Famous for their award winning beers, the Russian River Brewing Company was formed by the…read moreCalifornia Korbel Winery in 1997. The original brew master became the co-owner when the winery left the beer business in 2003. It was then moved this location in 2004, opening as a brewpub. It's been on my list of places to visit for a while, so my wife, her mom, and I took the opportunity to stop in for a Thursday night dinner on our way to San Francisco from Fort Bragg. The inaugural double IPA (aka Imperial IPA) was made by the current co-owner at a different brewery in 1994. Double means it uses double the hops and malts, and the ABV is quite a bit higher. He then created Pliny the Elder (ABV 8.0%) in 2000, recognized as the most famous DIPA. The track continued, with Pliny the Younger in 2005, a triple IPA (using triple the hops and malts with ABV of 10.25%). This version is available once a year in the spring, since it costs so much money and time to make. With so much malt being used, a large amount of time (and hops) is needed to balance. I've had Pliny the Elder in bottles before, and really liked it: I don't like the hoppy 'piney' taste in my beers, but also recognize that not enough will make the beer too sweet (which I've been facing with a lot my island beers lately). Parking is street only, but there was a lot of it, with the metered parking only requiring payment till 6 pm. We were greeted warmly by the hostess and immediately seated at a table near the bar. As expected, it was quite loud, with after work folks having a good time. We got menus, ordered our food, and then decided what to do about flights. The brewery is also known for their Belgian style and thus offers two different flights. It was my first time, and didn't know how much my wife could help, so decided to order the California Sampler (a selection of 12 different West Coast 5 oz. pours of ales and lagers for $15.45) to start: O.V.L. Stout (Old Vic Loyals) - Irish nitro stout - really beginning to love stouts, and this one was good. Velvet Glow - lager - solid. Ending up buying 6 pack to bring home ($12.99) STS Pils - pilsner. Bought a 6-pack for $12.99. Russian River Porter - Blind Pig IPA - West Coast IPA Happy Hops - Juicy IPA Mosaic Stack - West Coast IPA SimCoe 25 - West Coast IPA Citra Flash Mob - West Coast IPA Mind Circus - Hazy IPA DDH Pliny the Elder - really good. bought two cans at $5.99 each. Pliny the Elder - the original Felt pretty good, so decided to order the Belgian Sampler (9 different for $13.63), Surprisingly, I didn't like it nearly as much (my favorite fruit beer during this trip was the Howzit Punch beer). Petite Robert - table beer Little White Lie - Belgian White Robert - saison Perdition - biere de sonoma Damnation - golden strong ale Mortification - quad Supplication - sour brown ale Intinction - barrel aged pilsner Consecration - sour dark ale In terms of the food, it was solid. The 8 pc chicken wings ($17) were good, and the cheesy garlic bread ($10) was filling. I had the meatball sandwich ($16) and upgraded the fries to a spinach salad (+$4): it was tasty, loved the toasted French bread and marinara sauce, with the meatballs being OK (tasted from frozen)...loved the spinach salad with strawberries and blue cheese. We finished off our meal with a Vinnies (co-owner) sundae: good vanilla ice cream with whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and a lot of almond slivers. Payment was at the table, and me being again very pleasantly surprised at how little the flights were (a typical brewpub where they charge $3-$4 per 5 oz, would have cost 4 times as much...though of course I wouldn't have drunk as much either).

We ordered two salads, one large pizza and their pizza bites. The spinach salad was very good with…read morestrawberries, goat cheese, and some nuts. The green salad had a good variety of vegetables also. We got the jalapeño cheese pizza bites, which was good and the large pizza I don't recall what the name of it was, but it was also fairly good The service was a little bit slow. They were quite busy, but it took us over an hour and a half to get our table. While we were waiting my friend and I had to flag down the staff so that we could get a beer while we waited. The room was quite noisy, but the table was comfortable