I made a trip up to Chico Ca. to go to the Sierra Nevada brewery. I have never been to a large brewery before and Sierra Nevada has always made some of my favorite beers. This place was amazing. The tour was about an hour long and covered pretty much every aspect of the brewing process and ended in the tasting room. The highlight of the whole tour for me personally aside from the tasting was the hop room. If heaven has a smell, I smelled it today. It's almost indescribable how bad ass it was. There was thousands and thousands of pounds of whole leaf cascade. If you can imagine how dope a fresh pack of hops smells when you first open it and take a nice deep breath. Now imagine being able shrink down and climb inside that bag. I'm trying to figure out how many pounds it would take to make my whole house smell that way. I'm sure my wife would be ok with it. The tap room and restaurant are excellent. All their delicious standard beers and many that I've never seen or heard of. The food was very good and a lot of it is locally raised and grown with the left overs from brewing used as compost and animal feed. If you've never been to a brewery and are considering a trip to one, I highly recommend Sierra Nevada. Aside from the brewery Chico is a cool town and there's lots of good local bars and places to eat. For sure put this brewery on your must see list, and if your tour guide happens to be John tell him the dudes from Vegas say hello.
