Brewery Visit - Genesee Brewing Company

I had the opportunity to go home to Rochester New York last weekend. If you are unfamiliar with the upstate New York area, Rochester is located between Buffalo and Syracuse right along Lake Ontario with the Genesee River running through the center. Right along the river is the Genesee Brewing Company. The photo above shows the view from the balcony off of the Restaurant which is attached to the brewery. On the left you can see High Falls and on the right are mainly buildings which were associated with Kodak when it was in it's prime. My parents, my older brother, his girlfriend and I went to the restaurant for dinner and while we were waiting for our table to be ready, we walked around the gift shop and did a quick tour. 

      

 

Above you can see some of the displays which were set up in the main shop and tour area. The top row shows the various packaging which has been associated with Genesee beer over the years with the top left showing all of the bottles and the top left showing the cans. The top center picture shows my brother, Timmy, looking at a display which detailed the history of the brewery. The picture on the wall shows some of the workers standing with barrels of beer from during the early years. The Genesee Brewery opened in 1878 and then again in 1932 after prohibition was repealed. It is currently the 6th largest brewery in the United States by production. The bottom row shows more of the production process which occurs at the brewery. The bottom left and bottom middle pictures show the various tanks which beer is made in. The brewery uses a small batch system and uses a Newlands steam-fired 20-barrel brewing system at the main production plant in Rochester. The bottom right photo shows our tour guide explaining the ingredients which go into beer production. There are also bottles on display of all the current types of beer which are produced. The bottling facility can package 900 bottles of been per minute!

 

 Here I am in from of a giant Genesee Beer can! Which is actually a photobooth inside. 

 After our quick tour and run through the gift shop, we headed upstairs to the Brew House Restaurant. It is relatively new so my parents had never been there either. It was very cool with a giant 41' bar along the back wall which was made from salvaged from Cyrus and Cedar open tanks which were over 100 years old. The atmosphere was great with fun music and a lot of people. There was a lot of Genesee merchandise and posters around and the walls were mainly brick. During the summer, the balcony which overlooks the river and the rooftop terrace would be fantastic for hanging out on. Unfortunately, it was quite cold when we were there so we preferred to stay inside

 
 To go with dinner I ordered a beer sampler which consisted of four beers and also tried two other beers which my parents ordered. I also ordered the "Genesee Meatloaf" which was topped with a glaze made of the Honey Brown beer with a side of mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. The food was quite good, but the beer was, in general, not something I would normally gravitate toward.

I am not very good at tasting beers and being able to talk about them in an well-educated manner. I am much more familiar with wine and the flavors associated with that than beer. I also don't particularly like beers in general so my tasting notes were not very descriptive.

From left to right in the picture, the beers shown are the Dundee Kolsch-Style Ale, Genesee Beer, Dundee Summer Shandy, and The Original Honey Brown Lager. The Kolsch-Sytle Ale had a very bizarre taste but I couldn't place what it was. The Genesee Beer was the generic beer which is made by the brewery. It is the cheap beer of choice for college kids in the north. I was not a big fan of this beer it was just cheap crappy beer. The Summer Shandy was definitely the best beer of the night in my opinion. It was mixed with lemonade which gave it a very light summery taste. The finish was a bit over lemony for me which is something which I think for many of the other lemonade style beers. The honey brown beer was another one which had a funny taste for me. It was not my favorite but it definitely tasted better after tasting it with the meatloaf though. My parents ordered two other beers which I had not tried: Dundee IPA and Dundee Pale Bock Lager. The IPA tasted like any generic IPA with a lot of hoppiness which I don't like. I didn't expect to particularly enjoy this beer and I was not surprised. The Pale Bock was very carbonated, much more so than any other beer I tasted that night. It tasted much like a generic beer to me though. Below are my parents sitting with our beer.
 

Overall I had a great time and would very much like to go back to the Brew House over the summer when I could go out on the balcony or up on the roof. The view of the city is very pretty.