Our good friends asked us if we would be interested in heading to Chautauqua for an evening and stopping at Southern Tier Brewing Company while we were there. With a hard twist of our arms, we agreed and made the very short two hour drive!
The Brewery sits in a somewhat remote area of Lakewood, NY.
The doors to the Brewery open at 2 p.m. on Saturday's and they offer 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. tours for only $8 per person. We arrived around 2:30 p.m. and the first tour was sold out. We quickly bought tickets for the 5 p.m. tour. Since we had a few hours to kill before our tour, we decided to "sample" many of the great brews offered fresh on tap!
Unearthly, Gemini, Pumking, Jahva, 2XIPA, IPA, Pale Ale, Harvest, and Hop Sun were just some of the beers we all had a chance to try. As you can see from the picture they had 14 different beers on tap! You can order them in 12 ounce and 16 ounce glasses (they do not sell sample sizes or sample). Everything we had was super fresh and reasonably priced. 12 ounce glasses ranged from $3-5 and pints ranged from $4-6 based on ABV. My favorites were the Jahva, Unearthly, Gemini and the 2XIPA. I also must say that fresh Pumking was super tasty on draft. The vanilla was just a touch lighter than I remember based on bottled versions and Cleveland draft versions. Finally, if you are hungry they were offering a very small snack menu along with pulled pork sandwiches. Since we ate ahead of time, all I can tell you is that the people we were sitting with really enjoyed their pulled pork experience.
The next part of our trip featured the tour. Our tour started out by sampling more beer offerings and hearing the story behind each brew. We also got a little history lesson about how the brewery started and how far they have come in production since day 1! As the tour progressed, we got to see the bottling lines and the packaging areas as well. The tour lasted about an hour and was well worth the $8 price tag!! Here are a collection of pictures I took along the tour to give you an idea of what we were experiencing.
If you have not taken the two hour drive northeast to Lakewood, NY you really should. This is a great brewery tour, and the selection of fresh beer available at the connected brewpub is amazing. I cannot wait to make another weekend trip up to Southern Tier Brewery hopefully this summer!
I can't believe how BUSY it was when you went!! There was hardly anyone there when we attended back in June. It played to our favor because we got to ask lots of questions. There was also a lot more product ready to roll when you were there. I didn't even drink the beer and felt like eight dollars was a steal for such as cool experience.
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