SF Beer Week Day 1: ODE to O.B.A.

Kicking off SF Beer Week at a private event at the Anchor brewery in the Portero Hill neighborhood (it's sixth location in its 113 year history) got me in the spirit in a hurry. Many local brewers represented as did various beer-world flotsam and jetsam (ahem). Not only were we treated to Anchor brews fresh on tap and an undying plate of Maytag Blue cheese, the reception ended and guests were invited to gather around the mash tuns and brew kettles for a toast. The debut of Anchor's newest, and very limited release, Our Barrel Ale.
(Left to right are SF Beer Week's creators: Celebrator's Tom Dalldorf, Magnolia's Dave McLean, Beer Chef Bruce Patton, Fritz, 21st Amendment's Shaun O'Sullivan, and beer scribe extraordinaire Jay Brooks.)

Introduced by owner Fritz Maytag and his longtime brewmaster (since '71) Mark Carpenter, this beauty clocks in around 8-9% ABV. It's a blend of other Anchor beers (notably Porter and Bock, and I'd guess no Small Beer) aged around six months in their proprietary barrels--those of Old Potrero
Straight Rye Whiskey. Take some of my favorite beers, blend, aged in barrels of one of my favorite whiskeys, and you've got yourself the "ideal social interchange beverage," if I may borrow a quote Fritz told me.
On a scale of one to ten, I unwaveringly give it a 10.

Just don't start licking your lips. This uber-ltd release goes on sale SOON but with no official release date, and there are barely over 100 cases--bottled only in magnums (would that be "magna"?) like Our Special Ale (a.k.a. Anchor X-mas)--and they'll only be available at the brewery. Thank goodness I live in San Francisco.

Afterward, Half Pint & I headed for our favorite "cheap'n'cheerful" grub stop, Tommy's Joynt, which knows a thing or two about old school Anchor tradition.
Can't wait to see what the next nine days have in store.

A day at the office: Tommy's Joynt

12:46: Pint of Anchor Steam. I love Tommy’s Joynt for a wealth of reasons, but the wall of beers is chief among them. Around 110 bottled beers from around the world, but today I’m starting with a pint of the homegrown stuff.
I’m going to share a pastrami on rye and a turkey on sourdough roll with Half Pint. The ceramic jar of hot mustard—they’re so not kidding about the hot—is calling my name. Mara, the designated “pickle fetcher” ever since her star debut on (an upcoming episode of) the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” was filmed here, is heading toward the (secret) pickle jar.

The delicious carved meats. The tankards and steins adorning the walls. The chatchkes adorning the beams and ceiling. The barflies at the bar. It’s a good day.

1:28: “It was lip-smacking good,” says the white-haired man in the XL Hawaiin shirt to his wife on their way out. I wonder if they had my favorite, the buffalo stew.

Absolutely no one has left the long wooden bar. Jose in his Giants cap and TJ’s baseball 3/4s ringer is pouring mostly beer, but I see a guy with an orange juice based cocktail and another guy with a vodka rocks.

2:02: Looking over the list of wordly beers, for now I skip the offerings from Armenia and Australia and go for the Maredsous Triple from Belgium. I know that for my next round, I’ll at least skip over the beers from Brazil, Canada, and China (though it would be fitting for the final day of the Beijing Olympics). Thanks, Marissa (the new waitress).

2:09: Wonder how much Tommy’s collects from the condom vending machine mounted on the bathroom wall.

3:23: One guy at the bar asks Jose for another pint of Fat Tire, then asks where it’s from. Jose knows it’s from Colorado, thinks it’s from Golden. Another guy corrects him and says it’s from Boulder. I try not to chime in, but the 10% Belgian triple I’m still nursing makes me hand each dude one of my postcards as I say New Belgium’s from Ft. Collins. Mr. “Boulder” says he’s not talking about that, he’s talking about Fat Tire. This same person soon gave me shit for originally being from LA, when he’s actually from Aspen, the Beverly Hills of the Rockies. But pretty soon we’re happy compatriots at the bar until a tasty blond walks in and stands directly between us. Once she gets a book of matches, she’s off, and Boulder/Aspen and I have nothing left to say.

5:19: On second thought, I WILL try an Armenian beer. I ask to look at both bottles. The Erebuni appears to be a standard industrial lager, but the Kilikia Jubilee has a more captivating appearance. Both come in 500 ml green bottles, but the Jubilee label shows four gold medals including, and I only know this because I read Cyrillic (Russian), a medal from the 2002 Sochi (the Hawaii of Russia, not that they’re comparable) beer competition. Swan-kee.

