When you’re raised as the son of a fisherman, you’re bound to hear in a multitude of ways how much better the fishing used to be. As he tells it, there were more fish, first of all, and fewer of us trying to catch them — before that damn A River Runs Through It movie came out and popularized the quiet sport for the masses.
That might be true, and in many ways, our rivers have changed since his time. I try not to stray toward the pitfall of making too many comparisons, but I have found one from which I get a healthy dose of solace. I am at least fortunate enough to have come of age in a time when the beer no longer sucks.
These are the heydays of American brewing, and it’s not just for Portland hipsters anymore. A 2018 Brewing Association article states that the largest growth in the brewing scene came from the smallest breweries, which accounted for over 60 percent of the craft industry’s growth last year. It started in the cities, but I have watched the craft scene move inland from the coast over the last decade or so, and I think that it might have found a perfect home in the mountain community of Truckee, California. The FiftyFifty Brewing Company opened its doors in this riverside town just over 10 years ago, in 2007, and since then, it has been joined by the Tahoe Mountain Brewing Company, Alibi Ale Works, and the newly founded Truckee Brewing Company.
I recently came to the realization that my girlfriend’s house is smack dab in the middle of all four breweries, all within biking distance, and I had an idea. Folks around here are obsessed with outdoor feats of endurance — bike around Lake Tahoe, run the Tahoe Rim Trail, ski as much vertical as possible in a day, etcetera. So it was only natural that Truckee was the launching point for a night on the Tour de Brew: four breweries, innumerous IPAs, one dress caught in a bike chain, and an appreciation for the diversity and creative energy behind the community’s craft brewing movement.
The Truckee Brewing Company
Located across Interstate 80 in northeast Truckee, Truckee Brewing tapped its kegs for the first time in May of this year. Its location is nondescript, just a striking logo on the glass door of an industrial-warehouse-style building to signify that you’re in the right place. Then you walk inside to face the clever union of a small modern tap room and an expanse of immaculately kept brewing equipment. There are 12 taps on your right, and the vats the beer was made in on your left. It’s a cyclical experience to drink in the company of beer fermenting, similar to eating your day’s catch.
Owner Dustin Hurley and brewmaster Adam Lundy opened Truckee Brewing with an attitude toward local partnership, and it shows in the tap room.
The concrete drinking tables pay homage to Truckee’s rich Union Pacific history with their railroad tie legs, fabricated by local Jeff Curley; richly colored oil paintings from Squaw Valley’s Kirsten Paulsen adorn the walls; the beer flights are served on local potter Brad Henry’s stone crafts; the smell of fresh stromboli wafting through your nostrils is courtesy of Sierra Bakehouse; and the geometric “Truckee Bear” logo adorning almost every item in the place was the creative brainchild of Reno tattoo shop Canyon Web. It really does take a village.
The most foreign thing in the room was certainly the Brut IPA, apparently a hot new fad out of San Francisco. I will admit, I was skeptical. I’m still a little skeptical, but my girlfriend loved it, and she has such developed taste that she can name most brewers and styles in a blind tasting. It just goes to show what I know. Even the nondrinker can get adventurous with something the bartender called a “Cascara,” or nonalcoholic, nitro-infused chilled coffee drink. For the not so adventurous drinker, Truckee Brewing has a solid selection of beers named simply for their classic styles, IPAs from the East to the West Coast, as well as session, red, Kolsch, pale, and sour ales. My biggest takeaway from Truckee Brewing’s first year offerings: an almost dangerous level of drinkability.
The Tahoe Mountain Brewing Company
Tahoe Mountain Brewing is barely a short walk from Truckee Brewing and occupies an equally unassuming space. The company was first founded as a brew pub in Tahoe City in 2011, and the owners, Aaron Bigelow and Dan Keenan, expanded their brewing operation to Truckee not long after, although the brew pub and brewery contrast each other in every way except the beer they serve. While the pub occupies a center stage in Tahoe City, with a view of the lake and a deck constantly swarming with tourists, the brewery itself is a hole in the wall of the best variety. The bar is only about five seats wide, and after ordering a Passionfruit Pale Ale (not nearly as fruity as it sounds, I promise), I had the Cheers theme song stuck in my head as my girlfriend and I drank and BS’d with the regulars about topics such as Truckee’s rafting culture and the good ol’ days of Alpine Meadows Ski Resort.
In terms of creativity in the brewing process, Tahoe Mountain Brewing wins hands down. The beers on tap run the gamut from the previously mentioned Passionfruit Pale, to the Iambic-style Viejo Rojo (Old Red), aged for two years in cabernet casks, to a good old West Coast DIPA, Hop Dragon. The last is 10 percent alcohol and breathes fire. The brewery has a penchant for barrel-aging its beers, and about half of the brews on tap have spent significant time in a cask of some sort. They’ve got beers aged in port barrels with tart cherries, sherry barrels with Brettanomyces yeasts, bourbon barrel lagers with beechwood smoked barley If you’re sick of drinking yet another creatively starved “hop-forward” IPA, this is definitely the place to expand horizons.
If you have a canine partner, bring it, because the brewery doesn’t have a kitchen, and pups of all shapes and sizes are more than welcome. Tahoe Mountain Brewing also holds a Hops for Huskies event on the first Friday of every month, with one dollar from every beer purchased going to local animal advocacy nonprofit, Tahoe Husky Rescue.
