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.  

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.

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 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.

If you do the math and look at your calendar you’ll see that Valentine’s Day will invariably fall within the 10 days of SF Beer Week goodness.  Beer is not what it used to be in America, and that means it is more delicious and sharing it can be more romantic than ever.  There are Beer and Chocolate events on the list this year, and a lot of lovable beers, but we still see few brewing traditions the actually honor the romantic holiday in all its sweetness, cheesiness and despair.   We wrote about this last year for Celebrator Beer News:

     Very few breweries bother to make a Valentine’s seasonal, but Russian River Brewing is an exception. Like all of Russian River’s Belgian-inspired beers, this beer’s name ends in “tion,” and the brewery brought kegs of this special beer to several events.

Russian River brewer and founder Vinnie Cilurzo explained: “Tomme Arthur [The Lost Abbey] called me five or six years ago in January with a suggestion for a beer called ‘Rejection’ for Valentine’s Day.” The very next day, Cilurzo brewed the beer, using a Belgian yeast and ingredients he had on hand, including some dark malt, in order to have it ready in time. That’s how Rejection became a beer as black as the heart of whoever has jilted you. The beer is available only in February and only on draft. One thing Cilurzo discovered by holding on to a few kegs was that Rejection ages beautifully. “We’d like to bottle it at some point so that customers can enjoy aging it at home,” he said. But that’s still just a twinkle in the brewer’s eye.

(Excerpted from our 2012 CBN story)

While looking around to find that story, which was one of our earlier pieces for The Celebrator Beer News, I happened to come across an earlier, lovely description of the beer.  It was from the Celebrator party the year before SF Beer Week began, and it was by our friend and fellow beer writer Bill Brand, whom we’ve really missed since his tragic death five years ago.

Bill described the party and gave another description of Rejection (the beer) here:  http://www.ibabuzz.com/bottomsup/2008/02/21/update-celebrator-beer-news-20th-a-fest-with-amazing-beer/

A short excerpt from Bill’s article:

      ” …Vinnie Cilurzo was pouring two Russian River beers, his famous Pliny the Elder and a new one: Russian River Rejection. It apparently will never see bottles or distribution outside the pub in Santa Rosa. A black beauty, indeed: Very dark brown, 6.1 percent ABV, 24 IBU (International Bitterness Units — Bud 13 IBU, Pliny 100 IBU).

Vinnie said he used Weyermann Carafa Special Chocolate Malt, which is malted barley that has been dehusked. Weyermann, the German malting company removes the tough and bitter outer covering before the malt is kilned. Dark malt kilned with the husks on produces bitterness in beer. Delicious, smooth, almost silky taste with enough of a dark malt taste to provide a great finish. “

 (2008 article by the late Bill Brand)

So as we approach the last days of SF Beer Week, cheers to a happy Valentines Day, to all romantics and any cynics who can appreciate another time for toasting.   We’ll be out and around, and happy to raise a glass for love, for the memory of Bill and for the beauty of Beer Week.

We are delighted to be part of the Celebrator 25th Anniversary Party on Sunday. For one thing, many special beers, including the rich and citrusy Celebrator 25th Anniversary Double Pale Ale from Sierra Nevada Beer Camp will be pouring.  The Golden Promise malt and Citra hops we added to the classic Pale Ale recipe make this velvety, sumptuous and citrus-salad fruity.  It’s not exactly like any other beer, but it is in the double IPA family!  There’s a fun collaborative story about being at Beer Camp by all the writers who were there, here on the Celebrator site.   (By the way,  Beer By BART Gail’s “My Funky Valentine” sour beer collaboration with Bison Brewing will not be pouring again during beer week.  The last of that will be served in future weeks at Bobby G’s in Berkeley, we are told, so that’s proof there’s life after #sfbeerweek.  Stay tuned.)

Go Beer Week!

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.

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.

If you are on BART, you can get off at Civic Center. Board the 19 Polk bus on the southwest corner of Market and 8th ($2.00 exact change, $.75 65+ of age. Ride 4 minutes to 7th and Brannan.

There are multiple MUNI options.  Go to 511.org to plan your trip.

Arriving by CalTrain: Walk one block north to Brannan, turn left (west) and walk to 7h St.

Print your ticket or use Eventbrite app for scanning and have it ready at 6. The line will move faster!

Enter on 7th St near Brannan!!

Be safe, eat food and drink plenty of water. It’s gonna be a fun 10 days.

This coming week I hope you get to enjoy SF Beer Week, and that you get a chance to try My Funky Valentine.  In November, “Organic Dan,” Dan DelGrande of Bison Brewing, touched base with me to propose a collaboration.   He offered me four five-gallon corny kegs full of The Hostage, an organic Baltic Porter that had spontaneously soured in a bourbon barrel.

His offer was that I could add bugs, fruit or whatever to make something special out of this very lactic brown beer.

I was delighted at the opportunity to “doctor” a clean lactic sour beer, and immediately started growing up several strains of Brettanomyces from little jars in my refrigerator, using organic apple juice and organic brown rice syrup for a starter because I had no organic malt in the house, and Bison is an organic brewery.  (I promise to post more geeky details later for those who want all the specs, but I selected the most vigorous strains of the yeast and put them in a bucket of chopped dried organic cherries and red plums. And organic whole wheat spaghetti. Brett loves wheat.)

