Southern California Destinations and recipe suggestions

[gpogo]

I'm moving to southern california for a coop on the 14th. Anyways I was planning on doing a mead and maybe some sort of fruit mead. I was also thinking some sort of big beer. Then when I return in 8 months have a get together with some friends and decent homebrew.

One idea was a barleywine. I'd love some other recipe suggestions. I don't have the equipment for ag yet, so whatever I do will either be extract or minimash.

Also if you know of any good destinations in southern california(I'll probably be in lancaster) breweries, lhbs, or other points of interest I'd be interested in hearing of them. I think the Stone Brewing Co. is about 2 hours away and where I'm from I haven't found any of their beers.

 

[raceskier]

Ahh, Beautiful Lancaster. Broils in the summer (and you can set your watch to the afternoon gale force winds) and freezes in the winter. You must have really PO'd someone to get sent there. Anyway this is a good source for local info: http://beeradvocate.com/beerfly/directory/0/US/CA
You're probably looking at a 3 hour trek to Stone. Once you get to the LA area, there's a lot to investigate. Indian Wells is probably the closest micro, about an hour north on the 14.

 

[Brewsmith]

Yeah, there's not much in Lancaster. Raceskier is right. Indian Wells Brewing would be the closest to you. http://www.mojave-red.com/brew.asp
Stone is about 3 hours south off I-15. If you want to go about 2 hour northwest you'll hit Paso Robles to find Firestone Walker http://www.firestonewalker.com/
There's a few brew pubs in the LA area, but they are spread out all over and would take you at least 1.5 hours to get there, 2 hours to get to Orange County.