A Tale of Two Tasting Bars

Beer had endured a long history of second-class citizenship in the alcohol world. It has never been seen as sexy, sophisticated or worldly as wine or as refined, experienced and mature as distilled spirits. Thankfully, American craft beer and flavorful European imports are slowly changing society’s perception of beer. The biggest barometer of change is right in our neighborhoods. Our local grocery stores are beginning to stock better beer, while specialty liquor shops have greatly expanded their existing selections.

Perhaps the biggest measurement of change is where we’re not only purchasing our beers but where we’re consuming them where even the diciest of watering holes can be beer meccas. The demand for craft beer, both domestic and imported, has increased to the point where a new type of business has emerged: the craft beer tasting bar.

The idea of a tasting bar, long dominated by the wine industry, for craft beer is a fairly new one. The very notion that beer was on the same level to be enjoyed and sold in a similar manner as wine seemed like a dream. Thankfully, this dream is now a reality, two realities, really. I had the chance last week to visit City Beer and Beer Revolution; while both are craft beer tasting bars, they couldn’t be any more different.

City Beer, 1168 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 map

City Beer was the brainchild of owners Craig and Beth. Long frustrated with the “inability to mix and match a six pack”, they thought up the idea for City Beer while on vacation. The idea was both ground-breaking and simple at the same time; possibly eliciting many palm-to-forehead reactions.

Located on Folsom between 7th and 8th streets (closer to 8th), City Beer is unmarked and unremarkable from the outside. Unless you knew exactly where to look, you’d probably have missed it altogether. Inside, it’s a slightly different story.

Everything I’ve ever heard about City Beer was an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp”. It was both tiny and had an expansive beer selection. It was intimate yet had a very good craft beer selection. I had trouble imagining what that looked like. After arriving at City Beer, I no longer had to imagine.

City Beer is small. There were about 3 tall bar tables with stools and 2 chairs and a small side table for people to sit on. Their bar is essentially a 2-tower, 6 tap kegerator, easily dwarfing my home setup 3 times over, maybe more. It’s semi-permanent and could possibly be relocated if necessary. Housing all their beer were two, sliding door refrigerators and a shelving system in a back corner. Cases of beer are stacked against various walls amidst kegs of various sizes. It doesn’t sound like much, and I might’ve been a little underwhelmed by the place when I first walked in, but trust me when I say that it’s more than enough.

While there, Mrs. BetterBeerBlog and I decided to have a few beers. We were pleasantly surprised when our friend Gabi joined us unexpectedly and we extended our stay there by a few more hours. Coincidentally, we stayed long enough for Rick Sellers of Odonata Beer Company to roll on through for their Saison tasting.

Toria Tripel de Hoevebrowers, 8.5% ABV

Straw blonde color with a white head. The beer has a slight sweetness up front that quickly gives way to an unexpectedly assertive bitterness. It hides its 8.5% ABV well.

Midnight Sun, Kodiak Brown, 5% ABV

Clear brown color with a tan/brown head. Roasted malt flavors with a hint of chocolate. Medium-low hop bitterness, medium-bodied beer with medium carbonation.

Mikkller, Barrel-aged Black Hole, 13% ABV

This beer is their Black Hole brewed with coffee, honey and vanilla aged in wine barrels. Gabi actually picked this one up for us to share; at 13%, this was a big beer to have to go solo on. This beer pours out a very dark brown with a creamy, lasting brown head. Roasty, chocolatey aroma with a prominent coffee character and noticeable alcohol aroma. I often mistake the particular coffee aroma in this beer (and many other beers) for spicy, green pepper aromas. The coffee Mrs. BetterBeerBlog and I grind at home has a medium roast that is freshly roasted by a local coffee roaster. It does not smell like the coffee aromas I catch in many beers. In fact, I have never smelled coffee like that until I was next to someone at work changing out the coffee grinds from the machine; those grinds smelled like the coffee I smelled in beer. We have horrible coffee at work. Anyway, the flavor follows the aroma closely, with the addition of oak flavors that give the beer a slightly astringent mouthfeel. There is a perceptible, very warm if not outright hot, alcohol quality to the beer.

Mikkeller has a well-deserved reputation of making interesting beers but in the few instances I’ve tried them, they’ve failed to impress. In some cases, their product doesn’t travel very well but in this case, I just wasn’t enamored with the combinations. I give them props for doing something different though.

Odonata Beer Company, Saison, 6.4% ABV

I had heard so many good things about this saison, their flagship beer. I’ve tried some of their other beers, in particular their sour ales such as Beersel and Rosa (both named after the cities in which the yeasts used to make them originated from), and have come away very impressed so I had high hopes for this beer.

The saison has a slightly yeasty aroma with citrus character. It pours a cloudy gold color with an off-white head. The flavor is slightly sweet with some peppery flavors, some pit fruit flavors and some lemony citrus notes. Hop bitterness is low. This is a highly carbonated beer with medium body.

Initially, I was disappointed with the beer. The aroma was lackluster; it had an American hefeweizen character to it that was bland. So I let the beer warm up and that’s when this beer opened up for me. The aroma started to exhibit more fruity esters while a funky yeasty character emerged. The flavor description above is from when the beer warmed up. In the end, I think their saison ended up being a solid beer. It wasn’t the best example of a saison that I’ve had but it’s solid.

Eventually, Mrs. BetterBeerBlog and I had to leave. Had to. We had arrived well before the “after work” crowd but once they arrived, the already small City Beer seemed to get that much smaller. Ruining what had been a very pleasant time was a customer who reeked of foul body odor. Oh, mygawd. How could you not know you stink. Badly. Very, badly. At one point, I held the glass of Odonata Saison up to my nose just so I could filter the air through the beer (didn’t work). I went one step further and dipped my finger into the saison and wiped it across my upper lip thinking it would mask dude’s horrid stench (also didn’t work). In the end, we just settled up our tab and left.

