of the beers were high-test, so I was a bit boggled.  With help from our servers and from the nice "regular" lady seated next to us we were finally able to order a few rounds of samples.  The samplers came in a cool wooden crate carrier and were all served in little snifter glasses.  Most of these were pretty pricey, but all were worth it!  In addition to just a huge list of beers, they also had a couple of mini flights with either different vintages or different treatments of the same beer (oaked, cocoa nibs, etc.)  They had a couple of options only for their Reserve Society members...one of the perks of joining. 

Seriously, have you ever seen this many beers from one brewery?

 

 

We ended up getting several groupings of beer, each seemingly more impressive than the last.  A few didn't hit the mark--the Coffee Smoking Wood comes to mind (just too astringent.)  Favorites were the malt-bomb barleywine Mash and its coconut incarnation.  I was also a huge fan of the hoppy, bretty saison Atomic Kangaroo.  A tour was going to leave about halfway through our debauched tasting, but I didn't want to let our seats go in the rapidly filling up taproom.  Oh, and I wanted to keep trying more amazing beers!  Sj and I had planned an hour or so for the tasting, but even without the tour we ended up spending closer to two hours at the taproom.  To counter some of the booze, we ended up needing some food from the cleverly placed food truck outside the brewery. 

We ended up buying a whole case of beer to take home with us (we had brought an empty Styrofoam shipper to Disney for just this purpose) as you get 15% off a full case of 750 ML bottles.  We also lucked out and were there during the special release of White Chocolate--a big and chocolaty wheat wine.  Between the obscene amount of samples we tried, $30 White Chocolates, and all the rest--this was not our cheapest brewery visit!

Word to the wise on visiting by cab: one can get there easily, but getting back home can be more problematic.  We had the friendly bar staff call us a cab when we were wrapping up our buying spree, but 25 minutes later no-one had arrived to pick us up.  After another call we were assured that a car was 5 minutes away.  By this time were both really ready to get our big heavy box of beers back to the hotel and get back to Magical Disney activities.  After 15 minutes I called another company (Yellow Cab) and they said they would get someone out for us.  After 15 more minutes someone got dropped off at the brewery and we dove for the cab before he could leave the parking lot.  30 minutes later (after finally arriving back home) I got a call from the Yellow Cab telling me that they still didn't have anyone to pick us up.  So plan ahead or rent a car!

I love the beers from The Bruery with a passion.  This was a holy pilgrimage for me and other than the cab issue was one of the best taproom visits I have ever had!  I'm looking forward to slowly doling out my spoils over the coming months to prolong the memory and experience.  If you get out that way--this place is a must visit.  And if you can get access to their beers in your market: do so now!

Finding Craft Beer Around Disneyland

Recently my wife and I celebrated our (lucky) 13th anniversary by taking a trip to Disneyland in California.  We did our honeymoon at Disneyworld in Florida, but this was my first time in CA.  I could write a book on our adventures in and around the parks, but since this is a beer blog, I'm going to focus on that!  Let's just say this about Annaheim: the craft beer revolution has been slow to arrive there.  I was able to find a few options for good beer, but had to search hard for them! 

We stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel right on Disney property, making for a very convenient commute into the parks.  This massive edifice of housing is quite impressive, clean and comfortable, but it can take you a while to traverse the length of it!

Disneyland itself is completely dry...being a family place and all.  This was very noticeable when we had a nice dinner in the Blue Bayou restaurant within the Pirates of the Carribean ride.  We had options of soft drinks, virgin mojitos, or lemonade to go with our main dishes.  Wine or beer would have been wonderful here! 

After a long afternoon of Disneyland chaos I was happy to find that our hotel Hearthstone Bar was open late and had a few options for craft beer (including Racer 5 IPA and Firestone Walker Double Barrel in bottles.) 

Accessed directly from our hotel, we were also able to visit Disney California Adventure (DCA).  This is the newer area of Disney, focused more on the Pixar era with giant mock ups of Cars scenery, Bug's Life, and even my old favorites the Muppets.  I discovered that Karl Strauss Brewing had a beer truck selling $8 pints of beer in plastic cups hidden away near the Wharfside eating area.  The beers were nothing stellar, but at least they were available!  The IPA was probably the best of them. 

Downtown Disney is the nightlife spot just outside the parks and hotels, with some Disney owned restaurants and shops as well as others like the House of Blues and Rainforest Café.  Most of these close pretty early (around 10 when we were there) so getting a night cap is unlikely at most places.  I think the best options for beers we discovered was at the Catal Restaurant and Uva bar.  They had about 10 taps at the bar and 5 in the restaurant, as well as some bottled beers to choose from.  I had a HUGE glass of Valiant DIPA that about did me in with my wonderful meal.  I highly recommend that place for dinner and beers! 

One would be remiss not to mention that The Bruery is a 15-20 minute cab ride from Disney property and have an amazing tap room.  I'll be writing that visit up separately!

So there you have it...a pretty short list, but I searched high and low and that is about as good as you will find right there at Disneyland.  I had a wonderful trip and really enjoyed the differences between the California and Florida experiences.  I do like drinking my way around the countries in Epcot though...