Last year, Brewmaster Mark Carpenter celebrated his 40th anniversary with Anchor Brewery. According to my notes, he started on September 30, 1971. During GABF, a film crew interviewed a number of us during some side events, and they put together this video that includes some luminaries from the craft beer industry. Congratulations Mark.
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John Heylin, of the Nor Cal Beer Guide, along with several other BABB members, created a little spoof or homage film for SF Beer Week entitled What’s SF Beer Week Like? Drawing on Reservoir Dogs and the cult status of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, the minute and a half video might make you cry, especially if you can’t get Pliny in your hometown. But fear not. As is revealed in the end credits; “No Pliny the Elder was harmed in the making of this video.”
Here’s how John describes his film: “How spoiled is the Bay Area when it comes to beer? This spoiled. Come check out SF Beer Week from February 10th-19th and spoil yourself silly.” I spoke to Vinnie Cilurzo at Russian River Brewing today, and he loved the video, thought it hilarious and sent it to all his employees.
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It’s February, and that means it’s time for the 10th annual Strong Beer Month, once again with six new extreme beers each at 21st Amendment and Magnolia throughout the month, which this year has one more day to help you make it to the finish line. Try them all, and you get to keep the commemorative logo glass. Just collect all 12 punches in your Strong Beer Month ticket before the beer’s all gone.
Here’s the beer for this year:
This year’s theme is the 1978 Who album “Who Are You” featuring Nico “Roger Daltry” Freccia, Ben “John Entwistle” Spencer, Dave “Keith Moon” McLean and Shaun “Peter Townsend” O’Sullivan. Frankly, I think “Moon McLean” might stick as a nickname. Have all twelve strong beers, and you too might start singing “Brew Are You.” I really want to know.
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Friday night Guinness‘ P.R. firm in New York invited me to the start of the Guinness Believer Tour, which debuted in San Francisco this weekend. The idea was to introduce not just regular Guinness, but also Foreign Extra Stout and their new Black Lager to consumers, who as far as I could tell, signed up for the event through social media like Facebook. The event was held at the Terra Gallery on Harrison Street and was pitched as a “multi-media experience that will take you ‘behind the gates’ of the famous St. James’s Gate Brewery.”
Guinness is much more than a beer, and when you raise a pint to your lips, you’re not just drinking it—you are part of it. We want you to be a part of history, connecting you to tradition that spans generations and a spirit that fuels celebrations today. Experience the Gravity Bar in Dublin, discover the heritage behind this famous brand and, of course, raise a pint of the black stuff to Arthur Guinness himself.
So I thought, why not? It’s been a while since I’ve done a Guinness event, in fact I think the last one was when it was still being imported by “Guinness USA,” which is pre-Diageo, I think. So I went to virtual St. James Gate.
The room was set up with different “stations,” or areas where the small crowd of no more than 100 people could meander to and from. The center featured a bar where servers were showing off the 119.5 second “perfect pour” and handing out pints of Guinness. Then there were a few food stations loaded with some very tasty nibbles.
So for the first 20-25 minutes, people sipped their pints, nibbled on nibbles, and meandered from station to station. In addition to the virtual St. James Gate, there was also “Find Your Prefect Pint” station, where you could put in an address to find nearby spots that served Guinness. There was a place to learn to do your own perfect pours from a nitrogen kegerator. There were wall sized display pieces with Guinness history and memorabilia on them, and a slideshow of old advertising lit up the wall.
For the second half of the hour, there was a presentation on a small stage. The host was comedian Dan Soder, who Guinness hired as an “Ambassador” for the tour. I had a chance to chat with him before it all began, and he was an amiable, likable guy and a big Bill Hicks fan, for which he scored bonus points as far as I’m concerned. That portion of the show was interesting. Three short films were shown on the wall, little advertising pieces with high production value showing the history of the brand and other information about the beer. In between, Soder entertained the crowd, and staff handed out small samples of both the Foreign Extra Stout (still tasting great) and the Black Lager (not bad). A comedian, and Dan in particular, seemed to work well to keep things light and moving. They also brought up a pair of volunteers to practice the perfect pour, with prizes to the winner, of course.
All in all, not a bad way to spend an hour. The Guinness was tasting very fresh, which was nice and it wasn’t too cold, which was great. I find it’s often served at a temperature that’s too chilly, but that gravity bar was a cellar temperature.
