THE RHINO RAMP JOURNEY BREWERY REPORT

TRAIL CREEK BREWING COMPANY - TWIN FALLS IDAHO

We began our trip from Roseville California to West Glacier Montana on July 9th at 4:20am and stopped for an early afternoon lunch at Trail Creek Brewing in Twin Falls Idaho. New restaurateur Kurt Handley explained to us that up until two years ago the site was occupied by Twin Falls Brewing. We stopped in specifically to try the Spin Drift IPA but were a bit disappointed to discover that, although it was a decent beer, the Spin Drift was merely a Pale Ale moonlighting as an IPA. I kinda stuck my foot in my mouth (imagine that) and suggested that perhaps we had been mistakenly poured the False Peak Pale Ale by mistake but was informed that the Pale Ale was not on tap at the moment. Oops. We also tried their Uncle Dunkle (Munich Style lager), The Alchemy Amber and the Dry Irish Stout. Although I thought the Amber was pretty solid the Stout was clearly their best beer by my account....far far better than their Lavender Beer ...which reportedly was the Pale Ale infused with Lavender essence. We did a growler trade with Kurt, shared a calzone and then jumped back on the Highway (thanks for the excellent local short cut tip Kurt) North towards......

BROWNSTONE BREWING COMPANY - IDAHO FALLS IDAHO

Our stop at Brownstone was brief..we did a sampler, filled a growler of their IPA, skipped across the street to view the impressively extensive falls, fueled up the Crown Vic and resumed our trip North on Interstate 84. Brownstone Brewing is housed in an impressive building of brick, wood and glass. The sampler platter was fairly typical with a wheat beer that they called a Hefeweizen, a nut Brown (I kinda liked that one), a Czech Pils, Pale Ale, an Amber Bock and a Raspberry lager. A regionally solid beer place that appeared to have decent food from what we could ascertain from the plates being carried by. It turns out that the growler of IPA we procured went bad on us (listen to pacificbrewnews show number 69) which I'm not that surprised by considering the beer wench didn't rinse out the growler before filled it. I must learn to insist upon that in the future.