Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Toronado 20th Anniversary Celebration Concludes

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After the 21st Amendment beer dinner, I hightailed it back to the Toronado where the party had kicked into high gear.

It was this kind of night, with all manner of wonderful beers, many of them — at least 22 — had been made especially for the Toronado and that evening.

Many special bottles were opened and flowing that night. What a wonderful four days filled with friends, food and the fermented.

 

For many more photos from the second half of the Toronado 20th Anniversary Celebration, visit the photo gallery.
 

Toronado 20th Anniversary Celebration Begins

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My friend Dave Keene bought the Toronado bar on lower Haight in 1989, transforming it — and much of the Bay Area’s drinkers along with it — into the premiere beer bar in the city and one of the top beer bars in the country. That’s not so much opinion as fact, confirmed by the countless tribute beers and people in the beer community who flew in from all over the country to celebrate the Toronado’s 20th anniversary this Saturday.

10, 20, 30: Dave Keene (center) was celebrating his 20th, flanked by Don Younger (on the left), whose bar the Horse Brass in Portland celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year, and Chris Black (on the right), whose Denver, Colorado bar, The Falling Rock, celebrated its 10th anniversary in June.

Inside, the Toronado was packed to the gills with well-wishers and beer fans.

For more photos from the first half of the Toronado 20th Anniversary Celebration, visit the photo gallery.
 

The Party Moves to Annie’s

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The third night of celebrations for the Toronado’s 20th anniversary was held last night at Annie’s Social Club on Folsom in San Francisco. The two bands, American Dog and Broken Teeth, that played the evening before at Russian River Brewing, were on hand again to entertain the crowd at Annie’s. Dave Keene had lost his voice the evening before, too, and was very hoarse as the night. unfolded.

Annie’s Social Club was an eclectic bar with lots of personality.

American Dog, from Columbus, Ohio, went on first.

Jeremy Cowan, from He’Brew, Rob Tod, from Allgash, and Tomme Arthur, from Port Brewing and the Lost Abbey.

Tomme Arthur again, this time with Dave Hopgood and Mitch Steele, both from Stone Brewing and Jeff Bagby and his wife, also from Port Brewing. Jeff was the first person I saw when I arrived at Anchor Brewery Wednesday night. He was getting out of a cab from the airport as I parked my car, and he’s one of only a handful of hearty souls who made to every one of the Toronado celebrations so I made a point of making sure he was pictured in every post.

Broken Teeth ended the evening with another raucous set of hard driving rock and roll.
 

Russian River Celebrates Toronado’s 20th Anniversary

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Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, who own Russian River Brewing, are great friends of Dave Keene and the Toronado. So last night they threw him one hell of a party at their brewpub in Santa Rosa. With two of Dave’s favorite bands performing, and Vinnie’s special beer he created especially for the Toronado’s 20th anniversary, it was a wonderful evening with many people from the Bay Area beer community in attendance.

It was a packed house at Russian River’s long bar.

Brewer Vinnie Cilurzo, American Dog lead singer Michael Hannon and Dave Keene.

Jeff Bagby, from Pizza Port, with Eric Rose, from the new Hollister Brewing in Goleta, near Santa Barbara.

Natalie Cilurzo, Jen Garris (Hi Mom!) and the Katherine.

Vinnie brought out some of the good stuff, like Damnation batch 09, and Supplication Batch 01, which he’s pouring here.

Drake’s brewer Melissa Myers with her “Big Daddy” Dave Keene.

The dance floor overflowed to the music of Broken Teeth.

Dave Keene was definitely having a great time at his party.

Rocking out and toasting Broken Teeth’s final number at the end of the evening.

 

More CBC Photos

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As my grandfather was fond of saying, “the faster I go, the behinder I get.” I’ve only now gotten around to going through the rest of the photos that I took in Austin, Texas while attending the 2007 Craft Brewers Conference. They’re all pretty random, but they’re now posted at the photo gallery if you’re interested in seeing them.

The White brothers from White Labs bookending Chuck, from Green Fash Brewing, Natalie Cilurzo, from Russian River Brewing, John Harris, from Full Sail Brewing, and Vinnie Cilurzo, also from Russian River.

Greg Koch, me, and Justin Crossley, from the Brewing Network, along with Steve Mosqueda from the Drinking and Writing podcast and Pete Crowley, from Rock Bottom in Chicago.

For many more photos from the Craft Brewers Conference, visit the photo gallery.

Vinnie Cilurzo’s Keynote Address

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Vinnie Cilurzo gave the keynote address at this year’s Craft Brewers Conference in Austin, Texas. Hoping to spark a new tradition, like Sam Calagione last year, he served some of his own beer so everyone assembled could drink a toast to craft beer’s success and to everyone’s efforts that led to that success. He set out bottles of the second batch of Russian River’s Beatification.

