Lost Coast

Felecia and I just got back from a spring break road trip to the California Redwoods.  The fist night we stayed in Arcata, that’s one fucking unique neo-hippy town.  When Felecia asked a girl we ran into if she knew a good place to get a burger and a beer she replied, “Do you guys eat meat?”  “Um… yeah, we mean meat burgers, I guess.”  I suppose it’s reasonable to assume that we might be craving a good veggie burger, but it’s not quite what I expected.  I found the exchange enlightened me to the sensibilities of this little white, middle class college town in Humboldt.  We wandered on in search of a comforting, cheap restaurant as a typhoon blew in.  It seemed a surreal.  We braved the horizontal rain and blew off a homeless guy who wondered if we had an extra nug.  There was a short, road worn woman standing in front of a gas station we walked by, smiling with all gums and waving a gas can at us.  I think she’d been huffing it.  We ended up at a cheap Mexican place where I had a Downtown Brown, a tap I glimpsed as we walked in.  It was dark, dark brown, and delightful.  We discovered the next day the Downtown Brown is brewed by Lost Coast Brewery in comparatively metropolitan Eureka! a few miles down 101.  The next night we stayed in Eureka! a few blocks from the brewery and tried their 10 beer sampler plus a couple pints of our favorites.  They had 3 or 4 wheat beers, which were for the most part disappointing; the apricot was really horrible and the hefe had a disturbingly light mouth-feel.  I’m sure some people like that, but it just seemed wrong to me.  Felecia’s favorite was the Tangerine Wheat, it was really good.  I thought the Amber was great, perfectly balanced, maybe the ultimate beer.  We were intrigued by their Great White, a light Belgian brew.  We ended up taking a case of bombers of Great White home with us.  It was $20 at the brewery (the same is twice as much at Belmont Station).  We drank most of them two nights ago with Jen and Patrick when we got back to P-town.  I stayed up way past my bedtime and had the worst hangover I’ve ever experienced from beer alone.  Overall, I think that Lost Coast is a great little brewery.  Their IPA was fine and had the most resilient eggshell coloured head I’ve ever seen, that shit just wouldn’t go away.  The porter was far above average, although I only drank the 4 oz sampler (I wanted to save a little drunk for the tequila we’d drink back at the Hotel).  Only one of the Great White bombers had a label on right, one had the label backwards and the rest were naked.  I think the guy who puts the labels on got stoned and left to watch South Park.