I’ve written about surviving SF Beer Week before. here is 2010 and 2011. pretty much everything that you need to know is there. and because we’ve been through the week for the last three years we want to offer a slightly different perspective on surviving.

one of the very best things about San Francisco and the Bay Area is that there is amazing beer all year round. our friends make delicious things that chase the seasons. and other friends are bringing beer from the rest of the world making sure there is no lack of things to taste and try. one could argue that SF Beer week is every week happening 52 times a year. it’s easy enough to lose sight of this fact.

you might not know that the Bistro in Hayward has 5 (or is it 6?) festivals each year. that 21st Amendment has a beer garden serving craft beer in cans before and after every Giants game. City Beer Store busts out special kegs every Wednesday and Thursday. Speakeasy opens the brewery for music and fun every Friday. Thirsty Bear has a cask every Tuesday. Drake’s first Friday is fun or if you want a more grown up experience hang out in the Barrel room any time. Toronado and Beer Revolution play host to breweries offering a night to meet brewers and try loads of beer they made. and don’t’ forget all the rest of them: Bender’s, Pi Bar, Gordon Biersch, Public House, Social Kitchen, Comstock, Magnolia, Triple Rock, Zeitgeist … we’re forgetting a few. sorry.

four years ago was San Francisco’s first Beer Week. but before there was SF Beer Week it was already a kind of a beer week. the Bistro had the Double IPA fest. a week later was Toronado’s Barley Wine gathering. the day after that the Celebrator had a party. and on top of that Magnolia and 21st Amendment made February into Strong Beer month. there was no lack of things to do. and drinking it all was challenge because everything was big.

it’s easy to look into the crystal ball that lays out SF Beer Week then finding yourself getting a feeling of overwhelming dread. there is so much to do and everything looks fun that you really want to give the menu back while nodding saying “YES! please bring me one of everything!” but that’s not possible. you’d die. maybe you’d die happy. but my second thought is “maybe I just want a cheese burger and a Coors Light. I’ll see you fools in 10 days.”

okay, okay, okay. I’m kidding. lets get down to what you should not miss.

if you don’t have tickets already it’s too late. it’s sold out. the Opening Gala. yes. yes and yes. everyone is here. all the San Francisco brewers. more brewers from around the bay. brewers from the north. there will be close to 70 breweries attending by the time the doors open. when those doors do open what you are looking for is that one special keg that each has hauled up from the cellar to pour for this momentous party. we’ve been hearing about barrel aged this and made special since at least last year. plus we got to try some of it along the way. yeah, you don’t want to miss out. even if the most you get to try is short 3 ounces. you can always get back in the line.

this is why you want to plan the rest of the week so you don’t get shut out. to help you find what’s going on there’s an App for iPhone or Android and there’s a web version. you need these. make a plan of what you’d like to do. you can make an account so you can put those events on your calendar. then you’ll know. you can stop looking after you make your plan. you’ll also want Twitter running on your device in some way. be sure to follow some people. we’ll list a few as it gets closer. but the twitter buzz will tell you before you get there what it’s really like. several events last year so so popular that people got turned away. and there’s no getting around full because of occupancy laws. tune in before you go so you’ll know if you have a chance of getting in.

speaking of lines. Russian River makes lots of beer that isn’t Pliny. one report spoke of 23 different beers on the beer board at the pub in Santa Rosa. Natalie and Vinnie didn’t set out to make this beer a cult following. they just wanted to make a seasonal IPA. but the echo chamber will has made sure that the hype is there making the line for this beer impossibly long for no reason. this makes the anomaly that is Younger is just that. the beer is worth trying to be sure. I’m always down for a pint of something new. but geez, it’s just a beer. there is no reason to get mental over missing it. the good news is that lots of places have at least one keg meaning there will be plenty to go around.

while everyone is waiting in line not getting any Younger there will be lots of other beer just as rare (or possibly more so) that you should be pay attention to finding. an old of russian imperial stout that sat in a barrel. the cherry something that got reblended with new beer for balance. or that beer that made its way all the way from Kalmazoo because somebody thought it was a good idea to pour it for one night. that’s the stuff you don’t want to miss.

after the opening event what’s next? here’s where it gets weird. if you follow the echo chamber you’ll end up in Hayward. but maybe Double IPA isn’t your thing. there’s a Beer and Chocolate event. Triple Rock is doing a beer release for something we don’t want to miss. but then it’s Saturday which brings out all the other people. maybe this is a good night for a bottle of anything and a movie?

beer dinners are the temptress of the week. there’s at least one amazing multi course offering every single night. our advice on beer dinners is that smaller is better. which means if you think you want to attend something buy your tickets or make your reservations the second you decide. it will sell out. every event does. we like that our chef friends like Sean Paxton and Bruce Patton have special dinners boasting 5 to 9 courses. but we’ve also been annoyed by these kinds dinners. although to be fair it wasn’t the fault of the chefs. serving a room full of people at nearly the same time is no small feat. but cold food and not enough beer are features we’d like to not pay for any time soon. because the prices of these events beg for perfection. it may be yummy but let’s just say that we’ll be skipping dinners to focus on other places. besides there are lots of chances for beer paired dinners. not only does Monk’s Kettle do one at least once a month but we hear about dinners happening all the time around the bay area.

