This Saturday in the city of Fairfax, in Marin County, the 16th annual Fairfax Brewfest will take place from 1:00-5:00 p.m. Along with festival sponsor Iron Springs Pub & Brewery, at least 17 breweries will be pouring their beer. Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door, for unlimited samples and full details, along with how to buy advance tickets online, can be found at the festival website. See you there.
The San Francisco-based band The Famous regularly plays the beer circuit and can frequently be seen performing at beer festivals and brewpubs around the Bay Area. They’re a terrific band. I’ve seen them several times, most recently at Vinnie Cilurzo’s 40th birthday party at Russian River Brewing. At Vinnie’s party, The Famous did a song created for the occasion, Pliny the Elder or The Pliny Song, an awesome little homage to the beer and the man it was named for. They’ve now recorded a studio version of it, and have created a music video to go along with it. Enjoy.
Yesterday was Pliny the Younger Day at Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, California. I arrived a little before eleven, and owner/brewer Vinnie Cilurzo let me in the back of the brewpub. The difference between last year’s release day and this year’s was immediately apparent. There was relative calm in the place, the bar was not three or four deep, with people pushing against the bar clamoring for attention. Perhaps most importantly, both Vinnie and Natalie seemed relaxed, too.
Last year, you may recall, Russian River sold out of of Pliny the Younger, their Triple IPA that’s released just once each year, in just eight short hours. The brewpub was filled to the gills and the staff was understandably stressed and exhausted. The main reason this happened last year was nobody expected so many people to order growlers, and having placed few restrictions on them, they continued to honor orders until the entire supply of beer ran out.
Having learned from last that experience, this year no Pliny the Younger growlers were permitted. They also managed the door and made sure it was never too crowded inside, which made for a much more enjoyable experience. A line of people that stretched down most of the block outside waited patiently for their turn to come inside. As people left, a new customer took their place so there was a steady stream of new patrons.
I actually thought this year’s Pliny the Younger was even better than last year. It seemed more balanced and the hop wallop wasn’t as vegetal or oniony as I remember it being last year. There is nothing quite like having it fresh from the source on the day it’s released. And this year, they’ve allocated enough beer so it will be available for at least two weeks, giving many more people a chance to try get some.
It will also begin appearing in select accounts around the Bay Area, so keep an eye on your favorite water hole. But act fast, last year kegs of Pliny the Younger kicked at some bars in a matter of hours.
Vinnie Cilurzo, me and Joe Tucker (from Rate Beer) enjoying a day at Russian River Brewing.
Below is a slideshow of Pliny the Younger Day. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
It was bound to happen, but at least it’s being done by someone we know and trust to treat beer and homebrewing with the proper respect. The Brewing Network has partnered with KOFY Channel 20 to create a new reality TV show about … homebrewing. The show, to be called Brew Your Own Beer TV, will take the form of a “game show-reality style program pitting teams of homebrewers and craft beer lovers against one another for some really great prizes. It will be shot all across the greater Bay Area in parking lots and bars and breweries.”
Here’s what they’re looking for:
We are looking for beer lovers of all types, men and women, couples, teams, bikini models — as long as they have a general understanding of how beer is made and a flexible schedule, they will be considered for the show.
Do you love beer? Are you a home brewer or craft beer enthusiast? Are you interested in learning more about the brewing process while competing with other brewers for great prizes?
We are casting for a reality show that centers around home brewers and craft beer lovers in the greater San Fransisco Bay Area.
Applicants must have a LOVE for beer, a desire to learn more about the brewing process, and a flexible schedule between February 20th and June 15th. A basic knowledge of how beer is made is required but home brewing experience is not a must — we want beer lovers of all knowledge levels.
21 and older only!
To apply: e-mail your name, recent photo, brewing experience (if any), an explanation or example of your passion for beer, and a reason why you should be a part of this TV show. If possible, you may also submit a link to a short video that further explains why we should select you and to help us get to know you better.
Deadline for submissions is February 15th!
The casting call is also on Craigslist and that’s where the e-mail address to use for applying can be found. Or you can simply e-mail the Brewing Network.
My understanding is that there will be ten teams of homebrewers competing, so not every team has to consist entirely of expert homebrewers. You’d need at least one, of course, but enthusiastic assistants that work well together would most likely make for the best team, rather than all homebrewers who might have trouble agreeing on how to proceed. There will be contests and competitions along the way to eliminate teams until one emerges victorious. Sounds like it could be great fun.
Good luck to everybody, and good brewing. But hurry up and apply, there’s less than two weeks to go.
The iconic Budweiser Clydesdales debuted on April 7, 1933 and have a big promotional part of Anheuser-Busch ever since. Most come from Grant’s Farm in St. Louis. Today there are six teams of Clydesdales. One is headquartered in St. Louis and the other five travel the country. On Saturday, one team — or “hitch” — visited the A-B brewery in Fairfield, which is the smallest of the twelve ABI breweries in the U.S.
