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SF Beer Week: Love?

February 14, 2013

Beer week speeds on towards the Celebrator Beer News 25th Anniversary Party, which we’ll attend for sure on Sunday. More about that in just a bit.

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.

Categories: Beer, Beer Journalist
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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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Sour beer collaboration with Bison Brewing – meet My Funky Valentine

February 7, 2013

(By Gail Ann Williams, the brewer in the Beer By BART family)

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.

kegs in the kitchenI 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.

heart shaped charmI’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.

Categories: Beer, beer festivals, Berkeley, homebrewing, San Francisco, Sour beer
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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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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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Looking forward to SF Beer Week and more winter beer goodness

January 22, 2012

The San Francisco Bay Area beer landscape looks particularly lovely in January. There are several treats leading up to the best time of the year,  the Greater Bay Area’s February treasure, SF Beer Week, starting on February 10th.  Time to mark up your calendar, arrange some time off work, and plan carefully for the second weekend when the westbound deck of the Bay Bridge will be closed for ongoing repairs, but BART (and the other local bridges) will be open in both directions.  If you have never taken BART, why not prep for Beer Week? You may want to get a multi-transit system Clipper card that you can use on buses and ferries too, and then do a trial pub-run before hand.  

door with sf beer week sticker
Leave some time for reading through the growing list of activities, scouting out the best beer week events and getting reservations for those that require them. All ready?  Then check out these events in the run-up to SF Beer Week.

Next weekend, on Saturday, January 28, starting at noon, the Brewing Network’s enthusiastic army of homebrewers will seek out Todos Santos square in Concord for their third Winter Brews Festival event, with a solid lineup of craft breweries and a repeat of their unusual and impressive homebrew sampling program where you get a chance to taste top amateur brews.  (For walking directions from Concord BART station, use our description of how to get from BART to the original E.J. Phair brewpub, which is on the plaza. It’s a easy, flat walk from the station.) Winter Brews Festival tickets are on sale in advance, so you can plan ahead.

Then on the first, Magnolia and 21st Amendment brewpubs in SF start their traditional month of making and serving special strong brews, from Barleywines and other fine styles of strong ales, to their own inventive winter “Imperial” versions of usually more modest beers. (It doesn’t even snow around here, but we don’t seem to mind those strong, warming brews.)


Last year’s SF Beer Week kickoff festival was at the Yerba Buena center. This year the opening event moves to a larger venue (though not as short a walk from BART). In this photo, beer bloggers Peter Estaniel and David Jensen enjoyed the opening of SF Beer Week 2011, almost a year ago.

pints of Bay Area beers

P.S.: To our out-of-town beer community friends and readers: you don’t have to just have to dream about all the great Northern California beers poured during SF Beer Week 2012. There’s still time to book that trip.

 

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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Tools tips and tricks: a SF Beer Week survival guide

February 10, 2011

So, by now have you cleared the decks for SF Beer Week 2011?

Here are some survival tips, plus a little video valentine to this beer week from last year’s.

1. Have a backup plan. If you get to point A without a reservation to find a line around the block, know what’s easy to get to and just as awesome or at least another flavor of awesome.

2. If you are not packing a mobile device, grab your addresses, routes and logistics ahead of time. Field tested directions to many fine sites can be found on here on Beer By BART, on the right side of the main page, with details that will assure you how easy it is to get to places like Hayward (for the Double IPA Festival), and dozens of other venues.

For even more information, check out:
http://www.bart.gov/schedules/ Detailed route info and BART schedules
http://www.511.org/ Transit info from various agencies all around the Bay.
http://www.nextbus.com/ Get live arrival time info for assorted buses

3. Enhance your mobility. Figure out how to use any new apps before you need them. There’s an official SF Beer Week schedule iphone app here: http://www.sfbeerweek.org/app
Some other transportation apps and tools you might like:
http://www.511.org/apps.asp
http://m.511.org
http://www.bart.gov/schedules/ Listed again, because sure, you can get BART schedules here, but you can also find a bunch of cool BART schedule and live arrival apps.

