Author: Chris

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Year in Beer Boston Preview

YiB-3We have survived the January and February installments of the YiB as well as a few side trips, so now it is on to the third month; Boston for St. Patrick’s Day.

Boston is probably our favorite city to visit in the U.S. and not just because of the beer; the history is pretty cool too. Thus, when we first conceived of the YiB almost two years ago, after Munich, Boston was the second city we chose.

This will be our fifth trip in the last six years for Paddy’s Day. Our only wish is for warmer weather than we have had in the past.

We will be returning to some of our favorite beer haunts… Beerworks, Cambridge Brewing, Harpoon, Barking Crab, the Black Rose, and the Publick House. We will also be picking up some new breweries though all are outside of Boston.

Here are the new breweries we are going to visit:

  • Cape Ann Brewing in Gloucester, MA
  • Smuttynose in Portsmouth, NH
  • Portsmouth Brewing in Portsmouth, NH
  • Watch City Brewing in Waltham, MA

We also will be meeting up with Brad Ruppert and his wife. Brad was a fellow finalist for the Chief Beer Officer position.

Outside of beer, we will be catching a Bruins game as well as checking out the St. Patrick’s Day parade in South Boston.

If there is one disappointment about this trip, it is that we are not seeing a Dropkick Murphys show. Besides being one of our favorite bands, DKM was included in the original conception of the YiB. We tried to get tickets but were thwarted (anyone have extras?).

In their place, we are seeing another Boston celtic punk band… Larkin Brigade.

As always, if you want to meet us for a pint, just contact us. If you have extra DKM tickets, that would be even better.

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Beer Drinker of the Year

As promised, here is our report from Beer Drinker of the Year…

Since this is not an unbiased report of the event, I guess I should start by congratulating the two other worthy finalists; Richard Pedretti-Allen from Texas and J Mark Angelus from Oregon. Special kudos go to Mark for nailing the blind beer tasting portion of the contest.

Props also need to go out to Marty Jones from Oskar Blues for being not only the organizer but a great MC for the event.

For those who haven’t followed the story closely, we met Matt and his wife Michelle for the first time in January up in Anchorage. Prior to that, Matt and I had been emailing for about a year. Meeting them for the first time, Merideth and I immediately recognized kindred beer travelers and we became fast friends. After we got home from Alaska, we heard from Matt that he was a finalist for Beer Drinker of the Year. We had to go to Denver to be part of Matt’s entourage and to cheer him on.

We were also excited because Merideth and I haven’t been in downtown Denver for over 6 years and we wanted to see how things have changed.

We arrived in Denver Friday afternoon and met Matt and Michelle at the Great Divide Brewery taproom. When Merideth and I were last in Denver in December 2001, Great Divide didn’t have a taproom. Back then, you just kinda wandered in off the street into the brewery and some guy would pour you beer.

Now, they have a nice taproom where you can get some of the best beer in Denver. Unfortunately, we only had time for one as we needed to be at the Falling Rock Tap House for the first Beer Drinker of the Year pre-event.

The Falling Rock is rightfully mentioned in the same breath as Toronado, Horse Brass, Monks, and Brickskeller… i.e. one of the best beer bars in the United States.

Friday evening was a meet and greet where the Beer Drinker of the Year judges could meet the finalists for the first time. The judges consisted of past finalists as well as beer luminaries such a the beer goddess herself… Lisa Morrison.

I was just happy to be at Falling Rock, where I could try Colorado beers that I can’t get where we live (which is pretty much everything). The highlight was the unveiling of the 2008 Collaboration not Litigation Ale, a blended Belgian Strong Ale from Avery Brewing and Russian River.

After a few pints, the meet and greet moved a few blocks away to the host Wynkoop Brewery for dinner. And if there wasn’t enough meeting and greeting for Matt, after dinner the party moved back to the Falling Rock for a nightcap. I’ll admit that Merideth and I called it an early evening and left around 10pm.

