Category: California

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Crossing Over

Merideth and I took the afternoon off this past Tuesday to take care of some business on the other side of the Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz. Our business was twofold. There are two new breweries in Santa Cruz to visit and add to the list. Plus we wanted to make a recruiting visit for SF Beer Week.

Santa Cruz holds a special place in our hearts. When we moved back to the Monterey Peninsula in 1994 from the Bay Area, it was somewhat of a culture shock… not to mention a beer shock. After we tired of driving to Berkeley every other weekend to get our ‘fix’, we discovered Santa Cruz, Berkeley lite. It wasn’t quite Berkeley, but it was a heck of a lot closer and the beer scene was good.

So, we are always excited to cross over to the other side of the Bay, especially when we get to add some breweries to the list.

The first new brewery was Santa Cruz Ale Works.  ‘New’ might not be the most accurate thing to say because they did open their doors in 2007. And we had tried their IPA earlier in the year when a friend shared his growler. But this was our first visit to the brewery.

The head brewer, Marc Rosenblum, was formerly the brewer at Santa Cruz’s venerable Seabright Brewery. There were four beers on tap, a Hefeweizen, Pale Ale, IPA and Saison. The Pale Ale and IPA, both nicely hopped just as I like it, were the beers of note.

The brewery and tasting room is located off of River Rd behind Costco. Call or email for tasting room hours.

Our second brewery of the day, Uncommon Brewers is located just minutes away on the other side of Highway 1. We first heard about this brewery when we met the brewer/owner, Alec Stefansky, at the Red Restaurant and Lounge in Santa Cruz on Halloween last year.

Uncommon Brewers is part of the new wave of brewers, organic, green, canning and innovative.

We tried both of their beers; the wonderful Golden State Ale flavored with toasted poppy seeds and Siamese Twin Ale, a Belgian-style Dubbel brewed with kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass and coriander. Siamese Twin, at a hefty 8.5%,  is deceptively easy to drink.  In the spring, look for  12.5% version called ‘Sinister Twin’.

Many breweries today are looking for ways to reduce their impact on the environment and Uncommon Brewers is a part of that trend. One of the more interesting green things – and something we had never seen before – were these cool plastic kegs sourced out of the Netherlands. Round and light in weight, they save on transportation costs and when empty are simply crushed and recycled.

If you want to visit the brewery, you need to make an appointment. I suggest visiting their website for the listing of where to find their beer.

All and all, we enjoyed a productive day in Santa Cruz. We added two more breweries to the list and we were also able to generate interest in SF Beer Week.

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Year in Beer – San Diego Preview

Our last Year in Beer stop in United States brings us to the hottest beer scene in the craft beer world, San Diego. While craft beer has been around San Diego since the late 1980s with the likes of Karl Strauss, Southern California’s other metropolis burst on the scene in the last decade as a new wave of innovative breweries opened their doors.

And America’s new craft beer mecca is a place where we haven’t spent much time, as evidenced by the fact that I had to look through pre-digital camera beer pictures from the 1990s for this post. And as you probably notice, I couldn’t find any.

We will definitely make up for lost time as we have targeted a dozen breweries from north county to east county and finally, San Diego proper. Our list includes all the cult breweries; Alesmith, Green Flash, Port Brewing/Lost Abbey and Stone.

YiB-11Our big beer day will be on Friday when we hit five; Alesmith, Lightning, Green Flash, Oceanside and Port Brewing/Lost Abbey. And we are excited because we finally get to feature a beer tour company, Brewery Tours of San Diego. Beer tour companies are popping up in all the beer meccas and it’s nice to be able to promote one, especially in a public transportation starved county like San Diego. Brewery Tours of San Diego offers both scheduled and private tours of the San Diego beer scene.

This day is not without controversy. As we have mentioned before, breweries with multiple locations only count once on ‘the list‘. If we have been to one Karl Strauss or Oggi’s, we have been to them all. We have already been to the Pizzaport in Carlsbad, so Port Brewing doesn’t count as a new brewery. But what about Lost Abbey? Is Lost Abbey just Port Brewing’s second label? Or are they a sister brewery? This is something that will definitely have to go before ‘the committee’.

We will finish off our San Diego visit with the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival on Saturday, November 8. “Up to 21 San Diego breweries” will be pouring beers at the World Beat Center at Balboa Park. Since we will have already visited most of them in the preceding days, this will be a good time to try the breweries we missed and retry our favorites from our previous days.

All and all, San Diego looks like a very productive week especially in pursuit of our goal of reaching 450 breweries by the end of the year.

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The World Needs More Small Beer Festivals

Merideth and I remember fondly some of the small beer events we attended back in the day. Back then, it seemed like every weekend some charity got 20 or so breweries together to have a festival and raise money.

While these festivals lacked name recognition and number of breweries, they more than made up for it with a more intimate setting and enthusiastic crowds.

So with our string of HUGE festivals coming up, it was with some eagerness that we attended the 17th Annual Beerfest in Santa Rosa; 40 or so breweries, mostly local, were in attendance pouring their brews.

Our day would begin – and end – at the Russian River brewpub. We needed to go back and get some footage that we couldn’t get on Friday night. It was way too loud, and admittedly, I was bit tipsy from our day’s drinking and couldn’t get out a coherent sentence.

Besides their amazing beers, Russian River might have the coolest sampler tray ever. The beer markers were bottle caps.

The highlight of the sampler, besides Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig, was Dead Leaf Green, an English style pale ale.

We also tried Fleurette, the beer that Vinnie made with the Italian brewer Agostino Arioli, who owns Birrificio Italiano. Merideth liked this much more than I did and later Fleurette would become her “go-to” beer at the festival.

