Recently at the Toronado

Last week at the Toro-nado here in SF, I rode there primarily there to meet Jens Ungstrup,  the primary RateBeerian who, to date, has reviewed 13,546 beers. I’d recently interviewed him for a story on beer geeks in the August All About Beer and he happened to be in town for the Rate Beer Summer Gathering (which I was out of town for over the weekend:-(

In addition to chatting over several great beers (including http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/fantome-saison/7661/ provided by staff), Jens left me with a bottle of Amager Rated XX.

This Danish Double IPA boasts 23 different hops in this one bottle; I'm expecting to be overwhelmed.

Ultimately, it was a night of great drinking that proved yet again what is so great about the beer community, which is, that it’s not just about the beer. Here we were, total strangers (except that I knew something about him, such as that his mom is worried he drinks too much and he has a 12-year-old daughter who doesn’t know what to make of her dad’s hobby), and we spent almost 5 hours together trying 5 new (to us)

beers apiece. For the record, all of mine were winners: Telegraph Reserve Wheat (with lemon verbena and Brett), Russian River Publication (an Imperial Saison brewed for a gathering of publicans), English Ales Black Prince Porter (from a brewery in Monterey I’d barely heard of), the above mentioned Fantome Saison (gor-jus. Truly tasted like str

awberries), and El Toro Deuce DIPA (brewed with 5 hops including my fave, Simcoe).

We were joined by Steve Shapiro from Beer By Bart and his friend Mark, the T’s Betsy, and later Steve’s wife Gail Ann Williams. It was just one of those nights where nothing monumental happened, but the Duvel’s in the details.