Faultline Brewing Company celebrated the success of their first cigar event with Cigar Dinner #2, and what an evening it was! Accepting the open invitation for a backstage tour, I followed Brewmaster Greg Friday as he showed me where the magic of beer-making takes place in Faultline's compact but busy brewhouse. A graduate of the master brewers program at UC Davis, Greg spoke enthusiastically about Hetch Hetchy water, specialty malts, aromatic hops, grist mills, oats and orange peals, flake barley, secret stout recipes and a swirl of other tidbits that had my head foaming like their prized Nitrogen Dispense System With a beer menu before me listing 20 luscious-looking suds, I dutifully (ahem) sampled my way through, um, a number of them, especially enjoying the N2-dispensed Best Bitter, the rich and well-balanced British -style Pale Ale, and the sassy Saaz-hopped Pilsner. The cigar that kept up with all this taste testing was the H. Upmann Corsario, a sweet and tasty mild smoke that will soon make its way into my humidor. Faultline keeps their seven-plus taps rotating between standard beers, brewer's specials and seasonals such as the Spring Bock, Oktoberfest and Holiday Strong Ale. Let's see...there are 20 beers plus 11 cigars featured on Faultline's in-house Dunhill Selection cigar menu: so, math whizzes, how many times could go have a smoke and a pint on their outside patio and not repeat yourself? If you can't answer that, least on of their excellent beers-to-go and have a fresh beer on your own back porch. Fortunately for me, Faultline Brewing Company will be opening a new brewery around October 15th, 1996, in my neck of the woods, Walnut Creek, so I have to drive so far for such a great time.
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