After a little over twenty-four hours at home, I left early this morning for Denver, where I’m judging again at the Great American Beer Festival. Orientation was earlier this evening and we begin at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning. I got a pretty good group of styles this year, and some real gems. It should be a fun time. Stay tuned for more as GABF week unfolds.

I heard from a colleague today that the long-rumored sale of Drake’s Brewing in San Leandro is a done deal. Apparently the Martin Brothers, who own Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley have acquired it. Since Rodger Davis, Drake’s former brewer, recently was hired by Triple Rock, this makes perfect sense and will also give Triple Rock a production facility. Perhaps we’ll soon see Monkey Head Arboreal Ale in a six-pack?

 
UPDATE: Bill Brand has the full story in today’s paper, entitled San Leandro craft brewery sold to Triple Rock.
 

On Friday afternoon I arrived in North Carolina from London for the World Beer Festival put on by All About Beer magazine. Daniel Bradford and Julie Johnson Bradford had invited me to their event back in April and I was keen to see what North Carolina looked like these days and what changes I’d recognize, having moved to California from Durham twenty-five years ago. I was also giving a presentation and tasting on IPAs during the second session, in the evening. There were a few other writers in town for the same reason, such as Lew Bryson and Rick Lyke. After a brewer’s reception, I retired early, as I had only an hour and half’s worth of sleep the night before and was only able to manage a few catnaps on the plane over the pond. I felt like crap and by all accounts looked even worse. Happily, I woke up the following morning feeling much better. After enjoying visits to two area barbecue places with Lew Bryson (yes, we ate two meals), we headed over to the new Durham Bulls ballpark, where this year’s World Beer Festival was being held.

The World Beer Festival at the new Durham Bulls ballpark.

For many more photos from this year’s World Beer Festival in Durham, visit the photo gallery.
 

After an overnight flight, we arrived at Heathrow Airport shortly before 8:00 a.m. None of us had slept on the plane very much, so we were dead tired, but knew the best way to acclimate was to stay awake. So we made our way to St. Pancras Station, where we would later be taking the train to Burton-on-Trent, dropped our bags, and had caffeine fed into our veins intravenously at little cafe in the station.

We needed to make our way to the Lamb in Lamb’s Conduit Road, where I had arranged to meet a colleague, Martyn Cornell, who writes online at the Zythophile. Having plenty of time we wandered about London, eventually finding our way to the Lamb. We spent a fun and satisfying three or so hours talking about our favorite subject while enjoying some great beer and the best fries … er, chips of the trip, visiting three pubs in the process. Martyn has a more lucid account of time together in a post entitled Why the man from Firestone was deservedly tired.
 

Me and fellow beer writer Martyn Cornell, sharing a pint at the Perseverance.

For more photos from our early arrival in London, visit the photo gallery.
 

This being our 20th monthly Session a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, it’s a wonder I can remember when we started. Ray Merkler and Melissa Ward can though, and they’re the hosts of this month’s Session. They run The Bathtub Brewery and have chosen this month’s topic, or at least that’s my memory. The way they put it is:

Is there a beer that reminds you of a specific memory?

If you’re thinking, “Huh?” then you might want to craft your response along the lines of “Whenever I drink [insert brew here] it reminds me of that day …” Or perhaps it’s the reverse. Oooooh.

For me, music tends to spark more vivid memories, though beer and music are often inextricably linked. If, for example, I hear Paul McCartney’s Listen What the Man Said, I can actually smell the pork sandwiches I ate every day the summer I was fourteen, which I spent working in my stepfather’s car repair shop. In fact, I was just telling this same story to Lew Bryson just a hour ago, and now I can’t get that damned song out of my head.

As for beer, it’s unfortunately a bit more cloudy. Genesee Cream Ale — Genny to everyone, since we were on an intimate basis with her — revives vague and general memories of high school parties, autumn leaves piled high on the street, football games and loose women. It was one of our beers of choice, when we could manage to get it, and the one more of the girls seemed to like — a fact we recognized as a plus.

I can, however, tell you the circumstances under which I tried a certain beer for the first time, but that’s not particularly revealing. There’s no romance to those memories, just the cold hard facts of where and when. It’s pure data, not the sensory impressions and reminisces that I think should properly inspire a good memory.

But if that data also includes the people I was drinking it with then that’s a whole different ballgame. This is where beer’s status as social lubricant really shines. Once that piece of the puzzle fits into place, then the dominoes (sorry to mix my metaphors and cliches) of those memories begin to fall. Because I think in the end, beer is — like most things in life — all about the people you share it with. The beer is merely the catalyst for the memory, who said or did what and to whom, what made you laugh, and how that experience grew friendships or relationships is why you want to remember that time at all.

Sure, there are memories best left forgotten, but as long as you learn from a bad experience, they’re still valuable. And it really is true that most things, while not funny in that moment, become hilarious with the passage of time. I have a friend who broke both her wrists falling off a curb. Tragic then, comedy fodder today. How she managed it is still something of a mystery.

But okay, put a gun to my head. I guess my favorite memory comes whenever I have a beer from the Tied House, with locations in San Jose and Mountain View, California. The San Jose location was a stone’s throw from where I was working downtown in the early 1990s. I’d met a woman working on the same floor as me, and asked to go for a drink after work. Thinking I would like to ask her out on a proper date, I first ordered her a taster in the brewpub’s back garden area and tried her on craft beer, something foreign to her at the time. Her reaction was very positive and she was receptive and open to the experience as I had hoped, and I asked her out on the spot. Two years later, we held our wedding reception on the very same spot, running up the largest bar tab I’ve ever paid. And twelve years later still, she still loves craft beer nearly as much as I do. Tasting any of the beers from the Tied House fills me at once with all of the wonder that the simple decision to know Sarah better has brought to my life, to say nothing of Porter and Alice, the two wonderful children we’ve had together. Now that’s a powerful memory for me and magic in a glass of beer.