Then it was off to the festival. We parked at Mitch’s house and walked over to the festival with his crew.

I have to admit that I’m kind of a dork at festivals… there is a plethora of beers and I try to seek out new beers. But when I get that first bad beer, I go back to my go-to beers. And on this day, the go-tos were Pliny, Blind Pig and the Kolsch from Iron Springs.

The lines for beer were quite manageable but the food lines were another story. At Beerfest, the food is included in the admission price. So, if you wanted some of the succulent pulled pork, you had a long line.

Thanks to Jay Brooks for the photo.We ran into our friends Jay Brooks from the Brookston Beer Bulletin and Tom Dalldorf from the Celebrator. We also met a few new beer friends including Gail Williams and Steve Shapiro from Beer by BART and JJ who writes the blog The Thirsty Hopster.

You know it’s a small, intimate festival when Dean Biersch is pouring his own Hopmonk Tavern beer. It was my first time trying it and I have to say that the Kellerbier was exceptional.

However, the festival was not without incident. A person dropped a bottle of beer about 15 feet from me and I was actually wounded by a flying shard of glass.

In a year where we are going to the largest and most famous beer festivals in the world, we will look fondly back on this hot June day in Santa Rosa at Beerfest. In a era where festivals often pose a challenge to be overcome, long lines, noisy, & crowded spaces, it’s nice to go to a festival and relax while drinking beer with friends.

 

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From beergeek to beerdo

Yesterday we started our first North Bay beer excursion in 10 years, and so far it has not disappointed. We took the 3 hour drive up to Fairfax for our first stop, Iron Springs. You may be familiar with their beer ambulance that boasts,”Saving lives one beer at a time”.

Unfortunately, at this time, it may be Iron Springs itself that needs saving. They are having landlord issues, including a huge rent increase. My understanding is that they have no where else to go and may need to close. That would be a big loss, especially because the beer is tasty, the staff friendly, and the food great.

While at Iron Springs, we met up with fellow Aleuminati member, Rob. He had lots of information on the North Bay beer scene and had great insight into the craft beer industry. You can check out Rob’s blog Pfiff!. Thanks to directions from Rob, we then took the scenic route on to Petaluma and our second brewery of the trip, Lagunitas.

It’s amazing that this was our first trip to Lagunitas. We hung out in their loft overlooking the brewery, which the bartender affectionately called the “man den”. It felt like hanging out in someone’s attic. That’s me lounging, drinking Censored while reading Nancy Drew. The bartender went on to tell us that she went to high school with Winona Horowitz, better known as Winona Ryder. Our friendly bartender said that she should have known that Winona was destined to do big things, as she had a green mohawk in high school. Where is Winona these days anyway? Maybe one of you out there has an update for me…

One of the things that was especially nice about Lagunitas is that they serve you beer before the tour. As you can imagine, we skipped out after the beer. Oh yea, another highlight of Lagunitas is that it was my 390th brewery…Go me!

Next we went to Bear Republic in Healdsburg. This was a must for us, because our friend Matt Venzke (Beer Drinker of the Year) went there a few months ago and autographed his picture for them. Matt told us it was behind the bar, so we had to see for ourselves! Sure enough, the bartender Ryan proudly showed it to us. It’s even laminated! We had great fun with his picture, but it made us miss him and wish that he was there drinking a Racer 5 with us.

We ended our Friday evening at Russian River in Santa Rosa. We were last at Russian River many years ago when it was still located at Korbel. If you haven’t been, you need to go. It’s an ultra-hip place (but not douchey), so wear your coolest rockabilly outfit. When you go, make sure that you have lots of time. It isn’t a place that you can run in and out of quickly.

A weird thing happened at RR…when we walked in looking for a place to sit, one of the bartenders said “Hi beergeeks”. Chris had a beergeek shirt on (go figure) with a small logo and I had my sweatshirt on concealing my beergeek shirt. I’m not really sure, but I would like to think that he recognized us. Who knows? He did mention that the video taping of Chris walking in the door was a dead giveaway. The place was busy, so I’m not even sure how he saw all that. Then he brought us each a sample of Pliny. Wow, life is good!

We met some nice people at RR, including a guy named Mitch. He lives about two blocks from the festival site, so today we are parking at his house and walking over. We were even invited to his post-festival BBQ. Oh, and he has two wieners, although they are standards (45 pounds!) and long hairs. Through Mitch, we met Mark, who had the best beer word I have heard in a while…beerdo. You know, instead of weirdo? Maybe I’ll petition Chris to change our site to the thebeerdo.com.

 

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Year in Beer Side Trip – Old School

Who are those young kids?When we were invited to attend the Beerfest in Santa Rosa this coming weekend, we jumped at the chance to road trip it to Northern California.

Besides attending the beer festival and seeing old friends, this was a perfect opportunity to add a couple of new breweries to the list. Since we were last in the area over a decade ago, it was also an opportunity to revisit some breweries.

But I guess the ultimate reason for giving a quick ‘yes’ to the invite was that it reminded us of back in the day when our beer travel was a spur of the moment, ‘want to head over to Marin/Sonoma for the day?’ endeavor.

Back then, we were living in Oakland and popping over to the other side of the Bay was no big deal. Today, it is a three hour drive.

The new breweries that we are visiting:

  • Iron Springs in Fairfax
  • Lagunitas in Petalum (Yes, we have never been to Lagunitas)
  • Firehouse in Sunnyvale

The breweries that we are revisiting:

  • Bear Republic
  • Third Street Aleworks
  • Russian River Brewing

We’re planning on making a One Pint at a Time episode out of this side trip, so be sure to look for it in the future.