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City Beer Store’s “magnificent” birthday IPA and other mid-May delights

May 17, 2013

The little shop that changed beer tasting and bottle-buying forever, City Beer Store, south of Market and not far from Civic Center BART, turns seven tomorrow, May 18th. In keeping with a tradition that founders Beth and Craig Wathen have carefully cultivated, they will release a special beer to celebrate.  This year’s craft beer field trip saw the two of them venturing to the little town of Alpine, California, out in the low desert mountains east of San Diego to create an IPA with the esteemed Alpine Beer Company.

Beginning at noon, City Beer’s Magnificent Seven, a 7.7% American IPA brewed from seven kinds of malt and infused with seven different additions of hops, will join the pantheon of Beth and Craig co-created bottle treasures.  However, unlike some of the past creations that have been collected and hoarded by beer fanciers, an IPA is not made for long cellaring, so get it fresh if you can.  
city beer store
We’re still figuring out when we can swing by there to say cheers and have a glass on draft, but we may see you there.

This is yet another big weekend in San Francisco Bay Area craft beer, as we approach summer. Spring has become a time of year where nearly every week brings a run-don’t-walk craft beer event.  The sold-out Lagunitas Beer Circus, on Sunday, May 19th, will draw a crowd of beer revelers to Petaluma, and serve as a reminder for other folks to act quickly when beer event announcements come around.

Next weekend, on Saturday, May 25th, the 1st Annual NorCal Session Fest will be hosted at Drake’s in San Leandro.  The new festival will bring together dozens of great examples of California craft Session Beers — tasty brews under 5% ABV by definition of this festival, with many promised to be under 4.5%ABV. The festival will benefit the East Bay Bike Coalition, but if you don’t want to bike, you can use the BART and free shuttle bus or BART and short cab ride tactic, or even get a little walk in.  It’s easy to get there, and at the time of writing this, tickets are still available.

A few days ago we visited one of our younger local breweries, Freewheel in Redwood City, and got to appreciate the smooth and subtle flavors of their session strength English inspired beers.  Like some of the real ales being poured in the UK these days, Freewheel ales are traditional in method and strength but not necessarily in hop varieties. Some of the cask-conditioned selections showed off this lovely experimental inclination. Freewheel has partnered with two interesting English craft breweries and is brewing several of their recipes in an ongoing transatlantic partnership. It appears that you could get to Freewheel by CalTrain, by walking about a mile and a half from the Atherton station to Florence and Marsh Road, but we have not scouted that on foot yet.  So many fine beer excursions, so little time!

Freewheel will be pouring at the Session Fest at Drakes on the 25th, along with an impressive line-up that includes newcomers like Berryessa and Mavericks,  pioneers such as Sierra Nevada and Anderson Valley, and dozens more, all showing off their latest session creations in their current line-ups.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Beer, beer festivals, Craft beer, East Bay, San Francisco
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Anchor to build second plant — yet stay with the home team

February 19, 2013

By now you have read the news.  Anchor Brewing Company is opening a large, high capacity second location, but not in North Carolina or Chicago.  San Francisco’s oldest brewery and largest employer in the manufacturing sector is expanding at Pier 48, part of the land owned by the San Francisco Giants.   Beer and Baseball now go together in an only-in-San-Francisco way, close to the ball park on McCovey Cove.  A large production facility, attention to the historic pier architecture,  illustrations that look like a beer garden restaurant , and the promise of a museum all appear to be part of the plans.

What is the secret energy source for the folks at Anchor Brewing?   They managed to appear at events all over the nine or so Bay Area counties for SF Beer Week pouring their growing portfolio of special releases after an exciting beer launch (the return of the historic California Lager) days before, they hosted the champion home brew clubs of the state at their lovely old brewery in Potrero Hill on the second weekend of SFBW,  and then on the traditional rest day of Monday-after-beer-week, (also known as President’s Day), they give an exclusive to the home town paper and announce a collaboration with the home town baseball team, the current world champion SF Giants.

Here’s the story by Andrew Ross at the Chronicle’s SF Gate.

