Sons of Liberty Brewery - Norco

[BrewMasterBrad]

My brother in law does some catering for this brewery's tasting room and he kept urging us to get over there to try it out. We finally made it over there last Monday. We got there about 8pm, and since they have a big screen and it was Monday Night Football night, I was expecting a few people in there. There were three people besides us and the two people working. Bad sign. The owner is a really nice guy and a history buff (thus the name of the brewery) and the tasting room was nicely decorated in a 1700s era public house motif.

The beers were not good at all. I got a flight of tasters and had to choke them down for fear of offending the owner. All the beers seemed a little off. Some because of recipe issues and others were just plain bad. The food was outstanding since my brother in law is an excellent cook. Too bad I didn't have a decent beer to pair with the chicken burritos or chili dogs.

I got a little tour of the brewery. Little is all you get there because they spent most of the money and space on the tasting room and left little else for the brewhouse. They are brewing on a glorified homebrew system that is about 50 gallons or so. Their mashtun was filthy. They have no temperature control on their homemade stainless conicals, which explains many of the off flavors I was picking up in their beers. All the fermenters were full, so I could not inspect the welds on the inside, but I would venture a guess that they are not very clean and are harboring some nasty stuff.

I have to give these guys credit for going for it and opening a brewery, but their execution is severely lacking. I hope they make it, but that is doubtful until they learn how to brew.

[dhempy]

Maybe it could become the Circle City Brewery when it comes out of bankruptcy

Dan

[BrewMasterBrad]

Maybe it could become the Circle City Brewery when it comes out of bankruptcy

Dan

Location is not bad, but I would not want to buy their brew system.

[backhousebrew]

Sons of Liberty were pouring at the Learn to Homebrew Day last Saturday in Riverside.
They had a California Common that was pretty good.

[BrewMasterBrad]

Sons of Liberty were pouring at the Learn to Homebrew Day last Saturday in Riverside.
They had a California Common that was pretty good.

I had that one at the brewery. I was not impressed. I thought it was pretty dull and flavorless. It was, however, probably the cleanest of their beers that I tried.

[brianc]

After seeing the pics of their fermenters on their Facebook page: