SF Beer Week officially started yesterday with a kick-off event at Anchor Steam. I actually started my SF Beer Week celebration a little earlier by heading over to Firehouse Brewery & Grill in Sunnyvale. I went over there for lunch with two other co-workers. I won’t regale you with how we spent most of the time “talking shop” but will instead get right to the beer review because this is a beer blog. I’m sure you have much better things to read about than the missteps of an international IT solutions company.
OTIS (One Tun Imperial Stout), Firehouse Brewery & Grill, 9.8% ABV
Usually I like to shine a light through a beer to determine it’s clarity (or lack thereof) and OTIS is as dark and as opaque as they come. Steve (Firehouse Brewmaster) can always rename it the “black hole” as no light escaped from this beer. In addition to being black and opaque, OTIS has a brown head. The aroma of this beer is a combination of dark chocolate, deeply roasted malts and coffee. The flavor is very similar to the aroma along with the addition of a noticeable hop bitterness. Stouts aren’t particularly known for having a noticeable hop bitterness, so in a sense, OTIS is a bit out of style. That being said, damn beer styles as this is a good beer. After allowing the beer to warm up a little over the course of lunch, OTIS began to remind me of a bittersweet, dark chocolate. This is a full-bodied beer with medium-lo/medium carbonation that is served in a mini-snifter/goblet looking piece of glassware.
Firehouse Barleywine, Firehouse Brewery & Grill, ~10.3% ABV
To be fair, this beer isn’t ready yet. The samples we had were taken directly from the fermenter. The flavors of the beer will continue to develop and change slightly while the addition of carbonation will also affect the flavor and character of the beer. That being said, this is a pretty good beer already.
This barleywine pours out a relatively clear, light brown beer with ruby hues and no head. The aroma is distinctly American with the telltale citrus and floral hop character along with a slight alcohol note. This is an aggressively bitter barleywine. Despite the high level of hop bitterness, there is more than enough malt flavor to keep this beer in check. The more you drink, the less hoppy it becomes because your tongue is so beat up by the hop bitterness that lasts well into the finish. Steve has every intention of having this beer entered into Toronado’s Barleywine festival and I’m looking forward to trying his barleywine against others.
SF Beer Week Kick-off Event at Anchor Steam
I had never been to Anchor Steam Brewery before. I have always heard great things about the tour and I’ve enjoyed their flagship and namesake beer, Anchor Steam. Anchor Steam brewery is the only brewery in the world that produces a “steam” beer. A “steam” beer was a beer produced on the West Coast of America under primitive conditions without the use of ice. While not very descriptive, you can rest assured that Anchor Steam is the only brewery to produce “steam” beers simply because they hold the trademark to the name. Other breweries produce a beer in style called California Common, which is basically a “steam” beer.
To keep a potentially long story short, this was a great event. Sammy and I were invited by Jay Brooks as a way of saying “Thank You” for helping to promote SF Beer Week. For the first time ever, I felt like I was part of the “industry”. Sammy and I got a chance to meet up with and talk to a lot of beer industry people. There were brewers, assistant brewers, other beer bloggers, chefs, brewery owners and actual beer writers. For once, I didn’t feel like the weird guy constantly sniffing his beer and writing down little notes in his little notebook. For once, I was just the guy constantly sniffing his beer and writing down little notes in his little notebook. It feels good to be accepted.
Sammy and I were able to meet new people and catch up with many of our beer friends. We were able to talk Rob and Des from Pfiff!, Gail and Steve from Beer by Bart and Jon from Beer Obsessed. In addition to the bloggers, I was able to meet with Peter Zien and Jessica from small brewery of the year Alesmith. Jessica remembered us from our trip down to San Diego which was really cool. We hung out with Steve (Firehouse brewmaster) and his wife, as well as chat with the homebrew chef Sean Paxton. It really was great to be able to have met all these folks. It’s a great by-product of the experiences this blog has allowed me to have.
Old Foghorn, Anchor Steam Brewing Company, 8-10% ABV
Having already tried Firehouse’s barleywine, I gave Old Foghorn a whirl and came away impressed. This beer is a clear brown in color with a beige head. With a slightly alcoholic note in the bouquet of this beer, Old Foghorn is a sweet tasting barleywine with a roasted malt character and medium hop bitterness. Whenever I think about barleywines, I usually think of them as sweet and this fit right into what I had in mind. I’m going to have to look for this in the stores.
Liberty Ale, Anchor Steam Brewing Company, 6% ABV
Brewed to commemorate Paul Revere’s historic ride, this one specialty beer is now available year-round. Dark gold in color with an off-white head, this is a clear beer. The inital flavor you get is of a medium/medium-high hop bitterness followed up by a clean, malt flavor and sweetness enough to balance out the hops. I felt this was a tasty beer but fairly straightforward in it’s flavor profile.
Our Barrel Ale (OBA), Anchor Steam Brewing Company, ?% ABV
This beer was the reason we all came out to Anchor tonight. Our Barrel Ale, or OBA, is a blend of different Anchor ales that were allowed to age in Anchor’s own Whisky barrels. OBA has a brown sugar, spice aroma with noticeable whisky character. OBA is dark brown with an off-white head. The beer is malty sweet with some dark fruit undertones and chocolate notes. Despite the notable presence of alcohol in both the aroma and flavor, this beer is surprisingly lighter in body than I had expected. Thinking OBA was going to be a full-bodied beer, I was surprised to learn that this beer has a low/medium-low body and low carbonation with an alcoholic astringent quality in the mouthfeel. The hop bitterness is low as well but is balanced by both the malt profile and alcohol character. Chocolatey, even. A very interesting beer.
OBA is a very limited run beer with less than a hundred cases remaining. Bottled in a magum-sized bottle, this is a rare beer that may end up as a collecter’s item. As much as I think that may happen, I hope it doesn’t as beer is made to be drank and not displayed like so much fine china.
After leaving Anchor, Sammy and I drove east to the Trappist where we met up with Mario (from Brewed for Thought). In addition to just wanting to see the guy, Mario carried with him a special treat for me, actually two, special treats: two bottles of Russian River’s new Consecration Ale. It was good to see Mario and hear that his SF Beer Week Event: An Introduction to Belgian Beers, went over very well. He’s a great guy who looks like he’s positioning himself to become a “beer consultant” in the North Bay. More power to the guy, especially in this economy, it’s good to diversify. While at the Trappist, we got to see Nicole for a little bit but I finally got to meet one of the owners, Aaron Porter. I got to talk to him a little bit about the blog, about OBA, and how great the Trappist is. I didn’t want to sound like I was kissing his ass or anything but the Trappist really is a great Belgian beer bar. Hell, it’s a great beer bar! As with many other times I’ve been there, it was packed full of people, the three of us were lucky enough to get a spot by the door. While there, I did get a chance to put one back.
Petrus Oud Bruin, Brouwerij Bavik, 5.5% ABV
This is the first time I’ve had this beer was from a bottle I picked up from BevMo and I have loved this style of beer since. Eager to see what it tasted like on tap, I ordered two glasses, one for myself and one for Sammy.
It was dimly lit inside of the Trappist so I can’t give the most accurate description of the beer. I remember it being a dark brown color, murky with an off-white head. The aroma was mildly sweet, malty and a low level of tartness. The flavor of the Petrus was on the malty sweet side, medium-lo/medium in intensity, almost no hop bitterness and a low/medium-low level of tartness in the finish. It was medium-low/medium in carbonation and in body.
In a way, I was slightly disappointed. I’ve had this beer on bottle and I think it’s phenomenal. Take the above description but amp it up a few notches. Instead of being mildly sweet, it becomes a complex, malty sweet that I would describe as savory. The tartness, which is very appropriate for this beer, is more pronounced and becomes a great counterpoint to all that sweetness which is why you can get away with a lower hopped ale. Even the body seemed a little fuller on the bottle. This makes me believe that most Belgian Ales are meant to be drunk from the bottle instead of the tap. Of course for every one beer that tastes good in the bottle, there are probably 3 that are better on tap, right? Is this just an isolated case?
Surprisingly, I didn’t drink too much at this event. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m growing up and really am drinking for flavor and not to get drunk. Maybe it’s because my lower back’s in pain and I didn’t want to screw up my liver by mixing anti-inflammatory meds with alcohol. Whatever the case was, I feel I am much better off for it. SF Beer Week is a week-long festival and it’d be a shame to be all “beer’d out” on the first day.
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