Saturday morning was beautiful so we decided to walk to “HiDo” to check out one of the two Denver breweries that we haven’t been to. And in the only disappointment of the weekend, we walked for 45 minutes to get to the nameless place only to find out they didn’t have any of their beer. I don’t know if they had run out or have stopped brewing, but Merideth and I didn’t get any new breweries on this trip.

The finals were at Wynkoop and we were joined there by two friends Eli and Fran from Aleuminati, the not so secret society of better beer.

As for the actual contest, it is going to be hard to describe the events; you are just going to have to wait for the video. But as Merideth posted yesterday, Matt’s performance was masterful.

Being an eccentric beer geek who knows a lot about beer is what can get you to the Beer Drinker of the Year finals… what wins it is being funny and clever. Even when Matt was flailing to find an answer, he did it in a self deprecating witty way that had the crowd laughing.

But the clincher had to be the crowns. There is a portion of the contest called “Bribe the Judges”. What most contestants have done over the years is to bring beer, whether rare, local or homebrew. That makes a lot of sense and it would be probably what I would have done.

I have to say that Matt really thought outside the box on this one. He made crowns for each of the eight judges; attaching bottle caps with magnets from his extensive collection. And he didn’t just stick a bunch of bottle caps on the crown; each one had a theme. They were pretty impressive. And Michelle didn’t help him – besides being a beer geek and an amazing scrap booker – Matt is a wizard with the glue gun. In the end, Matt just didn’t bribe the judges; I think he created a new Beer Drinker of the Year tradition.

All that was left was the announcement and the partying afterwards. The party moved from Wynkoop to Great Divide to Rock Bottom. We had a great time hanging out with Marty, some of the judges, Fran, Eli, Matt, Michelle and the other finalist Mark. By the way, the judges were already trading bottle caps for their crowns.

So… congratulations Matt… you are not only the Beer Drinker of the Year, but also our hero!

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New YiB Side Trip – Philadelphia

Merideth and I have been invited to Philadelphia in March for beginning of Philly Beer Week. We will be in the City of Brotherly Love March 6-9.

We haven’t been to Philadelphia since 1992 and that was only for a few hours. While it has been on the list of places we should visit, without this great opportunity, a trip there would have had to wait for another year.

Coincidentally, early versions of our YiB press release talked about the expansion of beer travel and how city tourist boards were beginning to market their city to craft beer drinkers. And that is exactly what Philadelphia is doing with Philly Beer Week.

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Remembering the Early Days

For the last couple of months, when thinking about our trip to San Francisco, I would reminisce about our early beer lives in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the Bay Area.

YiB-2One of my strongest memories of that era is time spent at Triple Rock, or as it was called in the early days, Roaring Rock. Triple Rock was probably brewery number one and the story I that I have been telling for years about those days is that they had only two beers; Red Rock and Black Rock. You could mix the two and that was called ‘orange’.

Well, on the last day of our San Francisco trip, we began it by visiting Triple Rock. While enjoying an Ipax and then a cask pale ale, we got discussing the early days with a long time employee. Wanting to verify my memories of those days, I told him what I described above. And I was wrong! I have been living a lie all these years.

So for the record, in the early days, there were three beers. Besides Red Rock and Black Rock there was also Pinnacle Pale Ale. Mixing pale and red got you ‘orange’ and mixing red and black got you ‘checkerboard’.

Oh… we also have been saying for years that Triple Rock and their sister brewery Big Time in Seattle have almost the exact same layout except flipped… and that is wrong too.

YiB-2The main event of the day was the Celebrator Beer News 20th Anniversary party. Before the days of the Internet, the Celebrator was one of the main sources of information about beer and indispensable to the beer traveler.

A who’s who of west coast breweries were in attendance pouring not only beers from their regular lineup, but also some special beers. I spent the evening bouncing between Trumer Pils and big beers like Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and The Abyss from Deschutes.

We hooked up with a bunch of friends… Rowdy was there… our Alaskan friends were there… Chris Devlin was there. Rick from Draft magazine was there… But the highlight of the festival might have been running into Ted.