If you’re on the go, it’s also a quiet spot to swing by and grab some cans for the river on your way to the evening rise.
The FiftyFifty Brewing Company
After two stops on the Tour de Brew, driving was of course not an option for us, but the Pioneer Bike Trail conveniently leads back into downtown via Bridge Street to Brockway Road for a stop at Alibi Ale Works or FiftyFifty Brewing. Google Maps and bike lights are your friend if you decide to champion this route.
FiftyFifty is everything you think of when you picture a full-scale mountain-town brewery. It’s the place for a reliable selection of classic beers, a full menu, and casual table dining. If your goal is a sit-down meal with a local beer to accompany it, this is your stop.
While many of the beers aren’t quite as adventurous as those at Tahoe Mountain Brewing, they are time-tested favorites, not just in Truckee, but even outside the country. FiftyFifty is Truckee’s only internationally distributing brewery, found in more than 20 states and nine countries, and its Eclipse barrel-aged imperial stout has won a European Beer Star Awards gold medal three years running. Esquire magazine called it one of the “top ten beers you’ll never taste,” on account of the beer’s short supply. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to catch this stout in stock and prove them wrong.
My personal go-to at the brewery and anytime I find FiftyFifty’s beers on the shelf at the local grocery store is to opt for whatever they have on rotation as their “Cans for Community” brew. The brewery launched Cans for Community last year as a fund-raising effort for some of the local nonprofits and donates one dollar a can to a specific organization with each release. The current release is a Leg Lifter Ale, with proceeds donated to the Humane Society of Truckee Tahoe. Perhaps someday we’ll see a “brown” trout ale for Trout Unlimited?
Alibi Ale Works
During my last few years of college in Incline Village, I can confidently say that Alibi saved me from potential disaster. Before the brewery opened shop in 2014, the Village Pub was the only go-to place to grab a drink. You know that saying, “Nothing good happens after midnight”? Well, nothing good was ever bound to happen at the Village Pub, and Alibi Ale Works offered the perfect alternative. It became a favorite stop of mine for delicious beer, a clean and hip atmosphere, and great events. I even embarrassed myself at a few open mics.
As serendipity would have it, when I landed a job in Truckee a few years later, the brewery followed. In 2016, Alibi opened its Truckee Public House on Bridge Street, blew out its beer selection, and upped its events schedule in a big way. The larger downtown location gave owners Kevin Drake and Rich Romo a little more room to play with. By far the best addition of all, though? Nachos. Alibi’s location in downtown Truckee made it the perfect place to close out our tour, and we wrapped up the night with a plate of Mexican street-corn nachos and a flight of hoppy beers. The band for the night, a soul and funk group out of Reno called the Sextones, was just setting up to play. The beer you’ll find at the Public House is still brewed in Incline Village, using “Tahoe Tap” water pulled right out of Big Blue. It tastes as good as the lake looks. What stands out about the mountain-based brewery, though, is its plethora of choices. Twenty-two rotating beers can be found at any one time, along with cider, wine, nitro coffee, kombucha, and other nonalcoholic options. I usually stick to whatever “Batch #” IPA they’ve got on tap, although their house beer, Alibi IPA, is a great standby of the West Coast variety. One important thing I’ve noticed about Alibi beers to keep in mind is that they typically hit double. Two beers will feel like four, so plan accordingly.
A perfect time to swing by the Public House is anytime they’ve got live music on the roster, but there are two monthly events that stand out. On the second Wednesday of every month, Rusty Reams holds court with the Great Bingo Revival, a seventies funk-themed interactive bingo party dubbed as “This ain’t your grandma’s bingo.” On the third Tuesday of every month, Alibi hosts a free swing-dancing lesson with local dance instructors. My tip here is to show up early unless you know what you’re doing, because if you miss the basics, it will be very apparent as you trod all over your partner’s toes.
There was no swing dancing to be had that night, but there was some gentle swaying as we walked our bikes home, ready for an early rise the next morning. As Norman Maclean wrote in the book that inspired the movie that my dad says ruined fly fishing, “A fisherman . . . takes a hangover as a matter of course — after a couple of hours of fishing, it goes away. All except the dehydration, but then he is standing all day in water.”
If You Go…
Alibi Ale Works, 10069 Bridge Street, Truckee. Open 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., Sunday through Wednesday, 12:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m., Thursday through Saturday. Bingo on the second Wednesday and swing dancing on the third Tuesday. Live music. Order a flight of the “Batch #” IPAs and a plate of nachos, any style. Togo growlers available. Web: www.alibialeworks.com/truckee-public-house.html.
FiftyFifty Brewing Company, 11197 Brockway Road, Suite 1, Truckee. Open every day, 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.; Happy Hour, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Try the Eclipse barrel-aged imperial stout or the rotating Cans for Community offering. To-go growlers available. Web: fiftyfiftybrewing.com.
Tahoe Mountain Brewing Company, 10990 Industrial Way, Truckee. Open 2:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Wednesday through Thursday, 12:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. Hops for Huskies is the first Friday of the month; Power Hour is from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., Wednesday though Sunday. Get creative with anything barrel aged here. To-go growlers available, as are canned and bottled beers. Web: tahoebrewing.com
Truckee Brewing Company, 10736 Pioneer Trail, Suite 1, Truckee. Open every day, 1:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Locals night — half off all beer on Mondays. Try the Brut IPA. To-go growlers available. Web: truckeebrewco.com
— Sage Sauerbrey