Believe it or not, I’d never been to the Fairfield brewery (I have visited at least three others, however). But my six-year old daughter’s love of horses made this weekend the perfect time to finally correct that oversight. So I responded to the press release I got, and arranged to come a little early so I could still make the Brewing Network’s Winter Brews Festival in Berkeley the same day.
But back to the horses. Clydesdales are Scottish in origin. They’re large draft horses, often six-feet high (18 hands) at the shoulder, weighing as much as 2,000 or more pounds, and are thought to be at least 300 years old. After a quick tour of the facilities, Alice and I arrived in the parking lot just in time to watch the horses being taken off their tractor trailers and hitched up to the wagon.
Each hitch consists of ten Clydesdales that travel in three tractor trailers, along with the ceremonial beer wagon. Horse-drawn wagons were quite common for beer deliveries before the invention of the automobile, and continue to be used for ceremonial purposes throughout the world. The Radeberger brewery near Dresden, Germany still makes local beer deliveries on a horse-drawn wagon. It was a cool sight when I visited the brewery several years ago.
My daughter Alice, with her stuffed Clydesdale, in front of the Budweiser beer wagon.
The first two hitched to the wagon.
Eventually, eight Budweiser Clydesdales were hitched to the wagon. Then, for about an hour, they paraded around the parking lot to the delight of a few hundred people, who showed up even in the drizzling rain. And especially my daughter, who was thrilled to see the horses up close. You can see a short video of the parade’s start below.
Below is a slideshow of the Clydesdales’ visit. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
January is usually a slow time for beer in the Bay Area, so it’s nice that last year the Brewing Network stepped up and put on a great new beer festival featuring winter beers in Oakland. They’re back again and this year it will be held in a new location at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, just two blocks from the Downtown Berkeley BART station.
The 2nd Annual Winter Brews Festival will be held on Saturday, January 29, 2011, from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. “Tastings will feature a wide variety of local brews and unique innovations from some of the best brewers around, many of whom will be pouring their own beers giving visitors an opportunity to learn more about how the beer is made.”
Tickets are $35 before the event, or $40 at the gate, and include unlimited pours and a commemorative glass. Advance tickets can be purchased online. For more information on the event, visit the Brewing Network website.
Our last day at Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp last Friday, we were invited to their last quarterly beer dinner at the Big Room at the Brewery. Executive Chef Micheal Iles created an impressive five-course dinner, which each course mimicking one meal of the day, so that in essence we ate a day’s worth in one meal. You can see a photo gallery of the beer dinner below.
And as cool as the dinner was, the real treat was a presentation given by Sierra Nevada co-founder Ken Grossman. Throughout the dinner, in between courses, he told the story of how Sierra Nevada Brewery began, complete with slides. By complete happenstance, I happened to be sitting on a riser directly in front of the presentation, so I set up my Flip camera and taped most of it. The talk is separated into 8 parts, since that’s how the presentation was given. It’s just over an hour, and part one is below.
To see the rest of Ken Grossman’s presentation, I set up a page with all 8 videos embedded, The Sierra Nevada Story. Enjoy.
Today is my friend and neighbor’s birthday, Brent Ainsworth. Brent was a newspaper man until very recently, when he became the Novato Patch for AOL’s ambitious local news Patch project. Brent also wrote the occasional beer piece and contributes stories to the Celebrator Beer News. oin me in wishing Brent a very happy birthday.
Marin/Moylan’s owner Brendan Moylan and friend, Brent and Mike Altman, owner of Iron Springs Brewing at the Celebrator 20th anniversary party.
Brent and Lars Larson from Trumer Brauerei.
Brent (top right) at the 4th Philopotes Society meeting in July.
One of the first beers of the New Year will be a new Imperial IPA from Sierra Nevada Brewing, whose Hoptimum will be officially released January 1, 2011. If you’re fortunate enough to be in Chico, it was released there locally on Monday, but the rest of us will have to wait until 2011.
The Hoptimum was created during on of Sierra Nevada’s “Beer Camps,” a new program where people — usually beer distributors, retailers and others — spend two days at the brewery’s pilot brewhouse learning about the brewery and making their own small batch of beer. I was fortunate enough to attend Beer Camp last week, but more about that later.
After the success of the single batch, beer camp Hoptimum, Sierra Nevada tweaked the formula for a commercial release, which they describe as follows:
Hops, hops, and more hops are the stars of this big, whole-cone Imperial IPA. Resinous “new-school” and exclusive hop varieties carry the bold and aromatic nose. The flavor follows the aroma with layers of aggressive hoppiness, featuring notes of grapefruit rind, rose, lilac, cedar, and tropical fruit — all culminating in a dry and lasting finish.
And the label is one of the coolest I’ve seen from any brewery, featuring a true “hop head” in fancy clothes. According to the label, it’s a “Whole-Cone Imperial IPA” for “the Ultimate Whole-Cone Hop Experience.” That’s a nod to Sierra Nevada’s philosophy of using whole-cone hops rather than pellets.
