Old Stonehouse Brewery

These days, this popular brewery hosts reggae nights, salsa dancing, open mics—your typical modern brewery fare.

But like everything else in historic Nevada City, the brewery has preserved a link to its past, a window into what makes it unique. If you pass through the modern, warm wooden main bar and onto the pretty patio littered with flower baskets and laid-back, beer-sipping 20-somethings, you will discover what is quite possibly one of the coolest places to drink in the entire town, a chilly, LED-lit cave entrance that leads to a secluded set of tables and chairs within.The building itself is a beautiful example of stonemasonry. Built in 1882, the three-story building was constructed with local granite, painstakingly put together stone after stone by Chinese laborers and Italian stonemasons. The structure was paid for buy a local businessman who included fixtures and ornate wooden doors that were once a part of the once decadent Kidder Mansion into its decor, and ordered a cave for storage dug out of the hillside against the building.

Under the once thriving boomtown turned tourist town lies a series of tunnels, many of which were filled in once a full-sized freeway was built above them, and some of which once connected to the Stonehouse's cave. Once used to store casks of ales they aged, the cave now acts as a chilly but somewhat private hideaway to sip your cocktail and snoop around looking for tunnel entrances to fall into.

Renovated in 2004, the 10,000 square foot brewery now boasts a restaurant with craft beers, as well as live music and event bookings.