Friday 14th of August 2009 03:36:06 PM

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The Hopland Ale House, essentially a tasting room for Mendocino Brewing, is in an attractive old brick building in the center of the village of Hopland. Mendocino Brewing was one of the earliest craft breweries but they no longer brew here (there is a production facility in Ukiah) and it is no longer owned by the original people. It’s been owned for the last 6 years by the company that owns Kingfisher in India (according to the bartender).

The building is about 100 years old and was traditionally a saloon. The main room is dominated by the bar, which is a nice light oak bar curved at one end and with a brass foot rail. The bar back is lighter wood and brick. On top of the bar is a wooden “roof” supported by square wooden columns. The room has wooden floors and a few tables besides the chairs at the bar. Some of the walls are the traditional tin with stamped designs. There’s a gift shop in the room next door and a few tables, along with dart boards that look unused....

There were six Mendocino Brewing beers available (inexpensive for the regular beers but more moderately priced for the specials) as well as Kingfisher.

It’s a good looking pub but there is no food and it lacks a real pub atmosphere. Still an obligatory stop, given the brewery’s history, but don’t expect too much.

Wednesday 3rd of June 2009 09:15:24 PM

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This is of the many brewing companies I stopped at on a tour of Northern California breweries. The tap room is not where the beer is brewed so you have to go elsewhere to take a brewery tour.

All of the Mendocino beers I was aware of were available here. I was first surprised that there were no seasonal or "taproom only" brews offered. I had the sampler to try one of everything. In general the beer was good, but nothing distinctive or outstanding. My favorite was the "Eye of the Hawk" and "Black Hawk" stout was my second. Definitely competent beer making, but nothing to make you chose Mendocino over pretty much any other decent Californian beer I had.

The service was, well, serviceable. But not particularly friendly or engaging.

The taproom has more of a small-town country bar feel than anything else. There wasn't much atmosphere to remind that I was in a brewery taproom. It was very empty for as large of a place as it was, though we were there between meal times. We didn't try any of the food.

If you're in the area with nothing to do you might want to swing by. But all in all there wasn't anything there I couldn't get at my local beer store.

I was only there once, perhaps someone else will have a much more engaging visit and tell us about it.