Am I a believer? Not quite yet, but it was nice to see that served properly Guinness is still a great beer. I do love the Foreign Extra Stout, and was pleased when they began importing it again. My feeling has been that Diageo has mis-managed the brand’s cache over the last decade, but this seemed like a good start toward presenting it well again.
From here, apparently the Guinness Believer Tour was headed to Los Angeles and was then traveling throughout U.S. cities. Check it out if it comes to your town.
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If you were following the twitterverse closely on Tuesday, you might have noticed an interesting story developing, as relayed in tiny bites by Lagunitas owner Tony Magee. I’ve rejiggered the twitter stream, re-ordered it, uncompressed abbreviated words, and added additional ones for clarity in an attempt to make it a more coherent story.
“We had a crazy strong 4th quarter 2011 and are nearly MAXED! out right now. This could cause SERIOUS supply problems as Spring approaches.” As you may recall, “our new brewhouse,” specifically the “Lauter Tun, was savagely attacked by a crane in the mid-Atlantic and that has delayed the start-up by a about a month. Working on the new brewhouse installation and all the plant improvements have been my whole life for the last year, so, for me, it’s personal!” I “don’t want to disappoint friends, customers, retailers, or distributors” and “since the cool new owners of Anchor have become our friends,” and “since their brewers are totally the most experienced Craft Brewers anywhere on Earth, I asked them if they could help us somehow.” They magnanimously said yes, “so we’re working with them right now to brew some IPA draft for us. Can you dig that? Anchor Brewing! Its’a STRAIGHT-UP honor that Anchor is willing to help us through this two-month hump. It is great to have such friends on this crazy competitive left-coast! I love this career. Imagine; working with the brew-co father of us all.”
So that sounds intriguing, right? Lagunitas brewing in the cooolships at Anchor?!? I spoke to Anchor co-owner Keith Greggor, who confirmed that’s exactly what happened. He stressed that we shouldn’t read too much into it, it’s just one brewery helping out another, which is great, I think. So for the next couple of months, head brewer Jeremy Marshall will, from time-to-time, be overseeing Lagunitas IPA being brewed in San Francisco.
They’ll be brewing IPA for draft only there, at least until the new brewhouse in Petaluma can be completed. That also means that shortly, when you an order a Lagunitas IPA from a keg, it could have been brewed at Anchor. As far as I know, this is the first time a non-Anchor beer has been brewed on Anchor’s system at their present location. Now this is a great example of our community, where a brewery can set aside any competitive impulse and help out a fellow brewer in need. As Greggor said. “It just felt like the right thing to do. You help your friends.” How cool is that?
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Yesterday Anchor Brewing announced their new line of beers under the “Zymaster Series,” with the first to debut during SF Beer Week in February.
This morning I spoke to the Zymaster himself — Mark Carpenter — who told me a bit more about the beer. It sounds like it will be a pretty interesting beer, and one I’m definitely looking forward to trying.
Carpenter told me they wanted to do something distinctly Californian, and they searched brewing logs and records that they could find from early California brewers. Reasoning that as soon as brewers had the technological ability to brew lagers, that’s what they did, so they turned their attention to lagers. In California, Boca Brewing is believed to have made the first lager in the state, around 1875 (according to American Breweries II). The town of Boca was located in northeast California, roughy 6.5 miles from Truckee. In 1880 it had a population of around 200 people, though today it’s literally a ghost town. The brewery was founded in 1875 and closed in 1892, four years before the Anchor Brewery opened.
So Anchor set about to recreate the first lager brewed in California. They used California-grown malt and California cluster hops. Clusters were the first hop variety grown in the United States. Though their origin is unknown, it has been “suggested that they arose from hybridization of varieties, imported by Dutch and English settlers and indigenous male hops.” They weren’t able to find enough cluster hops actually grown commercially in the state, but they did find cluster hops growing in Washington using the same bines that used to grow in California, before the hop-growing family took their rhizomes with them when they moved north from California to Washington.
So the first Zymaster Series beer from Anchor is also the first true lager they’ve made (with Steam beer being essentially a hybrid) and was brewed to try as best they could to replicate the first lagers brewed in California. It’s 5% a.b.v. and is a single-hop beer, using only Cluster hops. Because of quality issues in the late 19th century, lagers here tended to be more highly hopped then they are today, and Anchor’s new beer will also reflect that, though they have not yet calculated the IBUs, so no one can yet how hoppy the lager will be. Only one thing is certain, I can’t wait to see what it tastes like.
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For more of my past columns, see Brooks On Beer
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