AMD64Blondie wrote:Now I've got a six-pack of Lagunitas Little Sumpin Sumpin ale to try.
(BTW,I've never tried anything form Lagunitas before...how are they beer-wise?)
IMO they are generally good to excellent. Most of their beers are pretty hoppy, and many of the ales have that "dank" hop character that has been really popular these past few years for IPAs and similar.
I was pretty pissed off when they sold out to Heineken a few years back, both because consolidation is generally bad for the craft beer industry, and because I was worried that Heineken would "dumb down" their beers. At least the second issue does not seem to have come to pass; the quality seems to have remained high (so far).
They also relocated their primary production facility to Chicago a few years back, so I've been there a couple of times.
View from outside:
The hallway leading to the tasting room & pub, which is buried in the bowels of the facility (it is 10x weirder IRL than the picture shows; the hallway is about 3x as long as the section you see here, there's a disco ball, and "Pure Imagination" from the Willy Wonka movie is playing):
A view of part of the production area:
A small section of the fermentation area (keep in mind that this pic was taken from a catwalk at 3rd story level, so you're seeing only the top part of the tanks... that's a LOT of beer!):