that said, the “dinners” that we liked the most last year were the simple things. 4505 made sausages infused with beer that got grilled on an afternoon and temporally put on the menu. or that chef that made “snacks” each one to be paired with a beer that came in an elegant snifter. or just enjoying the same slice of pizza I eat all the time with that pint of awesome.

there are so many things going on that nobody could possibly think of covering it all. you’d be lucky to have just one experience every night. and even that is 10 nights of going out in a row. overloaded, exhausted, burned out, and tongue tied come to mind for how we feel at the end of the week that lasts 10 days.

with all the above said I offer a short list of tips that will make your SF Beer Week more enjoyable:

find the road less followed.
go to the places that haven’t had beer events in the past.
show up really early or really late.
if there is a line out the door find a door that doesn’t have a line.

in closing we have to mention the Celebrator party that closes off SFBW. it’s held in the warehouse of Trumer in Berkley. this means you have a chance to try the freshest pilsner possible. one that has to travel all of 10 feet meaning there is no way for it to get damaged or abused. and that right there is worth the price of admission.

see you everywhere!

you know those books that list 300 things you must try? chances are half of what’s in there is unobtainable. so why not make your OWN book. 500 Beers is your book that contains everything you need capture all the unique beer that you are drinking. it contains space to log the details of your quest for trying beers close to your home or around the world. there is space to write the what, where, and when for each beer. and there is lots of space for notes, pictures and labels. this is a living book. it’s up to you to make it yours.

inside there are four types of pages:
a detail page where you list the beer, brewery, style, location you drank it and the date.
a progress bar that you fill in so you have a visual time line of just how many beers have made the list.
the grid pages are there for doodles, pictures, maps, specific notes or anything else you might want to capture.
mark maps in the back of the book where you beer came from. there’s even room for you own maps.

500 Beers is a fun way to learn about beer.

buy the book from our robot printer called Lulu now.

it’s sooooo close…

1) I don’t like the cover art. so that gets changed. fixed. see the revised cover above.
2) the text and the margins are wrong on some of the pages on the wire wound version. too close and too big. fixed.
3) watch that edge. seriously. fixed.
4) it’s obvious that some pages are in the wrong place. reflowed.
5) smaller type in places. yep, make the typeface smaller. make the typeface small. made smaller.

here’s the snaps.

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some of the big stouts like Abyss, XXIII or Serpents and even 15 from Stone all have flavors that will get masked by cold. but even every day Black Butte Porter benefits from warming. in the USofA Guinness is almost always served too cold as most beer bars don’t have a choice or way of controlling temperature just for one keg.

it might not be enough to just take beer out of the fridge and let it warm up. some beer will benefit from agitation in the glass. or air might interact with it as it’s being poured allowing it to “open up” the same way a scotch or red wine develops in the glass. we’ve all had an experience where we’ve not been impressed with the drink, but it aside and 10 minutes later it’s a completely different drink.

that’s why you shouldn’t be in a rush to down what you just poured from the bottle. of course there are exceptions. Kølsch for example. needs to be cold which is why it comes in a tiny glass. Pale and IPA generally are what they are right out of the bottle.

one simple way you can learn about what gets better as it gets warmer is to set aside a beer that you are enjoying and order another beer. after you finish your next beer go back to what you saved. what you will find is always going to be a surprise. which is, that some beer does not get better at all.

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Brews on the Bay – Jeramia O’Brien located on the water in SF
September 10th
http://sfbrewersguild.org/botb.html

Biketoberfest Marin Fairfax, CA
Sunday, September 25, 2011
www.biketoberfestmarin.com

Wet Hop Festival
October 15 – Bistro – Hayward, CA
http://the-bistro.com/

Bay Area Craft Beer Festival
Oct 22
http://www.bayareacraftbeerfestival.com/

video: the boil, the first grain out video, and the other grain out video, and finally here’s the sound of a conical fermentor.

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you’ve heard it said before that “all beer tastes the same” when referring to “factory beer”. the best way to think of these beers is as the lowest common denominator with regards to taste, smell and expectations. they were designed with a precarious balancing act in mind: making a beer that tastes like something, has a buzz inducing quality and is cost effective to make while maximizing profits. add in a little advertising to tell people what they want (and expect) and wha-laa fizzy yellow beer that is consumed by zillions of people.

what we found echos our previous findings:
you can taste the difference between all four of these beers.
they aren’t very good when you compare this beers to craft beer.
in the right context any of these beers could be refreshing.
if you do your homework you may come to a similar conclusion.

homework:
get four factory beers and try them side-by-side-by-side-by-side. you don’t have to drink the whole beer. be sure to talk about the things that you are tasting: sweet, bitter, crispness, mouth feel and the carbonation. bonus homework is to compare the same beer in bottles and cans because there is a difference sometimes. the cans are better.

beer on the show:
Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors and Coors Light
Dogfish Head Festina Peche

the new voice is Alex. you can see her pondering which beer. and here’s a link to a video of her getting it mostly correct.

before you head out for IPA Day download and “fold a book” containing information about India Pale Ale. it’s easy to make. all you need is a printer and some scissors. there is no glueing, taping or stapling required. print as many as you like and hand them out at your IPA Day event.