If I ever open up my own place and some dude walks in reeking like that, I will kick him out. That’s just rude, not just to me but everyone in City Beer.

Beer Revolution, 464 3rd Street, Oakland, CA 94607 map

Beer Revolution is located in what is quietly becoming a center of craft beer for the City of Oakland. Just half a mile away from Beer Revolution (BR) is the Belgian beer bar The Trappist; about a block away from them is Pacific Coast Brewing; and a mere mile away is Linden Street Brewing Company. One could, if one were so inclined, drink away an entire day in Oakland. *Note to self: drink away an entire day in Oakland.

As I mentioned before, although Beer Revolution and City Beer are similar businesses, they are very different. Finding BR isn’t really that difficult, it’s right off the 880. Finding parking isn’t too bad either, we found a spot a block away. While City Beer is just a few blocks off the freeway, street parking can be difficult depending on the time of the day.

BR is located in a boxy off-white/beige colored building and, if it weren’t for the Delirium, München and Lagunitas branded umbrellas on their patio, we might’ve missed them. Unlike City Beer, BR does have a “Beer Revolution” sign on the far left of the building that is about 2′x2′ in size but if the patio was full like it was the day we went, it would probably have been obscured by the crowd.

Californian’s are blessed with over 300 sunshine filled days a year and having a spacious patio like the one BR has is a definite plus, especially on warm days. City Beer started to warm up while we were there but there was no patio area to act as overflow. The inside of beer revolution is a hodgepodge of different things. All along the left side wall are 3 sliding door refrigerators that carry the entirety of BR’s bottle selection. To the right is BR’s bar area where they have 12 taps spread along 2 kegerators similar to the one in City Beer. In between, and scattered throughout, were beer bottle cap adorned used barrels that served as tables. Bar stools were loosely assigned to each barrel but depending on the size of the groups of people there, you may or may not get a seat. In fact, Mrs. BetterBeerBlog and I stood for the majority of our time there.

So while BR refrigerates all their bottles, all those fridges pump out a lot heat making for a toasty environment inside of BR. Taking note of this, I wanted to order a nice, sessionable beer from their tap list but many of the beers available were big. Linden Street did have 5.5% beer on tap but I changed my mind and ordered a Drakes while Mrs. BetterBeerBlog pulled a bottle of something sour from the fridge.

Oud Beersel, Oud Gueuze Vieille, 6% ABV

This beer pours out a clear, gold color with a white head. Its aroma is decidedly tart with a funky, barnyard-ish aroma characteristic of Brettanomyces. The flavor is initially sweet malt, like Belgian pilsner, that surrenders to a pleasant lactic sourness that is refreshingly tart on such a warm day. The beer is medium-low bodied with a spritzy carbonation that finishes dry.

I enjoyed this beer very much and if I had a do-over, I might’ve ordered a similar beer. Or maybe that Linden Street brew I originally wanted.

Drakes Brewing Company, Latatine, 7% ABV

This beer is a hazy, amber colored beer with a thin, white head. Slightly sweet malt flavor upfront with a slightly spicy alcohol quality. Low hopped in both bitterness and flavor. This beer had an unexpectedly chewy body and low/medium-low carbonation.

I didn’t like this beer. I left more than half of it behind. I didn’t know what to make of it. I normally like Drakes’ beers, they’re a phenomenal brewing company that makes some really solid beers, such as their 1500, but I was disappointed with this one. I am willing to admit it could’ve been palette fatigue as we did have quite a few beers over at City Beer. It also could’ve been the heat finally getting to me. In either case, Latatine just wasn’t doing it for me.

While City Beer does serve cheeses to enjoy with their beers, BR does not serve food whatsoever. They do have a good working relationship with the vegetarian place next door though. In fact, Sammy walked next door, placed her order and delivered it to us at BR. That’s pretty cool. Mrs. BetterBeerBlog ordered fried okra (yum!), cornbread (yum!) and “mac and cheese”. It’s not really a true mac and cheese because they use curry instead of cheese. It was actually pretty good but when you’re expecting real cheese, curry’s just not going to cut it. You’re not limited to just picking things up from the vegetarian place though, I believe you can bring in your own food if you wanted to as illustrated by the young woman throwing away an empty box of Dominos Pizza.

BR is a new place having opened up in early February to coincide with SF Beer Week 2010. Owners Fraggle and Rebecca have a punk inspired look about them that permeates BR. Besides playing as fast you can, one of the ideals of the punk movement was the idea of doing things yourself. BR has a lot of this character; it’s on the walls, the bottle capped barrels, the artwork and even the name of the place. Beer Revolution is an extension of its owners, and when your owners are craft beer fanatics, that’s not such a bad thing.

Overall

City Beer and Beer Revolution are great places to discover new craft beer and enjoy existing favorites. City Beer has an intimate feel and despite its cozy dimensions, offers a great selection of beers. Parking is limited to what you can find on the street so maybe public transportation or a cab might be better choices. Beer Revolution is a bit larger than City Beer, has a patio, refrigerates all their bottled beer and has twice the taps of City Beer. Unlike City Beer, they do not serve any food but you are welcome to bring food in. While Beer Revolutions seems to have “more” than City Beer (size, taps, cold beer), more doesn’t necessarily translate into “better”, just different.

Both City Beer and Beer Revolutions are extensions of their owners. If you haven’t already gone, I recommend you go to both and see which scene fits you best.

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