Big Bear Mountain Brewery, 40260 Big Bear Boulevard, Big Bear Lake, California
Kern River Brewing Company, 13415 Sierra Way, Kernville, California
Five.Ten. Bistro, 510 West Main Street, Merced, California
Gourmet Haus Staudt, 2615 Broadway, Redwood City, California
Last year when I was in California, it wasn't just big-city breweries and pubs that I visited. In fact, two of them were up in the mountains.
Located in the San Bernardino Mountains northeast of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, the area referred to as Big Bear includes both the town of Big Bear and the city of Big Bear Lake, located, not surprisingly, on Big Bear Lake, with a total population of less than 13,000 mostly white inhabitants. Because this area is at an elevation of 6,750 feet, it's a popular tourist destination in the winter months for both skiers and native Angelinos who want to get away from the dry Santa Ana conditions to play in the snow. This was one of the snowy mountain destinations, along with Wrightwood and Lake Gregory, to which my parents used to drive me and my brother on fun days out.
These days it's the home of my former sister-in-law, who moved from the heart of Los Angeles mostly because of the affordable house prices. So I've had a good reason to come up here for a long weekend whenever I visit Southern California.
Last year when I was in Big Bear, my adopted brother Kim drove down from Bakersfield for a couple of days in order to give me a ride back up to my brother’s house. One afternoon, while my sister-in-law (also named Kim) was busy in the kitchen preparing a meal which required a battle with her new pasta maker, male Kim and I decided to get out of her way and go have a pint and a light snack at a brewery I’d read about. So we drove down the road to the Big Bear Mountain Brewery.
When we got there and parked, the place looked pretty interesting, which it certainly was. The interior is crowded with all sorts of memorabilia and down-home esoterica. Behind the bar is a gun collection from James Bond films, as well as decals for all sorts of California police and fire departments. There is also a display of masks of all four members of the band Kiss, along with a couple of electric guitars, and over on the opposite wall hangs a relief painting of James Dean. So there is a hell of a lot of stuff to wander around and look at.
On the bar I spotted the taps of several craft offerings from Rescue Brewing Company of Upland, California. We first tried a taste of From Dust Till Dank DIPA (10.2% ABV). It was delicious, but it seemed quite a bit too strong for an afternoon pint, much less for any time, actually. We also had a taste of Sweet Fruition Pastry Sour (8.0% ABV), which was brewed with guava, orange, pineapple, and vanilla. It was a very interesting sour that reminded both of us of an Orange Julius, a unique taste particularly nostalgic to us native Southern Californians, although it was the official drink of the New York World’s Fair in 1964 and did travel across the continent and through southeast Asia. But it’s not really what either of us wanted in a beer. So we both decided on pints of Fun Finder IPA (6.6% ABV, Rescue Brewing), a West Coast IPA with Citra, Amarillo, and Nelson Sauvin hops.
We ended up sitting on the front patio, where we shared an order of fries. There was plenty to look at outside as well: flags, a No Barking-3 Strikes sign, and another sign that seemed to say that dogs must wear shoes. The afternoon was pleasantly temperate, the beer was good, and I have to admit the fries were pretty darn good as well. The food menu also features burgers, sandwiches, and chicken Caesar salad, and the brewery hosts live music nights. So if one ever finds themselves in Big Bear, this seems like a great place to visit.
A couple of weeks later, when I was visiting my sibling group in Bakersfield, my sister-in-law Carol and I drove up into the mountains to see Lake Isabella. As it was getting close to lunchtime and there wasn’t much in the town of Lake Isabella except for a liquor and bait shop, a veterinarian, and a gun shop, we decided to drive 12 miles north to the mountain town of Kernville.
I was excited about being in Kernville, as it’s close to where my family camped at least a couple of times when I was little, and where my dad and brother and I did some fly fishing on the Kern River. (I was apparently really adept for someone so young. At the age of seven I caught my limit of rainbow trout in no time, both here and on the Metolius River in Oregon.)
Kernville has grown quite a bit and now features various shops and Western-style exhibits for tourists. But the town is also home to the Kern River Brewing Company, where we stopped to have lunch. It was a bit confusing deciphering the signpost, as the brewery features two dining rooms with two different menus. So we found ourselves in the Original pub as opposed to the Backyard Restaurant, but that was all right with us. It was warm and quite windy outside, so we decided to sit inside in order to take advantage of the air conditioning. Our window had a nice view of the mountains, and on the other side of our table we had a view of the brewing vats below us. While Carol went for an Arnold Palmer, which is iced tea and lemonade, I had a pint of The Perfect Balance IPA (6.8% ABV), brewed with Strata, Cashmere, and Nelson hops. A collaboration with Pure Project Brewing of San Diego, my beer was a bit hazy, but it offered a nice hop-forward character oddly suggestive of dank, dry boysenberries.