IPA Day fold-a-book PDF link.
IPA Day fold-a-book JPEG link.

want to make your own book? the pocketmod tool will help you.

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here’s a gallery of the sketches that were the basis for the fold-a-book. some things changed, stuff got cut, and some of it stayed exactly like it was imagined.

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Thursday, August 4th is IPA Day. the idea is for you to introduce your friends to a craft made IPA. which is a fine thing to do. but there are some things you might want to consider before you take the advice on what to introduce to your pals. IPA is a big bold beer compared to what passes for a “normal” beer. it’s full of aroma and is often very bitter. these are two characteristics that make it very different. and not everyone will share your enthusiasm for these things because they are counter to what we’ve been told to like by marketing. just because it’s the go to beer and favorite among craft beer drinkers doesn’t mean that a Bud Light drinker will like it. don’t be surprised if they just can’t take the intenseness of IPA and order something else tasty for them.

another thing to consider is that the middle of summer is not the best time to introduce this beer. we’ve found that the hotter the temperature makes less hoppy taste even better. a crisp Pilsner or Kolsch can be amazing on a hot day (conversely when it’s cold these styles might taste too thin).

there are a few things that continuously bug us about IPA.

- none of it is going to India. so there’s no reason to call it this anymore.
- if you look up the recipe for IPA from the books publish 150 years ago you will find something not that much more then the Pale ale of the time. these beers were aged in barrels of unknown conditions for at least 120 before they were consumed. this is very different from the out of the fermenter and into the serving tank in 14 days repeat that the local breweries have to maintain.
- lots of people order IPA because it’s the simplest thing to order on the beer list. having clever names doesn’t help the knob buying beer.
- or they are ordering the beer because its the highest ABV on the list. they aren’t drinking it for the hops, balance or aroma. it might as well be Colt 45.

all that said, we think it’s fine to have an IPA day. but there is the question about the other 4o styles of beer… are we going to have days for them too? it might have been better to start with plain old Pale. not as hoppy and way more accessible as a style coming from a yellow fizzy beer. or Stout. mostly because it has the challenge of color. but we’d skip Guinness and pour one of the richer beers instead. or we might just order up a local Pilsner and do a side-by-side tasting with the other person’s favorite beer.

okay IPA lovers it’s your turn. drag your friends to the pub but please keep in mind what this beer is and how you long it took for you to love it.

link with more info about IPA Day.

IPA Day fold-a-book JPEG link.
IPA Day fold-a-book PDF link.

Beer with food pairing dinners are a great way to learn a lot about beer in an evening. usually these events are structured in a way that will leave you happy and full. if you’ve never been to one of these events here’s some things you can expect.

the beers won’t be a full pint. and this is a good thing. sometimes you won’t like the beer that is in front of you. which means that you’ll be dumping it in the bucket. and while it seems unfair to the beer imagine dumping a whole glass.

the food won’t be big either. remember these are portions designed for pairing. usually each beer has something that it goes with. meaning in an evening you’ll have 5-9 “courses” which turns out to be a lot of food.

this means that smaller is better. you’ll get to try more beer and eat a large diversity of food. but more importantly you don’t want to get “full” unless you like this feeling.

somebody will want to talk. this is the part of the learning part. usually your guide will tell you about the style of beer that is in front of you, what the brewer had in mind while making it and possibly a funny story to wrap it up. usually brewers and owners are quick with their words allowing you to get back to your own tables conversation.

speaking of your table, be sure to introduce yourself to everyone. you never know who will be next to you. we’ve met beer writers, judges, geeks, travelers and home brewers all of whom have a ton of knowledge that is relevant to the evening.

sometimes these things seem like they cost a lot of money. but added up it’s not that much more compared to a regular night out. remember this is part classroom, part show and a chance to try things that you might otherwise ignore or miss.

do and don’ts
if you’d like more beer be sure to finish what you already have.

before you dump a beer ask you table if they would like to finish it. somebody will appreciate that you asked.

try all the beers. don’t skip one just because you don’t like the color. who knows, that barley wine may be the best thing you’ve ever tried.

it’s a marathon not a sprint. you are going to sample food and beer for over 3 hours. so go slow. enjoy the whole night.

it’s ok to ask questions! ask your table, your hosts and the brewers.

upcoming events:

Beer School at 21st Amendment August 2011

Explore Your Craft featuring beer from Widmer Brothers:

San Francisco – August 13th
Orlando – October 18th
Seattle November 19th