559 beer tasting room opens in Old Town Clovis

The first beer tasting room in Old Town Clovis officially opens Friday, May 29.

559 Local is at 608 Fourth Street and serves beer made off site by Clovis-based W Brewing.

What is a tasting room?

It’s not a bar. It’s similar to a wine tasting room at a winery, but it serves beer instead. This one has a decidedly hometown Clovis flavor. It serves only beer from the one brewery running it. 559’s Raisin Farmer Ale is on tap and in bottles, along with Fig Garden Stout and others.

At 559 Local, you can buy a pint of beer to sip there or try out flights of beers in 4-ounce glasses, ranging from $6 to $10. You can also buy bottles to take home. They’ll even fill up a growler if you bring it in.

Tasting rooms are a chance for breweries to introduce the public to their beers and test out new and seasonal ones.

It’s open limited hours, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. (The tasting room opens right in the thick of the seasonal Old Town Clovis Farmers Market, which runs from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Fridays, so you can combine the two for a Friday night out.) They’ll have guitar or piano players on Thursdays.

Until recently, tasting rooms weren’t technically legal in Clovis. But the Williams family, who runs 559, worked with the City of Clovis, which passed an ordinance that allowed for tasting rooms beginning in March.

Rhett Williams and his mother, Cheryl Gomes Williams, come from a longtime farming family. Many of their beers use fruit from local farms, including raisins, strawberries and black Mission figs.

But you won’t find super hoppy strong India pale ales here. Most are easy drinking.

Rhett Williams says they get people from all walks of life: locals, 90 year olds and high-end wine drinkers and hipster craft beer fans.

The tasting room is in a small space, but it has big personality. It’s in a brick 125-year-old former doctor’s office, decorated with remnants of the family farm. One-hundred-year-old wooden grape trays that once held raisins drying in the sun line the walls. Giant metal wagon wheels that once hauled raisins that end up in Sun-Maid boxes hang from the ceiling.

Details: (559) 473-1875 or www.559beer.com.

This story was originally published May 28, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "559 beer tasting room opens in Old Town Clovis."