And here’s how the original “beer camp” beer — made for last year’s SF Beer Week — was described:
A group of hop-heads and publicans challenged our Beer Camp brewers to push the extremes of whole-cone hop brewing. The result is this: a 100 IBU, whole-cone hurricane of flavor. Simply put- Hoptimum: the biggest whole-cone IPA we have ever produced. Aggressively hopped, dry-hopped and torpedoed with our exclusive new hop varieties for ultra-intense flavors and aromas.
And here are few of the particulars for the commercial version:
By pure happenstance, I was in Sierra Nevada’s sensory lab last Friday when random sample bottles of Hoptimum came in for analysis, in this case tasting, before being released locally on Monday, and the rest of the world on January 1.
I had the beer camp version last year, but too long ago for any meaningful comparison. The commercial version, though, is quite wonderful. Despite being a big, hoppy beer, it’s well-balanced and almost mild for an Imperial IPA. I mean that only in the sense that the hops, while enveloping and intense, are not over-powering, harsh or astringent and meld nicely with the malt character. The beer has great conditioning. It doesn’t taste like a 10.4% beer, either. It’s not hot, but warming. You could drink a lot of it. I plan to. It comes in 24 oz. bottles making it an ideal beer to share with a friend or loved one. If this is how 2011 will begin, perhaps it will be a great year. I’d certainly toast to that. But forget the champagne, give me a Hoptimum.
This should be a fun — and funny — event. Mutineer Magazine is hosting a comedy event to benefit A Child’s Right, an organization with a mission to ensure children have access to safe drinking water. The Mutineer Magazine Holiday Comedy Festival will take place at the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Sonoma on December 11, beginning at 7:00 p.m. In addition to Jacuzzi wine, tequila from sponsor Don Roberto and beer from Lagunitas and Firestone Walker will also be served.
The evening of stand-up comedy will include comedians Ben Morrison (host), Bryan Callen (co-headliner), Natasha Leggero (co-headliner), Ben Gleib, Greg Wilson, and Daryl Wright. In addition, the winner of a Laugh Factory contest is scheduled to appear. Also special guest Jonathan Goldsmith will appear. He’s the Dos Equis spokesperson for the “The World’s Most Interesting Man” advertising campaign. You can read more about each performer at the Mutineer event website.
Tickets are only $35 and can be purchased online.
From the press release:
RARE LAUGHS, SPECTACULAR BEVERAGES
Performing against this fantastical blue backdrop (blue for water relief, naturally!)? An all-star lineup of standup comedians and special guests, no shortage of Hollywood-style glamour (think paparazzi-style photogs on the blue carpet) and outstanding libations from some of the finest names in beverage. It’s all in line with the publication’s rep for pushing boundaries and exceeding expectations where drinks and lifestyle experiences collide, and looks to be one of the wildest nights wine country will see this side of 2011. Los Angeles-based funnyman and festival host Ben Morrison – known as well for being Ashton Kutcher’s right-hand man on the hit MTV show “Punk’d” as for his prolific appetite for Single Malt Scotch – says, “It’s a totally rare opportunity to see this caliber of comedic talent all under one roof, in one night outside of Hollywood.”
Even better: it’s for a good cause.
LAUGHS TO BENEFIT WATER RELIEF
The festival is an ebullient catalyst for Mutineer’s 2011 trek to Nepal, where magazine staff, select “cultural influencers” and beverage industry reps will install five water filtration systems on behalf of relief organization A Child’s Right. The systems will provide clean drinking water to 25,000 children for ten years. To bring the full impact of the outreach home to readers, magazine editors will blog about the trip along the way and report on the endeavor with significant coverage in the May 2011 issue. Kropf sees it this way: “There’s nothing funny about the need for clean water. But bringing top comedic talent – and lots of laughter – to wine country to raise funds for water relief among at-risk kids? Priceless.”
FUNNY, SEXY & BLUE ALL OVER
Officially on the program roster: Cocktails by presenting sponsor Don Roberto Tequila and other select purveyors in the beverage tent, festive surprise guests, base-thumping holiday soul and funk beats, and lots of laughs. As for the show itself, the endlessly funny Natasha Leggero (as seen in NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and “Ugly Americans”) and Bryan Callen (“MadTV” and “The Hangover”) are set to co-headline an elite group of seven Hollywood humorists, all of whom have pledged to share with guests their most amusing insights into the theme of thirst. One of the comedians for the evening will be a wild-card performer selected at a Mutineer-sponsored search contest at LA’s Laugh Factory November 18, 2010, and a special appearance will be made at the festival by Jonathan Goldsmith, who famously portrays “The Most Interesting Man In the World” in Dos Equis’ advertisements.
A CHARITABLE GIFT EVERY HIP HOLIDAY REVELER CAN EMBRACE!
Best part of all? Festival guests will know that they’re laughing and sipping in the name of charitable water relief. And thanks to the show’s top-shelf talent, delicious drinks, eye-popping blue décor and insanely affordable ticket price — Mutineer tagged entry at a rightly reasonable $35 to make the show as millennial-accessible as possible — it looks as though everyone gets to have the last laugh come December 11. Cheers to that.