Anchor's copper kettles

Anchor has already worked with the SF Giants on the “Anchor Plaza” project, with their craft beers pouring in the outdoor food court area behind the scoreboard in the ballpark.   The two organizations both respect history and their own pioneers and heroes.  If, as we hope is implied, the proposed museum is a beer museum, the new facility should become a top beer pilgrim destination.  Anchor already has a terrific West Coast beer history collection and relationships with the most serious long term beer history geeks of California.  Hopefully, the beloved tours of their old brewery will also continue after the new place is built.

With the announcement of the upcoming Mikkeller craft beer pub in downtown San Francisco, SF starts to rank as one of the great beer travel destinations of the US, if not the world.    I have a feeling we’ll all stop lamenting the overlooked goodness of Northern California as a beer mecca within a few years.

We’re pure boosters on this one.  Construction starts next year.  Go, Giants!  Go, Anchor! Go, SF!

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Beer, beer travel, Craft beer, San Francisco
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Sour Sunday, as #sfbeerweek continues!

February 10, 2013

San Francisco Beer Week continues all around the Bay Area today. The two of us (Steve and Gail) are going to Sour Sunday in Berkeley, at Triple Rock and Jupiter, both near the downtown Berkeley BART station. (Find them by station or alphabetically on the main Beer By BART directory on our home page)

My Funky Valentine fruit and wheat slurry

The making of My Funky Valentine: Brett meets organic stone fruits in a food-grade bucket

We’ll be pouring My Funky Valentine, the very small batch dark sour stonefruit collaboration beer Gail did with Bison Brewing at this event. Come on by the Bison table at 1:00 pm for the release. Think Baltic Porter base, and then organic dried sour cherries, organic dried red plums, organic dried nectarine… and whole wheat pasta. If you are at this crowded but always worthwhile event, drop by to ask Gail why the spaghetti made this sour beer sing.

Here’s more of the the story of this unique sour beer, and how “The Hostage” became “My Funky Valentine.”

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: beer festivals, Berkeley, Craft beer, East Bay, homebrewing, Sour beer
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2013 Festival Season Kicks Off Sat. Jan. 26

January 21, 2013

So it’s been more than three weeks into the new year and there hasn’t been a festival yet. Well, nothing’s wrong that can’t be fixed.

The Brewing Network’s fourth Winter Brews Festival is a great way to start your 2013 beery explorations. Now held in Concord’s Todos Santos Park, this is a very accessible and friendly fest. There is plenty of room to roam in the park as you sample beers from 30+ breweries, most from Northern California.BN Winterfest, 2011 Berkeley edition

If you’ve been following the craft beer scene even a little, you know that there are new breweries opening all the time. It’s likely that here you will find beers from breweries that you haven’t gotten to know yet as well as many old favorites.

There is no need to drive as the park is located less than half a mile from the main Concord BART station, next to E.J. Phair’s pub. Here are the easy walking directions:

http://beerbybart.com/why/e-j-phair-concord-station/

We hope to see many of you there on Saturday. For more info and tickets:

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/ontap

Categories: Beer, beer festivals, Craft beer, East Bay, events, North Bay Area
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Hoppy beers fresh from the bine

October 4, 2012

One of the best opportunities to understand fresh “wet” hops, put into a beer without being dried and baled first, is the Wet Hop Festival, this Saturday.  The low key annual festival at the Bistro in Hayward, California, is happily near a BART station.  Bistro wet hop festival list and glassses Over the years this has been one of our favorite events. It’s easy to get to the Bistro, and the chance to taste small pours of a variety of wet hopped beers all in a row is a rare harvest season treat.  The Bistro provides detailed sheets describing all the brews.

This year Steve and I are especially thrilled to attend,  since our beer — ok, ok — a Sierra Nevada Beer Camp beer that we helped create — will be poured for the first time there!

Back in August we  participated in Sierra Nevada Beer Camp number 86! The group of campers, none of whom we had met before, emailed some in advance about the amusing significance of “eighty-sixed” as bar lingo.  The anticipation was palpable.

Terrence Sullivan from Sierra Nevada had told us that there was a good possibility that we could pick some hops from the brewery estate to use in the batch we created.   We imagined a light, low gravity, very hoppy ale featuring the fresh hops from the field. When we arrived and learned that fresh Citra cones, from an arromatic, relatively new and very popular variety of hop plants, were available to pick, we were delighted.

