Bins full of ...

Hops...different plants make different flavors in beer, apparently.  So we got to walk around smelling a very pre-beer smell, and could pick up a hop or two if we wished.

This was part of our tour of the Sierra Nevada Brewery a few weeks ago.  Thought I'd try to show you some of the last pics.

Visit to brewery

Our guide for our free tour of Sierra Nevada Brewery

Copper clad vats, stainless steel inside, are already processing the beers

Some of the controls showing

Though much of the brewery is still under construction, it's been producing for the last year...Pale Ale is a favorite.

During production days a sip can be tasted right out of the vat

Copper is everywhere, just for the gleaming pleasure of it, and I wonder if it's treated so it won't turn green, (inside and outside also!)

I showed a few more pictures of the brewery tour HERE the other day.  And there will be more coming of the hops room and the architecture, and the setting, and even the bottling assembly line.  Just a few.

And a quote for the day:

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that something deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

e.e. cummings