Local breweries sling suds on St. Patrick’s Day
With the St. Patrick’s Day holiday falling on Friday and the large amount of people in the Coachella Valley for the BNP Paribas tennis tournament, local craft breweries are cashing in on people enjoying a few cold beers.
Babe’s Bar-B-Que Brewhouse in Rancho Mirage was been slinging suds all day. Especially since the tournament is just down the road.
“It happens every year, we get a lot of the traffic and a lot of that economic impact as well,” said Jason St. John, general manager of Babe’s.
The Coachella Valley Brewing Co. in Thousand Palms was busy as well, making major cash on an alcohol fueled holiday falling on a Friday.
“You see like four or five people going out at a time and having a few beers and having a good time. That’s what it’s all about,” said Chris Anderson, brewmaster at the Coachella Valley Brewing Company.
If your looking for the iconic beer dyed green as the Irish Iles, don’t look to those who see brewing beer as an art.
“With the love of craft beer, it is most important to stay true to the craft than to do something kind of gimmicky like that, so we keep the green dye out of the beer,” St. John said.
“For us, our green beer our quintessential IPAs like Harvester, Monuments and I-10. Those are our green beers in that that are chock-full of hops. So that’s our form of green beer this year,” said Anderson.
For the record, if you asked the bartender at CVB, they would add some green food coloring.
It’s not just craft brewers and bartenders that are busy on St. Patrick’s Day. Law enforcement is out in full force cracking down on anyone who decides to drink and get behind the wheel. Nationally, 252 people lost their lives in drunk driving-related crashes during the St. Patrick’s Day holiday from 2011 to 2015.
