Last Call Brewing brings craft beer to Oakdale

JANUARY 16, 2016 4:26 PM

BY JOHN HOLLAND

Josh Garcia and Brian Chiara tend to Last Call Brewing Co. when they are not answering calls as a firefighter and paramedic.

The Oakdale residents opened the microbrewery last summer in a small industrial building southeast of downtown. There they craft 100-gallon batches of several beer types, served in their on-site taproom and at a few restaurants in Stanislaus County.

“We’re just a couple of guys who enjoyed home brewing and decided to open a little brewery, and here we are,” Garcia said on a recent morning at the Shepard Court site. “We want to bring great beer to Oakdale.”

Chiara works as a paramedic for Oak Valley Hospital and American Medical Response. Garcia is with the Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District. They have help at the brewery from their wives, Ericka Chiara and Jennifer Garcia, but the brewery is too small for now to hire employees.

“Last Call” refers to what a bartender might say near closing time. The logo features the clock tower on the 1909 building in downtown Oakdale that now is home to Oak Valley Community Bank. The hands are set at 1:45 a.m.

The partners got a city land-use permit and a state alcohol license and went to work installing the brewing equipment in the 1,400-square-foot space.

Josh Garcia said the city groundwater is just fine for making beer, which starts with boiling malted barley and adding hops of various types to refine the flavor. Yeast ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

All of Last Call’s products go into kegs rather than bottles. Its tasting room has irregular hours (check in on Facebook). Barkeeps pour the beers at such places as Bauer’s 66 1/2 Skillet & Grill in Modesto; the 108 Sports Lounge in Riverbank; and Rivi’s, Cafe Bravo, Ferrarese’s Deli Restaurant and Las Margaritas Grill in Oakdale.

Some of the beers have local touches in their names. Covered Bridge Brown Ale was inspired by the old structure at Knights Ferry. Table Mountain India Pale Ale evokes the geological formation in western Tuolumne County. A beer called 108pricot (read it carefully) refers to a highway running through Oakdale and the apricot extract that provides flavor.

There’s also 75 Minute Pale Ale, named for the extra time the grain soaks in hot water during the “mash” part of the brewing process. That’s the favorite of Jim Vollmer of Oakdale, who dropped by the taproom on that recent day.

“We have been waiting for a long time to have something like this,” he said.

Last Call is part of a craft beer industry that has been growing steadily across the United States. They have more distinctive tastes and higher prices than conventional products.

Craft brands made up 11 percent of the total U.S. beer production of 21.8 million barrels in 2014, according to the Brewers Association. They had a 19.3 percent cut of the $101.5 billion in total sales.

Stanislaus County has a small but growing role in this. Dust Bowl Brewing Co. launched in Turlock in 2009 and is in the midst of a major expansion. Sandude Brewing Co. started in the same city in 2013. And on a dairy farm west of Turlock, Blaker Brewing grows its own hops and some of the grain for beer it makes in a former milking parlor.

Last Call’s owners plan to keep their regular jobs, which involve long shifts, but they are happy to roll up the metal door and welcome visitors to the taproom as time allows.

“It’s a labor of love,” Brian Chiara said. “We do it because we want to make good beer that everybody can enjoy.”

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