Taking a family trip to Lake Tahoe. We live in LA and will probably be taking the I-5 or 99 up. Are their any notable breweries on the way up there? We are looking for something north of LA about 3-5 hours away so can stay the night in that town. Firestone comes to mind but I'm not sure if we would make it up there before their 9pm closing time. On the way home we will be taking the eastern sierras back and hitting up Kern River Brewing. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
KRBC would be a ways out of your way too, coming from either 395 or 99. Sorry to burst your bubble if you didn't already know. Not a much great stuff in the central valley; certainly nothing off the 5, possibly some smaller places off the 99. Sac has some good beer locales, but you're pushing 6 hours to get here from LA. If you're headed to North Lake Tahoe, 50/50 is on the way (as stated above), as is Auburn Alehouse.
Firestone walker has the taproom restaurant and they are open late and have all the same beers their tasting room has. Food is decent but nobody around here goes there for the food. Id go to fw in buelton then head up the 101 to fw paso robles then carry on...the 5 freeway is faster but there isnt shit out there.
Lengthwise (Bakersfield), Brewbakers (Visalia) Sequoia Brewing (Fresno) , Rubicon (Sac), Knee Deep (Lincoln), 50/50, Tahoe Mtn Brewing, Great Basin (Reno), Mammoth Brewing (Mammoth Lakes). Those are what come to mind when I think about that route...
If you really want to push it, at 6 hours, you can stay at the Lake Natoma Inn up in Folsom, and walk over to Samuel Horne's tavern 2 blocks up the street. http://www.facebook.com/SamuelHornesTavern?fref=ts Very nice, new place with great seating and a brick wall full of individual chalk placards listing the beers on tap. They serve food too. It looked like good food although I ate down the street at Chicago pizza (deep dish, mm).