After a week, I added the fermenting fruit slurry to kegs of the base beer.  Some weeks later, there was less fruit extraction than I wanted, so I added more fruit — some amazing organic nectarines that were the available organic fruit at my house that evening — to one of the kegs in order to blend in more fruit intensity.

The last tasting was much more fruit forward than I ever expected.   I can’t wait until I can have a whole glass instead of a small sample.

I’m getting ready for the debut of this beer, most likely at the Opening Gala of SFBW Friday, and then at Sour Sunday in Berkeley.  There is only 20 gallons on the planet, so it may be poured at a set time at the Bison Brewing table.  Please stop by and have a taste if you like.   I even bought some little heart trinkets for decorating tap handles…  

Go, Beer Week!   Go, 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.

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.

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

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.

You 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.

We 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.

Giants Fans’ Pre-Game Warm-Up At BrewFest Prior to the Giants/Astros Game

Baseball and beer, an American love story.  It’s an enduring relationship, one that crosses all demographic boundaries. Throw in ready access to some fifteen breweries pouring 30+ different beers right outside the gates of the best ballpark in America and you have a formula for a classic summer afternoon.  Some 42,000 people were making their way into A,T,&T Park for the Giants/Astros game. 2,000 of these fans stopped by the 3^rd annual Giants Brewfest, planning to get their pre-game beer on.

In addition to being a terrific place to watch a ball game, the Giants’ home field also offers a better selection of beer than most of the 20 MLB parks I’ve visited. This year they established Anchor (Brewing) Plaza in the centerfield concourse.  Throughout the park you can find a nice representation of San Francisco, California and west coast beers that give fans a sense of place. So it seems natural that the Giants would highlight this aspect of the baseball experience.

The Giants annual brewfest started three years ago as an event sponsored by the San Francisco Brewers Guild, a federation of the breweries in San Francisco. It was held in a parking lot across the Lefty O’Doul Bridge. When it was first announced, there was quite a buzz of anticipation amongst craft beer lovers in the Bay Area.  The idea of combining a festival of local beers with a day at the ballpark to watch their hometown Major League baseball team was hoped to be a perfect way to spend the day.

Things did not go so well that year. While the beer was appreciated, there were problems with the staging of the event. According to Guild members and a Giants official, the parking lot venue was too crowded and dusty.  The lines were very long for beers and they crossed each other, making it very difficult for patrons to move from booth to booth.

Afterwards, Guild members, who are old hands at producing festivals, met with the team to talk about ways to improve the presentation.  They were not able to reach agreement so the Guild withdrew its sponsorship.  The Giants moved the festival to this year’s location in Seals Plaza adjacent to the ferry dock.  Giants catering service, Best Beverage Catering, managed the event this time, which included recruitment of the breweries represented.

This year, many of the breweries were partners with the Giants, meaning that they also pour inside the ballpark.  International beer conglomerates Anheuser-Busch/InBev poured Stella Artois, Shock Top and Leffe and Miller/Coors/SAB offered Blue Moon and Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy. California regional craft brewers were represented by Sierra Nevada (Summerfest and Torpedo IPA) and San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing (Steam, Liberty and Summer).

The lucky patrons who arrived at the 3:00 start time had a pretty fair go of it.  They were able to easily make their way between the fifteen brewery stations. Within about an hour, most of the pre-ticketed crowd was stuffed into the fenced-in area

Giants Fans With Their Souvenir BrewFest Mug

of Seals Plaza. It became harder to navigate from booth to booth but still, a good spirit prevailed. Everyone received a Giant-orange souvenir mug and began working towards drinking the eight samples their entrance card allowed.

Also pouring were Berkeley’s Trumer Pils, Montana’s Black Star Lager, and Oregon’s Widmer.  San Francisco brewpub, Social Kitchen and Brewery featured their Beach House Blonde and SKB Pilsner. Monterey was represented by Peter B’s Brewpub which brought an IPA, a Hefeweizen and a Raspberry Wheat made with fresh raspberries.

Despite the crowded conditions, the people I spoke with were generally positive about the event. “What’s not to like, cheap beer and the Giants,” said one enthusiastic fan. Most breweries poured two or three beers.  Each of those who offered an India Pale Ale said that it was moving the fastest.

That there were perhaps too many people for the space allotted was not lost on Giants Vice-President of Sponsor and Special Event Support, Danny Dann. When asked if there was anything he would do to improve the event, he said while surveying the scene, “Next year we may cut down the number of attendees from 2,000 to 1,500.  We can’t expand the space.”  Probably a good idea.

There’s little to question about the Giants’ success at promotions and special events.  This was no exception.  It worked. With a few tweaks like better brewery signage and more representation of San Francisco’s fine craft breweries Brewfest would help cement the Giants’ reputation for being a great place to go for beer as well as baseball.

Tickets are available at the door only:

General Admission (3:00-7:00 p.m.) $55 at door
VIP Admission (2:00-7:00 p.m.) $65 at door

https://2012breastfest.eventbrite.com/