Upgrade your pub crawl

You’ve probably seen it going around town, a festively lit wood-paneled megabike pedaling its way around Midtown bars, loaded with revelers and generally looking like the best mobile party in Sacramento. The behemoth bicycle known as the Sac Brew Bike has drawn confused and intrigued stares since the company launched in May by the husband-and-wife team of Chris and Sarah Ferren-Cirino, and with a recently added second bike and ongoing tours throughout the winter, it’s only picking up speed from here. Matt See, a part-time pilot for Sac Brew Bike and a longtime friend of the owners, has been pedaling along since almost the beginning, taking passengers on tours of local beer hotspots such as Der BierGarten, Lowbrau, Kupros Craft House and more. During an interview with SN&R, See shared insights on the company’s best custom parties and what it’s like to move a bike carrying 14 drunk people through Midtown streets during rush hour.

Give me the rundown on the beer bike.

It’s a 15-passenger pedal-powered pub crawl, as I like to call it. We go around and do a tour of different breweries, craft houses and bars around town. … It’s all reservation based, we don’t do any hop-on and hop-off. It’s a set tour.

There isn’t any drinking on the bike?

Correct. We’re not permitted to serve alcohol. … As far as I know, just from hearing what Chris has mentioned to me, it’s a very gray area. The reason why we can’t do it at the moment is actually the California open-container law.

How did you get into this work?

I’ve been friends with Chris and his wife for over 10 years now. We all ran on the UC Davis track team. Last year, I left my job here in Sacramento and took off traveling and I came back in May, and Chris and Sarah had just started the business and were looking for a little bit of extra help. It was just a like a perfect fit for me—I was looking for part-time work while I’m trying to figure out what my next step is.

How often are you on the bike?

Typically on the weekend, I’ll do anywhere from about five to seven tours—two a day pretty much, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Throughout the week, I’ll probably do one or two during the week. … The season right now is getting a little slower just because of the changes in the weather, but I’d say we’re still doing 15 rides a week or so. During the summertime, we were doing probably closer to 20 rides a week, and that was just with the one bike.

So, you have two bikes now?

We have two bikes. We did a naming contest on Facebook and the first bike is yellow, and a gentleman suggested Barley and he suggested for the other one Hops—so we’ve got Barley and Hops and Barley is yellow and Hops is green, keeping with the beer theme.

Have you been a tour passenger?

Yeah, I’ve done it a few times. It’s hard to separate my own personal [experience], because I do the tours as well, but it’s kind of like a pedal crawl, it’s like a party on wheels. You kinda roll around town, go from place to place, music’s going, so everybody’s singing along. … Whether you go as an individual group or with a bunch of individuals that don’t know each other, as the stops progress, the enthusiasm and the camaraderie between the riders gets a lot more entertaining.

What’s it like pedaling this thing through the streets?

As far as it physically goes, we cruise at an estimated 3 to 4 miles-per-hour on the average tour. It can go a bit faster than that—we've have some professional cycling teams get it closer to 8 to 10 miles-per-hour. Dealing with traffic sometimes can be a little hectic. You know, you have a lot going on at once—you have cars going by you, you have people that are on your bike that are celebrating whatever they might be out doing, so you just kinda gotta keep your head up and kinda watch out for what's going on around you. Our No. 1 goal is to make sure that everybody gets back safely.

Is the bike difficult to pilot?

No, actually it's pretty easy. The lower half looks like a very basic car chassis. Once you're moving it's pretty easy to go. It's just like driving a car. You get used to the dimensions and stuff, you learn where you can fit and you can't fit.

You let passengers provide music for the bike. You haven’t been forced to listen to bad polka or anything?

No, no. There's a pretty good selection of music. Sometimes I'll put on my Pandora or something or I'll let the group decide if somebody wants to plug it in. I haven't had any experiences where I'm sitting there cringing.

Have you done any fun custom parties?

One of the first rides that Chris had done, he did it for a wedding party. A couple was getting married and they rode into the venue on the back of the bike while the bridesmaids and groomsmen pedaled them in. I think that so far is the coolest kind of idea that we've had. We've done custom parties for different birthday and bachelorette and bachelor parties. … We work with whoever's planning it and help them establish the route and the locations we go to.