Estate hops growing at SierraYou might think that simply having the facilities and talent to create custom one-time small batch beers with guests is an achievement for Sierra.

However, that is missing one of the most fascinating parts of the puzzle: Beer Camp relies on creative consensus.   So when we met our fellow campers and found out that two of them were determined to make a massive Russian Imperial Stout, we had no idea what the group would do.  I kept saying “hoppy session ale” and “fresh Citra hops we can help harvest” but there was no moving our Imperial Russian fan.

Finally the R&D and experimental brewer Scott Jennings, who currently brews for the Beer Camp groups proposed a compromise.   “How about an Imperial IPA that’s 8.6%, brewed with Simcoe, Amarillo and Chinook hops in the kettle to reach 86 IBU, and then you pick some fresh Citra hops for use in the hop back and in dry-hopping?”

There was a stunned appreciation.

a bunch of hops at SierraWe will be tasting that beer, named “Eighty-sixed,” for the first time Saturday. There will be more fresh hopped beers to compare it with.  We’ll be there at the Bistro early, since there is a certain baseball game of interest in the evening, and also because we just can’t wait!

More about the visit to Beer Camp in a later post.  Right now all we can think about is finally tasting “Eighty-Sixed.”  Before it’s, you know, gone.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: beer festivals, beer travel, Craft beer, East Bay, hops
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Summer Fest and beer festival season

June 14, 2012

It starts in April or May, when the dry weather becomes more dependable, and by June it is a force of nature: Outdoor beer season in Northern California. Beer lifted in toasts in urban Biergartens. Increasingly fine craft beers at baseball parks. Home brewed beer at backyard barbecues. And most impressively, intriguing tastes of dozens of creative, flavorful beers at the season’s many excellent beer festivals.

Sunday June 17th the Brewing Network’s Summer Fest takes place along the BART corridor. Expect lots of breweries pouring goodies for adults, a place for kids to play and a pleasant picnic-in-the-park atmosphere overall to make this the place to be, whether you are celebrating Fathers Day or the just the Sunday closest to Summer Solstice. Full event descriptions and ticket sales are available at the Brewing Network’s Summer Fest page.

BART is the ideal way to get to Concord’s Todos Santos Square for this fest. (Yes, there were big problems on the Thursday commute due to a building fire not far from the track, but the trains are rolling again.) You’ll walk about three level blocks after you get out at Concord (not North Concord) Station. The park is next to the pleasant E.J. Phair’s pub, so you will find walking details from BART on our page for E.J. Phair.

Last weekend we were happy to attend a notable first festival put on by Firestone Walker in Paso Robles, California, not far from San Luis Obispo. The first Firestone Invitational raised the bar on the notion that a beer festival should make beers available that you don’t see every day from breweries you can’t try every day. The organizers took care of all the small but important details and provided a quality environment for the visiting brewers and musicians, making for happy patrons. Southern Californians got to try Northern California beers and vice versa — and everybody was excited about the top breweries in from the Midwest. Watch for this top notch festival again next year.

How best to find cool festivals? Find and follow beer savvy sources on Twitter for last minute pointers. Check to see if your favorite breweries list all the festivals they will attend on their sites. Check local calendars. At the time of this writing, the Bay Area Craft Beer blog is keeping an extensive list of events.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: beer festivals, Craft beer, East Bay, events
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Baseball Bat IPA

June 3, 2012

Thursday was a rare day off for the San Francisco Giants and an even rarer off day at home.  For one Giants pitcher, this meant a chance to walk around his new neighborhood, followed by an afternoon nap, time with his baby girl and a chance for dinner with his wife, one of only about ten they can share during the baseball season due to the laborious Major League schedule.

And on this night, Shane Loux took his wife and child to 21st Amendment Brewpub to try a new IPA at a benefit for Hops For Heros, assisting veterans and their families.

Shane Loux

SF Giants pitcher Shane Loux tries the Homefront IPA

Shane was at 21A because he was invited to attend a charity auction event by his teammate Javy Lopez. Now, it’s not all that unusual to see charity events where the local sports team has donated items for auction. But what made this so interesting was the literal blending of craft beer and baseball. Yes, I said literal and meant literal.

