I have praised Stone Breweryenough in previous posts.  The amount of gushing is starting to get embarrassing.  I visited the brewery yesterday and here’s a photo journal of some of the place (I did not take photos within the bistro)…

This is one of the ways to enter the gardens and brewery – it’s like something from Lost.  I was waiting for the Darma Initiative to show up with a can of their brew. 

If you’d prefer entering by the front doors, they have a “normal” entrance too:

The Guardian (or Gargoyle) that represents Stone appears in many forms throughout the brewery, including in this “tablet” that appeared in the middle of our tour:

A lone pirate flag was hanging in the brewery to greet us on the outset of our tour.  The tour took almost an hour and was a great walk-through of their facility and process.  All tours end with a complimentary tasting.  Our guide was friendly, engaging and clearly having fun.  It was a great experience and made beer very accessible.

Some of their beers are aged in oak barrels - I love the romance of anything made with wood (like the recent post on Scotch).

And now for the biggest can of beer you’ve ever seen.  We were told that if we stole this fermenter that it would take one person 65 years of drinking 6 bottles of beer a night to consume the entire thing.  I couldn’t figure out how to get it past customs so I left it behind.

This is a bottling line.  If you take the tour during the week you would see it in operation.  There’s something I love about seeing a beer line (in action ar at rest).  The actual filler is at the far end of the photo (there’ a closeup of another filler below that may help you identify it in this photo).  I was excited to hear that they bought this one used from Molson and it appeared in Strange Brew.  I was the only one that had heard of the movie and our guide gave it (and me) mad props.

This is a non-operation filler (it is used for parts on the one in the photo above).  I have seen some that can bottle more than 750 bottles per minute.  The bottle is filler with beer (CO2 included) and hit with a hit of water to seal air out of the bottle before being capped (like in jam and other preserves, air is the enemy of all things decent and fair).

Pass me the can in the corner (a dirty, empty keg goes down to line to be cleaned, purged of CO2, reilled in capped in 60 seconds)…  The fridge was massive and included more than 50 other types of beer than Stone – the craft beer scene once again proving how fantastic it is as Stone represents these  brands in the area and is a regioonal distributor of these craft brews.  All for one, one for all…

The tour was fantastic, the people friendly.  It was a very worthwhile evening and was followed by a great dinner in their Bistro.  Any chance you have to grab a brewery tour, jump on it!