The food menu was huge, featuring plenty of chicken and pork options, but there were plenty of fish, vegetarian, and vegan options as well. The service on this Tuesday afternoon was a bit sluggish, but I was fine with that because we weren't particularly in a hurry, although we were getting quite hungry. When we finally did get served, our waiter was very earnest and eager. We both ordered Portobello Pittas with goat cheese and peppers, accompanied by waffle fries. Our sandwiches were quite good, although we both found the waffle fries rather uninterestingly baffling. But I suppose they might be a Kern County style, like bacon being added to everything from Bloody Marys to scones. After all, I’ve never completely understood the appeal of chip butties in my adopted country, so who’s to say?
At the end of my stay in Bakersfield, my Bay Area friend Rick and I headed up north to Sacramento on Highway 99. On the way we stopped off in Merced to find somewhere for lunch and a pint. From where we parked our car we could see the Five.Ten. Bistro, so we decided to give it a try. It was fairly empty inside, perhaps experiencing a post-lunchtime lull, so we decided to sit out back on the umbrella-festooned patio near the fountain.
After studying the beer menu, we decided to share a couple of pints. The first was Boo Koo Mosaic IPA (6.5% ABV, Mother Earth Brewing, San Diego, California), which was nice and clear with that deep Mosaic boost. Our other pint was Make America Juicy IPA (6.5% ABV, Heretic Brewing Company, Fairfield, California), a hazy brewed with Belma, Mosaic, and Citra hops. It was an interesting brew, made more interesting by the Belma hops which I’ve never encountered but which have apparently been described as tasting like a mixture of orange, melon, strawberry, pineapple, and grapefruit, so quite fruity in an ambrosiac way. When we began to eat our lunch, which was a spinach and feta salad with candied walnuts and cranberries that we split between us, suddenly the Make America Juicy started to taste better and better, regardless of that name.
The Five.Ten. Bistro is completely employee-owned, and the bistro features live music events on Fridays. But for us that day it was onward and upward to the breweries of Sacramento County.
On the final day of my California visit, before Rick dropped me off at San Francisco International Airport for my flight home, we stopped in Redwood City at the Gourmet Haus Staudt for my last proper American pint of my trip. After parking outside, the two of us worked our way past the German grocery and through the traditional German restaurant, where German dishes and German beers were being served to the customers. We finally reached the tap bar which featured lots of craft beers along with the German choices. I first had a taste of Scythe (6.9% ABV, Ghost Town Brewing Company, Oakland, California), which is a West Coast IPA and pretty nice. But both of us ended up going for pints of 3-Way IPA (7.0% ABV, Fort George Brewery, Astoria, Oregon), a hazy IPA that tasted crisp even though it was hazy, and there was no fruit or smoothie character to the haziness. It was a very satisfying West Coast IPA brewed with Kölsch yeast and an absolutely mad mixture of Citra, New Zealand Cascade, Pikimai Riwaka, HR Riwaka, and Simcoe hops. In addition to all those hops, the malts included Rahr Pils, Gambrinus Rye Malt, GM Flaked Wheat, and Weyermann, and the acidulated yeast was Kaiser Kölsch. So there were quite a lot of things going on in this epic of a beer.
Having opened in 1975, the family-owned Gourmet Haus was founded by Luci and Lothar Staudt, originally as a flower and gift shop. At some point a cafe was added that sold bratwurst and beer. Eventually Luci and Lothar’s son Volkar expanded the beer menu along with his wife Mary Ann, whose brilliant idea that was, and now they feature over 20 beers on tap, so no wonder this has become one of many Rick haunts. While we were there I observed a wide variety of clientele ranging from old German men to young tattooed bohos. And I imagine the German food is mighty fine as well.
Related Links
- Some other mountain breweries: Whitewater Brewery in the Mourne Mountains of Northern Ireland...
- ......Big Mountain Brewing Company in Chamonix, at the base of Mont Blanc...
- ...and Blue Mountain Brewery in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia
- All about Big Bear Lake
- All about Kernville (Sierra South)
- Fly fishing the Kern River