Game bat and brew bats

Game bat and maple brew bats awaiting auction

Chris Ray, former Giants pitcher and current aspiring professional brewer, started Hops For Heroes to offer support to returning soldiers and their families. While with the Seattle Mariners, Ray took his homebrewing hobby to the next level in 2011, collaborating with Fremont Brewery in Seattle to brew the first batch of Homefront IPA, conditioned on maple wood baseball bats.  All sales of the beer went to his newly founded charity.

This year, Ray and his brother are in the brewing business. He invited six breweries around the country to join their Center of the Universe Brewing in Ashland, Virginia, in simultaneously brewing the Homefront charity beer.  San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery, along with Cigar City Brewing in Tampa, Fremont Brewery in Seattle, Perennial Artisan Ales in St. Louis, Saint Arnold Brewing in Houston, and SlyFox Beer in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, eagerly pitched in.

Chris Ray’s recipe was for an “East Coast-style IPA” made with oranges, conditioned on bats. The Louisville Slugger Company, maker of many of the baseball bats used by kids and pros, donated unvarnished maple bats to use in the fermenters during the brewing process.  When the beer was finished, the bats were dried out to be auctioned off at each of the six breweries.

21st Amendment’s award-winning brewer, Zambo (he does have a full name but prefers this moniker), said that when the bats were added to the tank, they immediately floated to the top. When he racked the beer to empty the tank, they laid themselves out horizontally, perfectly arranged in the cone.  “The bats were bleeding beer out of their pores for days,” said Zambo. By auction night, some still had moist spots and a faint beery aroma.

O'Sullivan and Lopez

21st Amendment owner Shaun O’Sullivan and SF Giants pitcher Javy Lopez

The visit to 21st Amendment’s brew pub was a first for both Lopez and Loux, even though it’s located only a couple of blocks from their home park. Both sampled the Homefront IPA, which was a clearly a hit with IPA fans.  When asked what he thought, Loux said, “When you get a non-beer drinker to like a beer, that says something.” Truth be told, however, Loux is not a hophead, and he said his favorite of the night was the 21A stout.

The loft at 21st Amendment was crowded and buzzing all evening as the 21A owners, Shaun O’Sullivan and Nico Freccia, greeted guests and brewer Zambo emceed the evening. He and Lopez took turns exhorting the crowd to bid and bid again.  The auction included bats from the brew, a game-used Buster Posey bat autographed by many of his teammates (used only for hitting, not brewing), along with game tickets donated by Lopez and an autographed Brian Wilson gnome. All told they raised over $4,500 via the silent auction.

All proceeds from sales of the beer will also be donated to the charity.  It’s worth a trip down to 2nd Street to try this smooth, tasty IPA. There is a pleasant fruity note contributed by the addition of oranges, countered by a dry finish supported by the maple wood.  When it’s gone, it’s gone, until perhaps next year if 21A is again chosen to be a partner for the 2013 brewing.

21A crew and ballplayers

21st Amendment Brewpub crew and Javy Lopez (center) with a brew bat

More photos including some close-ups of the bats can be found in the Beer By BART Flickr set.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Beer, Craft beer, Pubs, San Francisco
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Picture beer people… at the Craft Beer Conference

May 11, 2012

Hop royalty at the Craft Brewers Conference

Click the picture above — Master Cicerone Nicole Erny and this year’s Hallertauer Hop Queen — to view pictures (from both Gail and Steve) from San Diego’s 2012 Craft Brewers Conference.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Craft beer

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World Beer Cup 2012–Bay Brewers Bring Home Gold and Silver

May 7, 2012

Grab a train, bus or boat–there are Bay Area beer victories to celebrate. Bay Area beer appreciators can head out to toast the international recognition of two breweries conveniently within the local transit footprint, plus a dozen more from around Northern California.

Brewers from around the world converged in San Diego this week for the Craft Brewers Conference, which incorporates a trade show and educational conference for the craft beer industry along with the prestigious biennial World Beer Cup, a competition which evaluates beer in 95 categories.

Arne Johnson

Arne Johnson of Marin Brewing at the reception after the awards


Brewmaster Arne Johnson of Marin Brewing took home a gold medal for Star Brew in the Other Strong Beers category, where this beer has done well in the past, and picked up a a silver for his Three Flowers IPA in the Rye Beer category.