Sam, Susie’s son and therefor representing Tommy’s Joynt’s third generation after Susie’s Uncle Tommy founded it in 1947, before her dad took over in ’55, told me a funny story. He was in Jerusalem trying to open a bottle of beer. Wait, I’m not at the funny part yet. So he’s looking around for a way to open it when this Orthodox Jew with the black hat and the sidelocks and the long beard walks by, grabs the beer, opens it with his teeth then hands it back and just keeps walking. I doubt if you hang out in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with a bottle of brew, no Amish dude would do that for you.

6:00: Mike Lattig shows up and joins me at the bar. He gets a Tusker from Kenya. I get a Spaten Oktoberfest. We enjoy the drunken banter from our neighbors.
7:15: Half Pint returns. Mike’s wife Jen shows up. Mike gets the corned beef platter. I get one of my favorites—the massive turkey leg. Yeah, a whole giant turkey leg, little stuffing, some gravy, period. I know I’ll barely have room for the pickles. Oh, and a slice of chocolate cake, which is rare, since I usually go for the carrot cake.

7:50: A barrage of foreign students or tourists show up and don’t quite get the concept of lining up for the cafeteria-style service. They organize themselves in a cluster. Works for me, since my primary means of organization at home is a strategy I like to call piles.

I ask for the special bottle I had another bartender put on ice for me since they didn’t have any chilled. I know it’s August 28, 2008, but oh my, they’ve got some bottles of the 2007 Anchor Christmas Ale left. It wasn’t as good as the ’06, but I love it and it goes with chocolate cake.

9:45: It’s been eight hours. I put in a full day’s work at my “office.” Time to punch out.

"I had dinner with the Beer Chef"

Perhaps save for "Playmate Quality Control," is there any job more desirable than one with the words “beer” and “chef” in the title? Lucky Bruce Patton is the Beer Chef and his office is an easy walk from me at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. Ever since I heard about his beer pairing dinners, I'd been dying to go. K'ro answered my prayers with a surprise birthday dinner for me.

She tricked me into thinking we were popping into Tommy's Joynt for a beer before dinner. It’s my favorite SF institution. But instead, she yanked me into the hotel with the cocktail hour underway where we each met a glass of Belgian-style witbiers concocted by Craig Cauwels, brewmaster at Schooner's Grille & Brewery in Antioch. (Yeah, I didn’t know where it was, either.)

We took our seats after filling our bellies with beer and hors d'oeuvres and unwittingly sat at a table with Craig and his wife, Mary. Rounding out the table, to K'ro's left sat Renae, Schooner's manager, and to my right, Jay Brooks, celebrated writer with a beer blog of his own.

The way Bruce does it, and he’s got it down pat since the San Fran native has been doing this for over a decade, is he gives a spiel about his menu and the beers from the brewery featured that night. Then Craig got up and spoke. Then we ate and drank.

First course: Caprese salad, using housemade mozzarella and replacing tomatoes with farmer’s market fresh yellow peaches, opal basil, all on a bed of dried cherry vinaigrette. The beer? “Vindication.” Oatmeal stout aged in brandy barrels with cherries. The magic “critters” Craig employed, eschewing traditional brewers yeast, were a colony of Brettanomyces (“Brett”). No standard kriek beer, a style I find too sour and too, uh, cherry-y, this delicious creation struck me as a dessert beer, but life is short and I’m a proponent of having dessert first. Also, it’s 11% ABV.

I’d like to go on about the rest of the dinner, but did I mention how strong that last beer was and that it wasn’t my first or even second of the night? All I know is, the pork tenderloin was terrific, the Irish stout served up my favorite way—on nitro—was outstanding, and next thing I knew, everyone at the table was all kinds of happy.

In case you forgot, this was my birthday dinner. I’d forgotten, too, until, after Bruce spieled the dessert course (butterscotch bread pudding), then that li’l devil busted out a huge, chocolate cake of my own. I wanted to share with everyone present, which entailed me visiting every table, and in doing so, I met some other guests, including fellow beer bloggers, Joe and Todd.

I hope to dine with the Beer Chef again. And I’m now on a mission to make my way out to Schooner’s as soon as possible. Not because I'm eager to see the end of the BART line, but because Craig's creations are out of this world.