A Whole Lot o' Travelin' and a Whole Lot of Good Beer! (Northern California)

Ashlee and I took a great trip to the San Jose/Northern California area for a pre-birthday trip for her and a chance for us to see Coldplay in concert.  The area is awesome, the weather was awesome and Coldplay were...well, awesome...and the beer I found was right up there in the awesome-sauce as well, starting with a Joe IPA from 10 Barrel Brewing (OR) that I had with lunch at a layover at LAX.

9/2/16 - Once we got to San Jose I was able to check out my first meadery ever.  Rabbit's Foot Meadery in Sunnyvale, CA, just outside San Jose was a hopping little place and I tried their Sweet Mead which I can't say I was a big fan of honestly.  I am just not much of a sweets fan in any form.  I also had a few sips of Ashlee's order, the Sucker Punch! cider from Red Branch Cider and Brewing which is an off-shoot of Rabbit's Foot.  The sour intro and smooth finish of it was interesting.  At dinner later, also in Sunnyvale, at Roberto's Cantina I had the Bohemia Clasica (Mexico) cerveza lager which was pretty good especially with out delicious Mexican fare.

9/3/16 -  We headed toward the coast today but stopped on our way at the awesome Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest state park, and took a great loop trail around some of the gigantic redwood monsters including this 250'+ one called The Father of the Forest.  Even cooler was the fact that after we got done with our walk, we were able to buy craft beer at the park store and enjoy it there (take that, Tennessee!!).  What a great idea.  I had the Apocalypse IPA from 10 Barrel (OR) and it was perfect!  

Once we were out on the coast we stopped for lunch at the quirky Highway 1 Brewing Company.  This is kind of a weird area anyway in it's loneliness and lack of development and the unique people around here seem to fit it to a tee.  I had their solid Slow Coast Session IPA and a few sips of Ashlee's good Syzygy Synergy (New Zealand Saison).  

9/4/16 - We were COASTING again today and our first stop was the beautiful Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, CA.

We stopped in at Hop Dogma Brewing just outside Half Moon Bay in El Granada, CA, and each had a tasty flight of their beers.  I had the following:  the A-Frame IPA, the Pyro's Post rye beer, the We All Grin for Lupulin: Batch 5.0 IPA, the Coast Tribe IPA, the Polydactyl Pilsner, the Yellow Mellow kolsch, the Baby-Dankopottamus pale ale, and the Fides In Fermento Imperial Stout w/ Coffee.  All were impressive and appreciated.

Back in San Jose we made a last-second , last-of-the-night beer stop at Alpha Acid Brewing and it turned out to be my favorite beer stop of the entire trip.  The little place is doing some outstanding brewing.  I had the Cocomo IPA (this was my favorite beer of the trip with its super-smooth coconut infusion) and the Final Final triple IPA (Lord, have mercy!).

We closed out the evening back at the hotel with a pint bottle of  Naughty Ninja - Hard Ginger from Red Branch that we bought on our first night here.  It is a cyser (fermented apple and honey mix) that was really very good.

9/5/16 - We spent our last full day in Cali back out on the coast, of course, heading south and then swinging back north where even little gems like Point Pinos Lighthouse above which was closed was still worth seeing.

The view of The Wharf at Santa Cruz from our hotel room tonight was better than the wharf itself.  I took a sunset walk on it and wasn't really impressed with the views, the restaurants...or the beer available there.  I did have a Shimmer Pils pilsner from Discretion Brewing in nearby Soquel, CA, that was decent at one of the bars there.