I took a bike trip up to the Russian River Brewing Company in Santa Rosa for the first time.

While you can get most of their beers at City Beer Store, they had a few there I’d never heard of:

We started with the 18-beer sampler:

My favorites were mostly ones I knew I liked:

  • Damnation 23 (golden color, strong, a bit sweet (like a belgian tripel?), aged with oak chips). I’ve bought it a few times, but didn’t realize until this trip that it’s 10.5% ABV. Whew.
  • Consecration (sour dark beer aged in red wine barrels)
  • Supplication (sour brown ale aged in pinot noir barrels with sour cherries)
  • Perdition (malty blonde?)

A few others I liked:

  • Mortification (dark, fruity, quad)
  • Russian River Porter
  • Damnation (blonde ale)

I was less into the IPAs (as expected) including Pliny the Elder (sorry, fellow beer geeks), the Aud Blonde, the stout, or the Rejection and Defenestration, despite their cute names.