{Editor’s Note: All quotes in this post are from Natalie Cilurzo. Got tired of thinking of clever ways to stick attributions in.}
Like a lot of beer nerds, Russian River Brewing has long been one of my all-time faves. My first taste of Pliny the Elder at a long-ago Bistro IPA festival was amazing, my first of Younger even more so. I was thrilled when co-owner Natalie Cilurzo agreed to an interview here a couple of years back. Really gave me a feeling of legitimacy.
So on the drive to their new brewery and restaurant in Windsor, I felt like a kid heading to an amusement park. Only here, the featured attraction is beer.
I got there a little early (and yes, I did go to the right place this time) and waited in the spacious main lobby, featuring several comfy leather chairs around a stone fireplace.
Unlike the original Santa Rosa pub, a long, narrow space stuffed to the brim most days, spaciousness abounds here. There are separate spaces for tours, gift shop, and restaurant, each with its own entrance.
Large groups are accommodated by two communal tables made of long, wood planks, separated by a half-wall across from the bar. More seating is behind the bar, and still more seating, plus another bar, is beyond in an auxiliary, sun-room type space.
All of this is surrounded by windows, filling everything with light. Another departure from Santa Rosa.
Natalie cheerfully greeted me (of course), and we were off on the tour.
RRBC’s Field of Dreams
Windsor is truly a ground-up facility. The site was previously an empty field. They did everything, from prep work and grading, to installing all needed utilities.
And, also unlike Santa Rosa, the site includes two acres of free parking, “which was vital during Pliny the Younger,” says Natalie.
Controlling all aspects of construction allowed them to minimize their overall environmental footprint.
“We could incorporate a lot of sustainable things if you do it from the ground up. Our parking lots are very green, we actually don’t have any storm drains on the property. All of that water either gets absorbed into the ground or flows out to the wetlands.
We have four acres of wetlands to the west that we own, it’s quite beautiful. I was out taking pictures this morning of some egrets, we have baby egrets out there. We have geese and ducks and red-tail hawks.”
When the people responsible for a triple-IPA release that gathers international attention get the chance to build a brand new facility from scratch, you’d expect everything to be state of the art.
And you’d be correct.
Over the (Open) Top
The new brewhouse features open-top fermenting, which allows the yeast to move more freely in the wort because the CO² that’s produced is allowed to escape. Imported from Germany, these specific tanks are only used by two other facilities in the U.S. — Sierra Nevada (North Carolina) and Wisconsin’s New Glarus.
The ventilation system is so advanced the fermentation space resembles a clean room. All fresh air pumped into the room goes through a Hepa filter AND UV light.
They’ve built their own sensory lab, for employee education as well as to maintain consistency between their Santa Rosa and Windsor breweries.
They also now have a yeast propagation cellar, so they can grow their own yeast.
According to Natalie, they still buy yeast “but we’re trying to get away from that for cost and quality control. It takes a lot of wort to grow yeast, so that’s been kind of expensive for us. We’re waiting until we get our new pilot brewery installed, that way we can make wort and not waste it.”
The new brewery is truly an international affair. The majority of their brewhouse came from Ziemann, another German company. And their new, high-tech bottling line is from GAI in Italy.
“This is quite a bit bigger than our last bottling line. It can do up to 200 bottles a minute, right now we’re running at about 130. That’s all we really need to do.”
Watching a bottling line can be pretty mesmerizing as it is, but the palletizer is where the magic really happens on this system.
After the boxes are folded, filled, and glued, they run down a conveyer to a pallet. Every few boxes or so, a portion of the conveyer belt’s sidewall kicks out, turning the orientation of the box, not unlike turning a Tetris piece.
The pattern continues, with every few boxes turned, so that the maximum number fits on each layer of the pallet. It also gives each pallet more stability, as not each layer is arranged the same way.
Trust me, it’s almost hypnotic to watch as each layer gets stacked. Even a veteran like Natalie says, “I can watch it all day!”
“Anybody who’s ever worked on a bottling line, this is their favorite part.”
Heading to the Altar
She then leads me to the sour, or what they call the “funky” brewery.
“One of the reasons we built a new brewery was we wanted a separate area for our sour beers. This is actually a separate building that’s attached to the other building.”
In the old Santa Rosa production brewery, the regular and sour breweries were in the same space, albeit on opposite ends. The threat of cross-contamination was constant, to the point that all equipment used in the funky space, down to hoses and buckets, were marked with red tape so as not to be accidentally walked over to the other side. Anyone who worked on the funky side had to stay there for the entirety of their shift.
They have about 900 barrels in the sour wing, and they’ve utilized their old bottling line here. “That way we don’t have any cross-contamination. We have one brewer that this is the only place he works.”
Then I was led to a place that can only be called a cathedral, down to the gothic door that opens into it.
“We got this door on e-bay, isn’t that funny? It’s old wood with new construction, which I appreciate. I’d rather have the modern hinges, right?”
This is the Koelschip room.
A Koelschip (or coolship) is a big, shallow, open tank. Hot wort is pumped in and allowed to sit. In the evenings, the windows that surround the room are opened, allowing the breezes to cool the wort.
These breezes also carry wild yeast, which inoculates the wort and begins fermentation. These “wild” beers are the closest approximation to what winemakers call “terroir.” Brewers usually use very specific yeast strains when brewing, as they know exactly what that yeast will do to a beer as it’s fermenting.
But when using Koelschips, brewers are at the mercy of the local yeasts flying through the air. Wild beers are truly fascinating, filled with all kinds of funky flavors. They are also quite expensive, as brewing with this technique is very labor intensive and only makes a small amount of beer.
This kind of brewing can only be done during the cool winter and early spring months, otherwise the wort won’t get cool enough overnight.
Even the materials used in this sacred, wood-clad space have a story.
“All of this wood is from Sierra Nevada Mills River (North Carolina). We told [owner] Ken [Grossman] what we wanted to do and he said ‘I have a bunch of lumber left over from harvesting all of the trees for the brewery.’ He had a barn that was full of wood, and we got it … Yellow and White Pine.”
The Good … and Not So Good
We finish up the tour with a quick look through the self-guided section. Windsor offers two types of tours. The scheduled guided tours are $15 and include tasting.
(Pro-tip: try to book a tour during the Younger release in February. Younger is included in the tastings, and it’s probably the only way you’ll get to try it without a long wait.)
Self-guided tours are free and don’t require reservations. No tastings, though. Although, nothing’s stopping you from ordering a beer at the bar and taking it with you as you check out the facility.
After the tour, I asked Natalie if the new facility has worked out as planned in relieving pressure at the original Santa Rosa pub.
“Yes … especially during Pliny the Younger. The waits downtown were not four or five hours, they were one or two, or maybe three hours. Even on the weekends downtown isn’t as crazy.”
Although opening their new location has pretty much gone as planned, as they’ve grown to 200 employees, staffing is a constant struggle.
“We have record low unemployment in California, and we’re in a serious housing crisis right now. The fires that hit us in the middle of construction didn’t help. We’re having a really hard time finding employees and keeping them, and being able to pay them a wage where they can [almost] afford to live here.”
Did they envision this kind of success, to be able to build a gleaming new facility on this scale, with all its bells and whistles?
“Yeah, this is exactly what we envisioned. I mean, it’s bigger than what we originally envisioned, but the job of the design team is to take our vision out of our heads, put it on paper, and then build it. So yes, this is exactly what we envisioned, and then some. It was a grand vision.”