YiB-2When Merideth worked at Barclay’s, she had the Sunday day shift. And I would spend most Sunday afternoons hanging out, drinking beer and enjoying the day. Ted and two of his friends were also Sunday regulars so we saw each other regularly. They were probably Merideth’s favorite customers. We hadn’t seen Ted for years and Merideth spied him across the room. It was good seeing Ted again and being called ‘Mr. Merideth’.

And I won my first silent auction. The New Belgium bike was cool… the world’s largest six pack from Triple Rock was awesome but I bid on and won a VIP tour of the Anchor brewery. The money was for a good cause; the California Small Brewers Association.

YiB-2The beer festival just wasn’t enough beer so we headed around the corner to the Trappist, the new Belgian beer bar in Oakland. The Trappist is a great new addition to the Oakland beer scene. Besides enjoying a few good Belgians, we also got to try the first beer from Oakland’s new brewery; Linden Street. The beer, a California Common, is a wonderful first beer from the Bay Area’s newest brewery.

And much to our luck, we happened to sit next to Adam Lamoreaux, the owner and brewer at Linden Street and got an insight into the brewery’s near term plans. As ten year Oakland residents, Adam’s excitement for his brewery and commitment to Oakland was music to our ears. The beer should be widely available in the Bay Area in the next couple of months and even better, look for 3 new beers to be added to their lineup. Their website is not quite done yet but check lindenbeer.com in the future for information.

So… two months down and many memories to cherish…

 

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The Warmup Is Over

The Year in Beer has been in San Francisco the last couple of days warming up for the big weekend that starts today with the Toronado Barley Wine Festival.

YiB-2We arrived Thursday evening and after checking into the hotel and leaving the car, we walked straight to City Beer for a nice relaxing Valentine’s Day evening. After the a glass of Ommegang’s Chocolate Indulgence, which neither of us thought was very chocolately, the serious business of beer tasting began; Lost Abbey Avant Garde, Avery Out of Bounds Stout, and Russian River’s Redemption & Damnation. I was trying to start the weekend slow but as always when I am at City Beer, I am a kid in a candy store.

However, the highlight of the Valentine’s evening had to be the Thai restaurant/Karaoke bar that we ended up at. It always ends up that at 11 o’clock at night after a few beers, I get hungry for Thai food. Usually, I am left unfulfilled, but we actually found a Thai restaurant, quite by accident, I might add. Now that’s a good start to the weekend!

Friday was an absolutely beautiful February day in San Francisco. We spent the day with our friend and beer guru Rowdy…just like old times. We tried to go to a new place called Wunder Beer (the guy’s last name really is “Wunder”), but they were not yet open for the day.

Undeterred, we walked over to the Haight to get some lunch at Magnolia. Though one half of strong beer month, it was going to be a long day so we stuck to their regular line up of beers. Magnolia always has three or four of their beers on cask so I always enjoy going there. The Bitter, Best Bitter and Porter was a nice way to start the day.

21st Amendment is the other half of Strong Beer Month, so we went there next. While there, we hooked up with our friend Chris, the Beer Retard. And lastly, we returned to City Beer for the final liquid appetizer before heading to the Beer-Chef’s chocolate and beer tasting.

The highlight of the day had to be Hop Crisis, an 11.8% hop bomb from 21st Amendment. Hop Crisis is one of those dangerous beers; it went down way too easily for a such a strong beer.

We smoozed with the best of them at the dinner, seeing several people that we met in Alaska, plus old friends and others. The food was out of this world…the beers not so much. We ended our night hanging out at Tommy’s Joynt with Alaska people and decided to call it a night.

So if all that was the warm up, we are in for quite a main course. Today is Toronado’s Barley Wine Festival pretty much all day and then who knows what else. Tomorrow it’s over to the East Bay for the Celebrator’s 20th anniversary party. It’s gonna be a long few days until Monday when we return home.