Ramblings of Beer Travelers
The latest episode of One Pint at a Time, “Alaska in January?”, is available for viewing.
In our first “Year in Beer” episode, we traveled to Anchorage, AK for the Great Alaska Beer & Barley Wine Festival. As you probably could gather from our posts about the trip, we had a great time in the 49th state and hopefully this episode captures the spirit of the weekend.
So please enjoy “Alaska in January?”.
For all the episodes of One Pint at a Time go to beergeekTV.
Just a quick update… Our local daily paper, the Monterey County Herald, asked us to write an article each month about our YiB experiences. My article about our Alaska trip appeared in today’s paper. Click here to read.
We have received an overwhelming positive response from the story about us that ran on the Associated Press wire. A heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who contacted us.
Included in all of the well-wishing were invitations to beer festivals around the country. While we would love to be able to attend them all, the reality is that time and money are huge constraints on our ability to attend events outside of the YiB schedule.
With that said, we would like to announce two YiB Side Trips:
February 22-24: We will be in Denver for the Beer Drinker of the Year contest. Our friend, Matt Venzke, is one of the 3 finalists and we will be in Denver to cheer him on. I believe Matt has even agreed to wear the “Girls are beergeeks too” Thong during the swimsuit portion of the contest.
May 13-15: After our Franconia and Bergkirchweih Beer Festival travels, we will be meeting Ute and Wolfgang in Cologne for three Flogging Molly shows on successive nights… Cologne, Munich and Vienna. You will remember Ute and Wolfgang from our Bamberg episode of beergeekTV.
When other YiB Side Trips are finalized, we will let you know.
It is already February and the Year in Beer is gearing up for San Francisco… After the great time we had in Alaska, we are looking forward to the YiB’s second installment.
San Francisco is special for a number of reasons. First of all, a significant event in craft brewing industry history happened in San Francisco in 1965; Fritz Maytag purchased the failing Anchor Brewery.
But on a more personal level, this trip is a homecoming. The Bay Area, specifically Oakland, was home for ten years. It is where we went to University and, more importantly, it is where our craft beer education began. So, it was only natural that the YiB would stop in San Francisco.
We will be joined in San Francisco by a host of people; our friend Rowdy who, as you know from my bio, is yoda in our beer story. Also, our friend Chris Devlin makes his YiB debut… the first of at least three… maybe four appearances. And some of our new friends from Alaska are coming down. Plus, there will be a whole cast of characters from our years living there.
We will be in the City February 14th-18th. The week is collectively known as “Beerapalooza” and this is how our schedule is looking right now:
In between, I want to check out a couple of new breweries… hit some of my old favorites like Triple Rock… check out the 3 new Belgian beer bars… and… and…
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that on top of all I mentioned above, February is Strong Beer Month in San Francisco. Put on by 21st Amendment Brewery and Magnolia Pub and Brewery, each will be pouring 6 different strong beers during the month (or more likely, until the beers run out). Drink all 12 and get a commemorative glass.
With everything else happening, I seriously doubt I will drink all 12 over the four days we are in San Francisco, but there are few a definitely I want to try. So, I’ll have to settle for buying a commemorative shirt instead of earning the commemorative glass.
Saturday began slowly, as we needed to recover from the night before. Plus we didn’t really have anywhere to be until the festival began at 2pm.
We took a walk with Matt and Michelle checking out some of the sites of downtown Anchorage. I also wanted to go to this one liquor store so I could buy some Alaskan beer for our tasting.
Merideth was able to do some birdwatching and saw what she was looking for; a waxwing.
It was a mostly clear day, so I have to say that the view from the Captain Cook monument was quite impressive. Your history lesson for the day… Captain Cook is credited with first exploring and describing the Anchorage area in 1778.
For lunch, we made our first visit to Humpy’s Great Alaskan Alehouse, the famous beer bar in downtown Anchorage. Opened in 1994, Humpy’s was the first champion of Alaskan beer and has an impressive selection. Merideth says forget the highly recommended halibut tacos and get the crab roll. Moreover, one of the owners, Billy Opinsky, had the original idea to hold an Alaskan beer festival.
With a few beers and some food under our belts, it was time to get back to the festival.
There were two sessions on Saturday… we only went to the afternoon “connoisseurs” session where there were special beers not available at the other sessions. The most notable was a 1996 Smoked Porter from Alaskan.
Again, we hung out with Matt, Michelle, Jason and Kristina… and met up with our new Alaskan friends as well. And of course, we hobnobbed with all the beer people.
As for the beer…
Served from a firkin, the Anacortes Fresh Hop Imperial IPA might have been the best beer at the festival…
Other notables….Oaked Yeti from Great Divide, a Belgian Dark from Homer, Milk Stout from Left Hand, 2005 Darth Delerium from Moose’s Tooth, 2005 Epic Ale from Roots. And all the stuff from Midnight Sun, especially the seven deadly sins series.
As for the 1996 Alaskan Smoked Porter, it was being served way too cold [The brewery representative said they did it to keep down foaming] so it was difficult to get any flavors out of it. There was more smoke aroma than flavor. I had a 2005 recently that I enjoyed much more.
Now it was time to volunteer, though instead of bread cutting, we filled water pitchers and wiped down the tables between the sessions. All told, we did about 45 minutes of work; well worth it for the free admission.
Our final thoughts on the festival .. wow! A lot of credit has to go to Annie Chavez and Aurora Productions plus the Great Northern Brewers Club for putting on almost flawless events.
We finished up the night back at Humpy’s, drank a few beers and did something really strange; we decided to call it an early night.
Sunday, my birthday, began with a brewers breakfast at Café Amsterdam, the newest and best beer bar in Anchorage. Café Amsterdam is amazing… The best Alaskan beers plus a great selection of lower 48 craft beer and Belgians. We spent several hours there with Matt and Michelle, shooting the breeze with our Alaskan friends. Thanks to Ken and Shauna, the owners of Café Amsterdam, for their hospitality.
For my birthday dinner, we returned to Glacier Brewhouse and Merideth was nice enough to let we wallop her in scrabble. It was my birthday after all.
We would like to thank the following people for making the first trip of the Year in Beer a memorable one… Matt and Michelle… Jim aka “Dr. Fermento”… Annie Chavez… Mike from Celestial Meads… Don and Tracey… Ken and Shauna Pajak… Jason and Kristina…