Number 5

5 Wind River Brewing Co.

The second leg of the tour started in Pinedale, WYO as we required a marriage license to get the deed done in Yellowstone. We flew into town, found the brewery and busted to the closest campsite so we could drink beer…yep, I’m Johnny and I have a problem…it’s been two weeks since I’ve been to a real brewery and I was hankerin’ for a good brew on tap…thank Dog for this place! It use to be the Bottom's Up Brewing, now it’s just a brewery named after the Mountains east of town and their beer is as beautiful as the peaks it’s named for…Beer is to mountains as WRB is to peaks…majestic! Hmmm…Hops are to beer as peaks are to mountains, I like analogies-a lot!

Back to our tour, from Johnny’s journal we read…”I scored the sampler; let’s see if I can remember some names-Gale Force Pale Ale, TKO (loved this beer), Out of Order Porter, Strom Bomb Stout-they were all gooder! The nachos small, but bitchin’ and the sweet tater fries wonderful! The service was outstanding and we had a great time visiting with new friends as well! This is a FABB place to be!”


I should expound on a number of stuffs scribbled in my journal on 5 July ’09. “New friends”, the barkeeps were chatty, full of yarn and had a familiarity with beer…then there were the patrons, sooner than flies on fresh shit, we were fast friends with the whole damn place; swapping handles and facebook pages, phone numbers and e-mails, with promises of growler swapping and phone calls to rock stars…OK, Americana Rock Stars from Ten Sleep to be precise, but in Patti and Johnny’s book, Jalan Crossland is the big show. We’ll visit about JC later, but my tale is one of the guys was buddies with HIM, and after he dialed JC’s number, Patti Lynn left Jalan a message that would come back to her from the stage of No-Woodstock this fall…damn, those famous people toyin’ with us little folk!

Now for FABB, it’s a contraction for Food, Atmosphere, Beer and Barkeep that we rate each brewery we visit (I’ll post a box-score at the end of this blog.) Very few places have scored an A in all four categories; the WRB was one of the elites, worthy of its lofty perch high on a level few in our discovery reached- fitting no?