Or keep it simple. Remember that you can phone 511 and use a voice menu at any time to figure out how to get from point A to point B.
You can even use texting for getting up to the minute bus arrival info with a less-than-smart phone if you look ahead at http://www.nextbus.com/ Try it.

4. Shoot!
"Happy Beer Week" toast from the event at Speakeasy DSC_0342sm THe Homebrew Chef @ Collaboration- A Beer Dinner with Firestone Walker & De Proef Welcome to Valentine's Day @ Trumer With the Celebrator
Take pictures, videos, notes. Your best Beer Week photos and short video clips are welcome in the Flickr group pool at http://www.flickr.com/groups/sfbeerweek/ and by putting them there you offer them to the http://www.sfbeerweek.org webmaster for use on the beer week site. YouTube videos are also welcomed. It’s our beer community history, let’s get it out there for everybody.

5. Tell your friends – beer fans and otherwise – what’s going on. Tweet a little, all about #sfbeerweek – or become a Bay Area Beer Blogger – #babb – and write a longer article about your experiences.

6. Water! Especially when you are drinking stronger beers. You know this, so all you have to do is to remind yourself. Matching big beers one for one with glasses of delicious Hetch Hetchy mountain water out of the tap can help shift your experience of a marathon from an ordeal into an epic adventure.

That takes care of survival. Now for love. What do you like about SF Beer Week? A year ago we asked some of the fine people who created and enjoyed SF Beer Week 2010.

Here’s an encore performance:

Cheers!

Explore Beer By BART; use our list 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, Berkeley, Craft beer, East Bay, North Bay Area, oakland, Pubs, San Francisco
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San Francisco Strong Beers

February 7, 2011

Happy February! This month is perhaps the best time of the year in our local beer community. For years Magnolia and 21st Amendment, two of SF’s brewpubs, have proclaimed February as Strong Beer Month, offering tasty line-ups of carefully crafted high gravity beers, from Barleywines to Imperial Stouts to Tripels. The general idea is that during February you drop by these two pubs several times each, punch a card for each strong beer you savor, and earn a Strong Beer goblet at the end of your month-long flight. Many of these strong ales are sure to fly out of the kegs and down happy throats before March, so the trick will be to decide which ones to try first.


This time around, Magnolia has created another noterworthy tribute to British brewing with their “Pride of Branthill.” Ah, the British bitter. Drinkable, crisp and civilized. We mostly know American interpretations of the strongest version of the English Bitter family, the ESB. If you were to set out to make an Extra-extra ESB by using old-fashioned English floor-malted barley and traditional hops to match, you would not match the elegance of Magnolia’s special strong ale, because theirs is made from the malt which comes from a single exceptional British beer barley farm. Branthill Farm’s crop from the town of Wells-Next-The-Sea in Norfolk, displays the best attributes of English barley. It seems odd that water is sometimes described as giving local and specific “terroir” character in brewing, while the malted barley, which gives all the body, alcohol and much of the flavor usually is not. Barley malt is usually treated more like a commodity, blended for uniformity for bulk distribution, rather than as a specialized artisan crop. Magnolia has turned that around with their ongoing relationship with the farmer who brings in this Branthill malted barely. It’s cool to see that the Norfolk area is as proud of this unusual relationship as we San Franciscans are. While Magnolia has also made more traditional session-strength bitters out of Branthill’s product, the malt really shines in this example. It’s a unique beer from the heart of the Haight, glowing with the character of the topsoil and the farmer’s pride of a very specific corner of Britain.

