Lagunitas Brewing Company
TRP first visited Lagunitas Brewing Company in November 2011. Lagunitas is easily one of my favorite breweries we have visited on the trip as well as the best brewery tour we’ve been on to date. The stories from the brewery are endless and the beers are fantastic. Couple that with a large outdoor beer garden, good food and a concert stage and you’ve got the makings of my favorite kind of brewery to visit.
Lagunitas was started in 1993 by Tony Magee, the classic story of small brewery going big-time, this brewery is currently undergoing a $9.5 million dollar renovation that can increase their production to up to 600,000 barrels! That’s up almost 6x the amount they sold in 2010 and an incredible increase compared to their 2004 production of 27,000 barrels. Lagunitas was the 26th largest brewery in the United States in ’09, their new expansion would match production capabilities to that of the 2nd largest craft beer distributor in the U.S., Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., which produced just over 750,000 barrels in 2010.
When we visited there were over 20 beers on tap and I am happy to say we tried each and everyone of them. Many long-time fans of Lagunitas weren’t too happy when they announced they would not be producing their seasonal, Brown Shugga, mainly due to the expansion plans in progress and the mass amounts of brown sugar they need to use to brew the beer. So instead they released a new seasonal, “Lagunitas Sucks!” for all the long-time lovers that were short-time hatin’ on the brewery. Some of our favorites from the day included the wet hop beers, Wet Max and Wet Dog, and Censored, a rich copper ale.
We list that Lagunitas has limited hours because they open at 2pm Wednesday—Friday and 11:30 Saturday-Sunday. SO DON’T GO THERE MONDAY OR TUESDAY hoping to sample some tasty brews, because technically they aren’t open!
DO go there and take the tour. Even if you think you know all there is to know about the brewing process, you should check out the tour, because the stories behind the brewery are very entertaining. Let’s just say that they have a very interesting background in naming a lot of their beers. If you go at 3:00 Wednesday—Friday you can get a ‘tasting tour’ in their old tasting room or a full-walking tour Wed-Fri at 3:00 & 5:00 — Sat-Sun 1:00, 3:00 & 5:00. On their website they say to call them up if none of those times work out and they’ll figure something out!