Head Brewer Zambo of 21st Amendment Brewing picked up silver in the Indiginous Beers division for his archeologically-inspired ancient Egyptian brew called Hqt, which included the planting of antique barley on their brewpub roof on San Francisco’s Second Street, near the Giants’ ballpark.

Brewer David “Zambo” Zamborski and 21st Amendment Brewery co-founder, Nico Freccia celebrate after their victory.

21A also took top honors for the space-monkey design of their Bitter American session-strength IPA in a can.

Looking a little further afield around Northern and Central California, awards will soon be going up on walls and in display cases at Half Moon Bay, Russian River, Lucky Hand, Third Street Alehouse, Bear Republic, Fifty Fifty, Feather River, Sierra Nevada and Mad River. Many of these breweries and some of these latest medal-winning brews can be found on tap and in bottles around Northern California.

A couple of beers you can easily find (and one that you’re not likely to see) brought medals home for Firestone Walker out of Paso Robles. Their “second brand” Mission Street Pale Ale, sold at Trader Joe’s stores, got Silver while their Firestone Walker Pale 31 took Gold in the same Pale Ale category. Their harder to find 805 IPA won Gold in the Australasian Style Pale Ale category (we’ve never heard of this either). These victories resulted in brewery Firestone Walker and brewer Matt Brynildson taking home the Champion Midsize Brewery and Brewmaster trophies to Paso Robles. That’s north of the Grapevine, so we’ll claim it as Northern California.

The San Diego beer scene represented itself very well in the awards and provided unfailing hospitality to brewers from around the world. Along with expressing hearty cheers of California brewing pride for friends who won, the crowd at the banquet showed audible delight at some Gold Medals awarded to brewers from countries not traditionally known for brewing those specific styles — such as Haiti (for American Style Cream Ale or Lager), Boliva (for International Style Lager), Mexico (for Chocolate Beer) and Iceland (for German Style Pilsner).

Marin Brewing and 21st Amendment Brewing are easy to visit using BART and connecting street car and ferry systems. Cheers to all the winners!

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Beer, Craft beer, Great brewers, North Bay Area, San Francisco
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BART transit tips for the bridgeless end of SF Beer Week

February 17, 2012

SF Beer Week has been too great and too busy for us to recount so far, although we can say  that Thursday’s master blending seminar with Eric and Lauren Salazar of New Belgium featuring special casks of the component parts of La Folie was thoughtful, inspiring and delicious.

Mike Azzalini and the whole team at La Trappe in North Beach went all out to make the sour blending seminar a memorable event, and sent each participant home with his or her own custom self- blended growler. The session was a rare insight into a remarkable craft.

What’s next?

There are plenty of good events to come, up to and including the final festival that is the Celebrator Party.  [Here's how to walk to and from Trumer and North Berkeley BART. They will run a free shuttle bus to and from BART, and the event is over at 8:00 PM Sunday, so regular stops and schedules apply.]

The final weekend adds a new challenge:  This weekend you can leave San Francisco by the Bay Bridge but due to construction you can’t enter — or get back  — that way.  Drivers will have an option of going way around by the various other bridges, but ditching the car and taking BART remains a good option.

A limited number of BART stations will remain open for special all-night trains. The normally-scheduled final trains will leave their terminals between midnight and one and make all stops.

In the City, the late night stations are Embarcadero, Powell and 24th Street.  You will find late night buses on the MUNI system can get you to an open BART station, or you may be able to grab a cab.  The 511 system is good for finding connecting buses, as is Nextbus.

The special late trains will only run hourly, so it will be useful to get a precise bead on when they get to your after-hours station. You can get that by downloading one of many mobile BART apps, (choose a real-time app from lists here) or point your mobile browser to m.bart.gov, or by looking at the full  BART or 511.org websites to plan a late trip.

No smartphone…no problem. You can phone 5-1-1 and use the interactive voice menus.

Have fun!

Explore Beer By BART; use our list of some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best beer places with detailed transit info, so you can get out there to enjoy without driving.

Categories: Beer, beer festivals, beer travel, Craft beer, East Bay, events, San Francisco
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