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Dogfish Head at Toronado Click to View Gallery

Admittedly, my curiosity is what brought me to Toronado last night. I have head a lot of positive things about Dogfish Head beers and I wanted to know if there was any substance to the hype. Living in San Jose, it’s a bit of a drive up to San Francisco for a Monday night’s worth of drinking. It can get pretty difficult enough doing this on a weekend, but a Monday? I just hoped it would’ve been worth the effort.

I can honestly say that it was *so* worth the drive up.

As it is with most places in San Francisco, parking is a bitch. We spent a good 20 minutes cruising the immediate neighborhood looking for a spot. I’d either miss an opening or the spots I did find were too small for my pick-up truck. This time, I kept my composure and we eventually found a spot only a block away.

Unsurprisingly, Sammy and I walked into Toronado and found it packed to the rafters. While not as bad as their Barleywine event, it still took a bit of effort to make our way to the back area. Similar to the Barleywine event, they Toronado opened up an adjacent room usually reserved for storage and special events, such as tonight.

We must have ordered our beers at the peak of demand as it took a while for the bartender to get to us. As in driving and looking for a parking spot, patience was the name of the game. Not wanting to waste the bartender’s time, we Sammy and I ordered a flight of Dogfish Head beers, the Chateau Jiahu, Immort Ale, and the Old School Barleywine. At the front of the adjacent room Sammy and I retreated to were plates of three cheeses designed to pair with the flight of beers we had taken. Unfortunately, I didn’t write the name of the cheeses down. Good thing William Brand has them written down on his blog.

To be completely honest, I didn’t take any notes on how the beers tasted with their associated cheeses. There were many reasons for this, the primary being I was having a good time. It’s hard to “work” at these events where you are thoroughly enjoying yourself, the beers you have on hand and the people you are with. Here are my tasting notes of the beers we tried. Unless noted, all these beers are from Dogfish Head:

• Chateau Jiahu: Wow! Poured and opaque gold not unlike a hefeweizen. I didn’t get too much from the nose but the flavors were fabulous. The beer was tart enough to get your mouth watering but not so much to have you puckering like a fish. There was a noticeable fruit sweetness that wasn’t cloying or overpowering. Creamy mouthfeel. Derived from residues found from 9000 year old preserved pottery in Jiahu, Northern China, this beer has been reformulated with rice flakes, wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, malted barley, hawthorn fruit and Chrysanthemum flowers and fermented with sake yeast. As interesting a beer experience as it gets! Paired with Berkswell Cheese, a sheep’s cheese from England.
• Olde School Barleywine: Robust malt aromas supported by a floral characteristic with a little bit of alcohol on the nose. It’s surprisingly smooth, which doesn’t bode well for the uninformed of its 15% ABV. Paired with Fiscalini Bandaged Cheddar from Modesto.
• Immort Ale: Noticeable smoke on the nose and in the flavor, yet different than a traditional rauchbier. We found this beer to be balanced in flavor, although biased toward the malt side of the beer flavor spectrum. Noticeable alcohol on the nose as well. After coming back home and looking this beer up on the Dogfish Head website, it turns out their barley was smoked with peat. Juniper berries, vanilla and maple syrup were included and fermented with a combination of Belgian and English yeasts. Oak aged. Paired with Isle of Mull cheddar from Isle of Mull, Scotland.
• 90-Minute IPA: Completely unlike any other IPA I have ever tasted. It had a great floral nose. Despite the nose, this beer has an extraordinarily smooth hop bitterness. I mean, if you didn’t know this beer had a 90 IBU rating, you’d think it was in the pale ale range. It’s a big beer to boot with 9% ABV. Another “wow” beer.
• Midas Touch Golden Elixir: Marketed by Dogfish Head as the oldest-known fermented beverage in the world. Like the Jiahu, this beer was formulated from residues found in drinking vessels from King Midas’ tomb (hence the name). We found this beer to have very low hop flavors and aromas while having a pronounced grainy flavor. It’s a sweet beer, having mead-like qualities. This could be considered as another “wow” beer but after having the Jiahu first, Midas Touch Golden Exiler’s thunder may have been stolen. Still another fine, tasty beer.
• Palo Santo Marron: Roasty porter-like beer. Definite wood on the nose and in the flavors. Probably my least favorite of the evening but a good beer nonetheless. The Dogfish Head websites lists this beer as “an unfiltered, unfettered, unprecedented brown ale aged in handmade wooden brewing vessels”. Palo Santo is an exotic Paraguayan wood from which the tanks were crafted from.
• Roddenback Grand Cru: Sour ale brewed in the Flanders Red style. This beer immediately smells like vinegar but tastes anything but. We found this beer to be more tart than sour, with the tartness coming from lactic acid. It poured dark with little head.

Of course, one of the highlights of the event was getting to meet Sam Calagione himself. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the guy. I mean, in the brewing industry, he is a bit of a rock star. I don’t ever recall a moment that night when Sam wasn’t in conversation with someone. Judging by the body language, it all seemed to be light-hearted in nature. Still, I was a bit nervous in approaching him. I wondered what I would say or even breach the conversation he was in. Even before I could come up with a plan, Sam beat me to it by approaching me first. That pretty much set the tone for the entire evening. I found Sam to be very down to earth, approachable, affable and generally fun guy. Sam had an ease and charisma to him that put people at ease. Having done formal speaking engagements and other such structured events, he mentioned he felt most at home in a bar.

What impressed me most about Sam was his ability to remember everyone’s name. I, admittedly, am horrible at remembering people’s names. Imagine being in Sam’s shoes, you are the center of attention at a bar where everyone wants to get their two cents in or ask their questions. It’s easy to remember his name because he’s the star, the man of the moment but throughout the night, whenever he would pass by or I would see him, he always remembered my name. I wish I could say I left some sort of lasting impression on Sam but he did this with everyone. It just shows me how much attention he pays to the people he speaks to and on how well he’s crafted his interpersonal skills to be able to remember people’s names. Very impressive.

The other, arguably, greater highlight of the evening was the many connections Sammy and I made. While meeting Sam and finally sampling Dogfish Head beers made the trip worthwhile, meeting new people and connecting with them made the event memorable. It’s not too often you can go, pretty much cold turkey, to a beer event and have such wonderful conversations. Many thanks to Cassandra, Brian, Kristian, Craig, Christen, Betsy and Joshua for making what was already a good event, an awesome event.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Beer and Food Pairing Event, Craft Beer, News, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.