Author: Chris

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Our Local Beer Scene – Bottles-n-Bins Liquors

This is the second post in Our Local Beer Scene series. Bottles-n-Bins Liquors in New Monterey.

When we moved back to the Monterey Peninsula in 1994, our first house was up on the hill in New Monterey. We liked the location because we could walk pretty much everywhere. It reminded us a lot of our neighborhood in Oakland that we were greatly missing.

Luckily, we didn’t have to sacrifice good beer too much because even back in the mid 1990s, our local bottle shop, Bottles-n-Bins, had a nice selection of craft beer.  And the owner, Vince, was always very friendly and welcoming, greeting us cheerily with “Hey Kids” every time we came in.

We moved to Seaside and then to Carmel Valley, so after a few years we didn’t spend much time over in the old neighborhood. We eventually stopped going to Bottles-n-Bins because it was just too out of the way.

Then sometime last year, a friend asked if we had stopped into Bottles-n-Bins recently. Answering in the negative, he said we had to go check it out. Curiosity piqued, we drove over there the very next day.

Vince still has a nice selection of craft beer, but what caught our attention were the racks of unique beers, most of them not available anywhere else on the Monterey Peninsula. Trappists, Belgians, and the rare and unique American beers were all under one roof. If it’s available in our area, Vince has it. It’s still a bit out of the way for us, but well worth the trip over.

However, one note of caution. If you are like us, you will leave Bottles-n-Bins much, much lighter in the pocket.

Bottles-n-Bins is easily located on the corner of Lighthouse and David Avenues, just up from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

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New beergeek.TV Episode – Belgians, Trappists & Kerstbier

YiB-12“Belgians, Trappists & Kerstbier” is the latest Year in Beer episode of One Pint at a Time.

With December being the last month for the Year in Beer, we wanted to make it a special one. And what can be more special than a beer tour of Belgium. We had two main goals for the trip: visit all seven Trappist breweries and reach 450 breweries. The Year in Beer culminated at the Kerstbierfestival, a Belgian Christmas beer festival in the town of Essen.

So enjoy our adventures in Belgium…

For all the episodes of One Pint at a Time go to beergeekTV.

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Anchor X-mas Vertical

It might be small but we do have a nice beer community on the Monterey Peninsula. Two of of our good friends are B & K who we met – where else – but Ol’ Factory Cafe. Everyone knows I am a HUGE social butterfly. One evening a couple of years ago, I was walking up to the bar at OFC to order a beer and I heard B order a Green Flash West Coast IPA. We started talking and have been friends with them ever since.

Last night, they invited us over for a vertical tasting of Anchor Christmas. There were five years of the holiday brew 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. To make a little game out of it, we did a blind tasting and tried to guess which beer was which year.

The beers had been properly cellared so they were all excellent.

And guess who picked them all correctly… me! By no means am I a good beer taster. I have never tried to be ‘Mr. Beer Palette’ but last night I channeled my inner beer douche and correctly identified the year for all five beers.

The 2003 was the easiest to pick out. It’s flavor was the mellowest and the spices most muted. 2004 and 2005 were not as mellow but you could guess by the amount of spice in the body of the beer.

2006 and 2008 were the hardest to choose. They were easily identifiable as the newest years but choosing which one was which proved to be hard. I hadn’t had much of the 2008 this year, the beer disappeared from the Monterey Peninsula very quickly while we were in Europe. It really just came down to guessing. And I guessed correctly.

To finish off this enjoyable evening, a bottle of Stone’s 10th anniversary IPA was cracked open.

Thanks again to B & K for hosting such a great evening…

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The Year in Beer Top 10 – Chris’ List

With the Year in Beer now over, we would be remiss not to come up with a list of top 10 experiences from our amazing year. The original plan was to come up with a combined list, but within the first minute of discussion, it was clear that wasn’t going to work. So, here is my list not necessarily in order…

The Kerstbierfestival
Our kind of festival where great beer, friends and conversation seem to be the focal point. Maybe the perfect end to the Year in Beer.

The “Four”
I still need to come up for a better name for our July-October stretch of the Year in Beer. In these months we went to four of the premier beer events in the world; Oregon Brewers Festival, Great British Beer Festival, Oktoberfest and Great American Beer Festival. A lot of beer geeks would be happy to make all four in their lifetime; we did it in consecutive months.

Anchorage in January
The first month for the Year in Beer and there was some worry about how it would turn out. Not only was Anchorage’s beer culture quite amazing, the community was so nice and welcoming. We couldn’t have started the year in a better fashion.

Cologne, Munich and Vienna
After the Bergkirchweih beer festival, we joined our friends Ute and Wolfgang for Flogging Molly shows on consecutive nights in Cologne, Munich and Vienna. Day one was Kölsch, day two was beer gardens with liters of beer and day three was our first visit to Vienna.

