In which Steve ended up at Baltimore Beer Week a few months back, and got ideas for SF BEER week
Timing is everything. A long-scheduled visit with friends in Baltimore remarkably coincided with the first-ever Baltimore Beer Week. Learning this one week out from the trip, research was needed. Fast. I sent out a couple of blind emails to Baltimore area beer writers/bloggers. They both answered swiftly. (You gotta love the craft beer community). One had moved out of the state and sent his apologies. The other, Baltimore beer blogger and Mid Atlantic Brewing News writer, Alexander Mitchell, answered and agreed to meet me when I got to town.
Alexander knows everyone in the local beer scene and made it his business to see that I got the opportunity to meet as many local notables as he could find this night. He succeeded magnificently. It was already day nine of the inaugural celebration of all things beer in Baltimore. Alexander was fueled with enthusiasm and pride as he took me from bars to breweries; to a beautiful bar in an historic hotel and to an Irish music session at a very Irish bar near Fort McHenry. At this bar, I had the only beer on this trip that I had ever tasted before, a correctly poured Guiness, of course. Between venues, Alexander narrated a tour of Baltimore, including the brewing and brewery history as we passed several shuttered sites. (One of these sites, the Baltimore Brewing Company, was right around the corner from the site of the notorious public housing development called “The Towers,” that was the centerpiece of the 1st season of the HBO series, The Wire.)
Ryleigh’s Oyster
Shortly after entering Ryleigh’s Oyster, I was extracted by the collar from a conversation with a 20-something beer appreciator, to meet Hugh Sisson, owner of Clipper City Brewing Company. As the introduction was made, Hugh was pouring from the 1 bottle of his delicious brew he brought along for this special event, Beer and Oysters. The rest, he said, would age another 8 months before being released.
“ I don’t like pumpkin,” declared Hugh Sisson. “And I don’t like bourbon. But this works!” Hugh was referring to the bottle of Clipper City’s bourbon barrel aged pumpkin ale he was pouring for the few lucky patrons within arms reach at Ryleigh’s Oyster (formerly a brewpub owned by Sisson, the 1st brewpub in Maryland). I quickly agreed with him. The totality of this beer was definitely more pleasing to me than my similar aversion to the aforementioned ingredients would have led me to believe.
This was only one in a series of fortuitous encounters I would have during our whirlwind 10-hour tour of Baltimore Beer Week’s notable venues.
It was raining and the traffic was slow, too slow for Alexander’s liking. “Move your posterior,” he inveighed loudly more than once to drivers out of hearing range. He was on a mission to show this Left Coast craft beer lover that Baltimore has its fair share of great beer and interesting venues in which to enjoy them. He knew there were more than time would allow us to visit…but he was going to try. As we approached The Brewer’s Art, a Belgian-style brewpub, we pulled across the street from the historic Belvedere Hotel. Housed inside of the Belvedere is the historic former speakeasy, the Owl Bar. “You get out, go into the Belvedere, head toward the back left of the lobby and look up,” he ordered. He would join me after he parked. It was indeed a cool looking room, with dark wood, stained glass and metal work, but not a place we would have a beer. On to The Brewer’s Art.
The Brewer’s Art is a brewery that specializes in Belgian-style beers. its two floors have distinctly different personalities. Upstairs is open, light and modern. Downstairs is dark (too dark for this geezer-in-training to read the menu), small and was very crowded. For bay Area readers, think Monk’s Kettle upstairs and La Trappe down.
Modeled after Philadelphia’s two successful Beer Weeks, local beer maven, Joe Gold and Baltimore Sun columnist, Rob Kaspar, started with the idea of forming a Baltimore Beer Club. Conversations with others in the beer community, including my guide, Alexander, led them to form a committee out of which Baltimore Beer Week was born.
At the Metropolitan Bar, later that evening, my collar was again tugged, this time to meet Joe Gold. Joe had a big smile as he walked in. The brewery reps I had been talking with greeted him warmly as did the young female bartenders who complimented him on his Baltimore Beer Week t-shirt and “demanded” theirs. He was happy to accommodate them.
Thinking about San Francisco’s 1st Beer Week last February and how much I enjoyed it, I understood the pride he felt as he looked around this packed bar. I was anxious to hear his tales of how he and the committee pulled this off. Being an organizer at heart, this stuff fascinates me as much as the beer delights me. Joe was eager to tell me the story.
The committee that was formed out of the above-described conversations, was first populated by non-beer industry folks. Joe, who formerly worked in the industry, believed this was key. The organizers wanted the energy and vision to come from the grassroots. Once they had a plan, they went to the industry for support. They approached Hugh Sisson, owner of Clipper City Brewing Company, Casey Hard, GM of Max’s on Broadway Taproom and 2 distributors. Clipper City became the “Flagship” sponsor. There were 3 Gold Level sponsors, very importantly including City Paper, a free weekly entertainment paper that inserted the BBW schedule for free in their paper the week before and the week of Beer Week. 12 pubs, retailers, distributors and breweries came in at the Silver Level of sponsorship. 46 businesses were Event Sponsors and 10 were Participant Sponsors.
The committee brainstormed a list of 191 possible event ideas and sent them out with a “sell sheet” to 390 beer related businesses in late April and early May. The return exceeded Joe’s wildest expectations.
In all they wound up with over 700 event listings over the 10-day festival, bracketed by the kickoff event on the USS Constellation, with former Baltimore Oriole star, Boog Powell, tapping the 1st keg, and the closing event, the Chesapeake Real Ale Festival at the Pratt St. Alehouse. “If you love beer, you gotta love this town.”
Kaspar column
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/bal-ae.fo.kasperoct7oct07,0,1963011.column
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_gG06d0v7I Powell video
Written October 2009 – published later
Beer by BART 