Category: Monterey Bay

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.

We will be the first to admit that Monterey County is not a beer mecca – definitely not a place that people would expect passionate beer lovers like us to live. But this is where we grew up; it’s home and we have to take the good with the bad.

Hey, if life has to have challenges like finding good beer, what better place to do it than on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula. And in the end, when you have to ‘settle’ for Sierra Nevada, things can’t be too bad. Don’t get us wrong; there are a number of pubs, restaurants, and bottle shops in the area that have nice beer selections and we can occasionally can be found at any one of them. But the focus of this series of posts is to highlight those places that go above and beyond just a nice beer selection.

First up is our home away from home, Ol’ Factory Cafe.

Every now and then, there are adverts in our local papers for establishments claiming to be the new craft beer heaven on the Peninsula, but in the end they pretty much have the same beer as every other place. When we first saw an ad for the Ol’ Factory Cafe in Sand City last year, we were skeptical; we had just seen the claim too many times before.

We were wrong to be skeptical. OFC is working hard to build a unique and eclectic beer list with 12 tap handles to compliment a selection of over 40 bottles. Whether interested in a sour ale from Rodenbach or a pint of Green Flash West Coast IPA, the beer list has something for all tastes. Our Bay Area beer friends who have stopped in have been pleasantly surprised by our little slice of heaven.

To accompany the great beer selection,  OFC has a tasty rotating food menu, including a cheese plate, charcuterie platter, beer brats, and fish tacos among other items. They do breakfast, too, including “Renee’s tin roof toast”, french toast made with housemade beer bread.

Ol’ Factory Cafe is a “green and sustainable” establishment that strives to run a zero waste operation. In addition to beer, they serve fair trade coffee, teas and other hot drinks in EcoCups. Even the unisex bathrooms, they even have cool waterless urinals.

Kudos to Morgan Christopher, the owner, for having the vision to open such a great beer destination on the Monterey Peninsula. The Ol’ Factory Cafe is located in the “West End” of Sand City, a town that reminds us a lot of West Berkeley in the early 1990’s; cool, hip, and up and coming.

To reach Ol’ Factory Cafe, from Hwy 1 southbound, exit at Canyon Del Rey. Go left at the bottom of the exit ramp. Go left on Del Monte Ave. Go left on Contra Costa Blvd. OFC is located  four blocks on the left at Contra Costa and Ortiz.

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…

I’ve kept in contact with Willy Buholzer, Anheuser-Busch’s European hop purchaser who we met in Munich last month.  I am writing a print article about him and we are planning on meeting up at Andechs on our next Germany trip in July.

To thank him for being so generous with his time showing us the Busch Farm Huell, the hop institute, and the Hallertau hop region, we sent him a Year in Beer t-shirt. In return, he sent me this picture. I think he looks pretty happy to be wearing it and we’re proud to have such a nice guy spreading the word about thebeergeek.com.