Down near the bay and the ballpark at 21st Amendment, two collaborations are getting plenty of attention. “Imperial Jack” is a delicious reprise of the popular and medal-winning collaboration with nanobrewer Richard Brewer-Hays. “21 Rock,” the 9.7% IPA collaboration made by brewers Zambo from 21A and Rodger Davis from Triple Rock over in Berkeley is a west coast imperial IPA to try. It’s big, but not “hot” with a boozy character, nor bitter-sweet like the hoppiest of American barleywines. They are calling it a triple IPA. A sip reveals that generous helpings of hops were coaxed out of their flowery, citrusy, golden flavors to balance the bitterness. At 65 IBU, 9.7% and moderately dry, this still comes off as a balanced beauty for the hop heads amongst us.

Surprisingly, one of the note-worthy February attractions at 21A right now is not a strong beer at all, but a lighter hoppy ale called Bitter American. With less than half the alcohol as the big beers on the board, it still has rewarding hop flavors and aroma right out of the can. This is one of their brewpub favorites which has just been replicated for the 21st Amendment line of canned beers produced by contract at a production brewery in Minnesota. Working with a brewery that was built on American lager styles is another form of collaboration with challenges of its own. The weather is delightful this February, so a picnic or a little coastal camping may be in order to make the most of a canned sixpack.

There is an “unofficial” strong beer line up at Social Kitchen for February, with some worthy contenders to taste. Last week we we enjoyed a sneak taste of brewer Rich Higgins’ original and delicious light-colored strong ale with a creamy sensation and real cacao, inspired by the flavors found in a cocktail, the classic White Russian. It was well worth a trip from downtown on the N Judah street car.

Coming soon is all the joy of SF Beer Week, so the suggested strategy is to get to your Strong Beer destinations this week, and avoid missing any of these remarkable beers.

Explore Beer By BART; use our list 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, events, Pubs, San Francisco
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Hop Harvests, Brews on the Bay and other craft Beer delights

September 11, 2010

Hop harvest at the Abbey de St Humulus
Beer and the end of summer, what a pairing! It’s the heart of hop harvest time, and it’s a grand traditional beer celebration month in the Northern Hemisphere, from Munich to North Beach.

Tomorrow we’ll be at Brews on the Bay, the San Francisco Brewers Guild’s seventh annual local brew festival aboard the Jeremiah O’Brien, moored at Pier 45 in the City. This September tradition is a benefit for the historic WWII Liberty Ship. Today, Saturday, is sold out on-line though there may be some tix at the “door.” If you are thinking about tomorrow afternoon, grab those tickets: http://sfbrewersguild.com/ To get there, you can take BART to the Embarcadero Station, then take the historic “F” line (two dollar fare) street car along the odd-numbered piers towards Pier 45. (It’s probably simplest to catch it in front of the Ferry Building, with the old clock tower you will see when you get out of BART. You could also take the time for a two mile walk, much of it along the Embarcadero sidewalk. Here’s the direct route that Google maps suggests, though you may prefer to walk directly to the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street and do the whole promenade along the Embarcadero.

Next weekend we will be rooting for our local brewers in the competition at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, and we expect to see many Bay Area friends there. Meanwhile, the legendary and also sold-out Northern California Homebrewer’s Festival unaccountably takes place at the same time this year. These two festivals are outside the SF regional transit footprint, but worth your attention. If you’re not planning to be at one of these landmark events this year, you might want to keep them on the radar as excellent choices for meeting craft beer community folks and trying exceptional beers in September of 2011.

Last weekend we were happy to be able to participate in the picking of the hops at Brian Hunt’s Moonlight Brewing, one of North America’s craft beer treasures that we are lucky to have in our local area. Hops are usually dried before use, but in recent years brewers have come to treasure the batches they can make once a year when the hops are still moist and fresh from the hop bine. Fresh hopped beer will be available locally from many brewers in small batches. Taste some great examples at the annual Wet Hop Festival at the Bistro, in Hayward on Saturday, October 2nd this year. http://www.the-bistro.com/events.htm (Yes, the Bistro is an easy walking distance from BART.)

There are more photos of the hop picking moonlight madness. pickingEnjoy this slide show of the harvest.hops to go to Toronado

Explore Beer By BART; see our list 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, hops, San Francisco
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