Hallertau Hop Tour
One of the fringe benefits of the Year in Beer was that we got a tour of the Hallertau hop growing region by Anheuser-Busch’s European hop guy, Willy Buholzer. Thanks to Willy for being a great host and hop guide.

The Beer Bars
The Year in Beer gave us the opportunity to go to some of the best beer bars in the world… Toronado, Monk’s Cafe, Standard Tap, Brouwers, Falling Rock, Kulminator, Arendsnest, In de Wildeman, ‘t Brugs Beertje, Cafe Delerium, Liar’s Club, Cafe Amsterdam, O’Brien’s… to name a few.

Visiting All Seven Trappists
One of the main goals of our December trip was to visit all seven Trappist breweries. The worry was that in December, the six that were open to the public, would have limited hours or be closed. The beer gods were smiling down on us as we were able to visit all seven and drink the beer at the six that were open to the public.

Philadelphia
One of the side trips we made during 2008. Big thanks goes out to the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing  Corporation for inviting us out for Philly Beer Week. If they hadn’t, we would still be talking about someday we need to get to Philly. We knew about Monk’s Cafe, and it is truly amazing, but there is a lot more to Philadelphia’s beer scene than just Monk’s.

Seeing Our Friend Win Beer Drinker of the Year
Another 2008 side trip… Being into beer, for me, is not just about the beer, it is also about the great friendships you make. And to be on hand to see our friend, Matt Venzke, win Wynkoop’s Beer Drinker of the Year, was not only a great time but was worthy a Top 10 Year in Beer experience.

Merideth
OK… this is probably number one. I got to spend the Year in Beer with my best friend and better half. It truly doesn’t get better than that.

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The Kerstbierfestival

YiB-12Our trip to Belgium finished with our first ever visit to the Kerstbierfestival, a Christmas beer festival in Essen, Belgium. The Kerstbierfestival was an event I targeted pretty early in creating the Year in Beer schedule because it seemed unique. Belgium in December drinking Christmas beers seemed like a good way to close out our year.

Saturday, day one of the festival, was the coldest day of our trip. We hopped off the train in Essen and started on a brisk 1.85km walk to the Heuvalhal, site of the festival. Easily finding the hall, a gym actually, we took our place in the queue.

We have made this statement before and risking crying wolf one too many times, we had really no idea about what to expect from the Kerstbierfestival. There were over 100 beers and most were unknown to us. As we found our seats within the hall, we reached that crucial point in the day. What beers do we try?

I should step back a bit and explain how the festival works. The Kertbierfestival is a token fest. One token cost 1.50 euro or 11 for 15 euros. Most beers were one token but rare or special beers could be two or three tokens. The pour was 15cl. Whole bottles could also be purchased. For example, the Rochefort 8 Cuvée 2007 would set you back 20 tokens.

Armed with the festival guide which had extensive notes in English, I picked out beers that sounded interesting. The first three beers I sampled, I didn’t really care for. After these first duds, I honed my strategy and concentrated on the special and rare beers, the ones that were two or three tokens. Here is where I found all my festival favorites, such as:

  • Rochefort 8 Cuvée 2007
  • Fra… Till… from Mikkeller
  • Santa’s Little Helper from Mikkeller
  • Bush des Nuits from Dubuisson
  • Malheur Bière Brut

In the end, I tried somewhere around 22 beers, give or take a few that I forgot to record. Most of them fell in the ‘pretty darn good’ category.

We were kind of shocked, at first, by the civility of the fest. A better word than civilized might be dignified. Most festivals in the States degenerate into drunk fests, but the Kerstbierfestival seemed different. There was no whooping nor hollering. No one tried to get the crowd to do the wave. Rather, the festival goers talked with friends, drank their beers and sometimes took notes. Even the 32 person stag party who were pounding cans of Jupiler (a Belgian macro-lager) in the queue to get in behaved in this manner.

Most pleasing to me was there was no blasting music, though at one point a gentleman busted out an accordion and people started singing.

I don’t think every festival needs to be this way, but it was nice to be at one where beer, friends and conversation seemed to be the focal points.

The crowd was mostly Belgian and Dutch, but there were also a number of Brits and Americans in attendance.

One American we ran into on Saturday was Tom Peters of Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia. We had met Tom earlier this year on the press junket to Philly Beer Week as he had hosted our first night events. It was nice running into Tom again. If there is one person to talk beer with at a Belgian beer fest, it would be Tom.

We returned to the festival on Sunday, but our festival day was short as we needed to get to Brussels to see some friends. So we shot the last of the video we needed, tried a few more beers and just basked in the moment. The Year in Beer was over.

As we left the hall mid-Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit of sadness that the Year is Beer was complete. The year went so fast, just yesterday it seemed like we were landing in Anchorage.

But thinking back on all the great trips, the people we met, the friends we made, the beers we drank, the places we visited, I cannot help to feel a great sense of accomplishment. We did it.