As with many new homebrewers, our first brews were with a Mr. Beer kit received as a Christmas gift in 2008 from good friends whom we met at The River in 2007! Hence the inspiration for our club name.

Not having a clue about the best time of year to start brewing, we waited until the next spring, only to find out that winter is the best time to homebrew! Delightfully amazed with the results of that first brew, even though we could taste a hint of root beer from the 33oz plastic bottles which previously held yep – you guessed it – root beer; we embarked over the next few months, adding equipment and increasing brewing capacity from 2.5 gallons to 5 gallons. Also, with the new equipment we started the journey to making our own wort from scratch (so called “all grain”). And so the journey began!

An Off-Season Stroll At The River

“Nice Stroll down a tree covered path once used by gold miners”

South Yuba River – Paradise!

Our nano-brewing goals are to use as many local ingredients as we can including spring water runoff from the South Yuba River headwaters, local organic hops, honey and even wild blackberries that grow along the river banks and ripen in the late summer months. Organic and local will be a guiding principle for the ingredients we use in our brewing processes.

We would also like to use organic malted wheat and barley in our brews. If at all possible, we will strive to make all-malt beers and limit the amount of simple sugars that only add alcohol but little body and flavor (not to mention headaches!).

We recycle the brown glass bottles we use to bottle our beer. For at-the-river consumption, we will use reusable plastic whenever possible to avoid broken glass (ouch!).

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