Vinnie spoke in part about innovation and the innovative contributions of many of the early pioneers of craft brewing. The video below is a little more than half of Ciilurzo’s speech from near the beginning until the toast. My memory card ran out at that point.

CBC Brewers Reception

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The BA hosted a Brewers Reception at Stubbs Bar-B-Que in downtown Austin Wednesday night before the official start to the annual Craft Brewers Conference. There was great food and beer from local breweries. Some highlights were the Rye Pale Ale from the Real Ale Brewery here in Austin and a nice barleywine, though I can’t recall who made that one.

A local sign proclaims Austin as Beer Land, Texas.

The reception was held outdoors in this great open space with a stage on one end and bars and buffet tables ringing the area.

Brian Dunn (owner of Great Divide) and his new director of brewing operations, Brit Antrim, with Joanne Carilli from White Labs.

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Steve Hindy (Brooklyn Brewery), Kim Jordan (New Belgium), Dave Keene (The Toronado in SF), Eddie Friedland (former owner of Philadelphia’s Friedland Distributing) and Vinnie Cilurzo (Russian River).

Ralph Olson, the Big Cheese from HopUnion. If you look carefully in between his “Sponsor” and “Exhibitor” badge you can see his officially “the Big Cheese.”

Horst Dornbusch and his wife, Ralph Olson and Jeannine Marois, who puts on the Le Mondial de la Bière.

Charlie Papazian leads a toast the memory of Linda Starck.

Daniel and Julie Bradford and Amy from All About Beer magazine.

The Rolling Boil Blues Band took the stage in the last hour of the reception.

Which got the crowd up and dancing.

Tom Dalldorf does his Pete Townsend impression.

Brew Years Eve

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At 12:01 a.m., 74 years ago, beer became legal for the first time in thirteen years. Though it would be eight more months until Prohibition officially ended (on December 5), President Franklin D. Roosevelt kept his first campaign promise by encouraging Congress to modify the Volstead Act and they passed the Cullen-Harrison bill, which FDR signed it into law on March 23. The bill allowed the sale and manufacture of low-alcohol beer (3.2% alcohol by weight/4.0% by volume), along with light wines, too. For brewers, it represented a return to brewing and those that had remained opening making non-alcoholic products quickly retooled. Those that had been shuttered for over a decade had a harder time re-opening, but some did manage it. Ultimately Prohibition did irreparable harm the industry as a whole and less than half of America’s breweries did not survive.

And we’re still waiting for an apology from all the temperance nutcases who thought making alcohol illegal would turn society into a utopia. If anything, it made things much, much worse. Virtually every societal ill temperance nutjobs believed prohibition would fix were only made worse. Instead of a more civil, crime-free world, crime actually increased significantly, not least of which directly is directly attributable to bootlegging and bathtub gin. An entire new enforcement agency was created to deal with all the new criminalized behavior by the Volstead Act, made famous by Elliot Ness and his “Untouchables.” And that was in part because corruption became rampant especially among law enforcement and local officials who took bribes and looked the other way while speakeasies operated with homemade and illegal booze. This corruption in turn made the average citizen’s respect for the law evaporate.

All those people who used to work at breweries, wineries, distilleries along with their salesmen, advertisers, marketers, distributors, delivery men, and on and one were suddenly out of a job, causing much economic harm. It’s no mere coincidence that our worst economic depression took place during this same period of time. In every sense this experiment was ignoble and failed to achieve any of its goals.

Originally, and for many years after, brewers referred to April 7 as “New Beer’s Eve” Although the fortunes of many breweries and the industry as a whole ebbed and flowed, overall the number of breweries continued to plummet until the early 1980s, when the microbrewery revolution began to reverse that trend.

The Brewers Association, a trade organization for small and regional breweries, is reviving the holiday under the name “Brew Years Eve” and encouraging their members to host celebrations all over the country. Their website lists hundreds of events by state

From their press release:

While the full repeal of Prohibition came on December 5, 1933, a modification of the Volstead Act legalized beer with 3.2 percent alcohol by weight (4.0 percent by volume) starting on April 7 of that year. In fact, one of the first public delivery of beer went to the White House to honor Franklin Delano Roosevelt who had won the presidency in part because he favored repeal. From April 7 on, the country’s brewers were back in business and Americans enjoyed legal beer for eight months before wine and spirits were once again legitimate.

Today, brewers bring Americans a lot more than just beer. Since the 1970s, the ranks of brewers have grown to include more than 1400 small, traditional and independent craft beer makers. Each contributes jobs and a variety of local and federal taxes to the economy.

To learn more about the history of Prohibition, here are some interesting links:

Beer Bottle Workshop

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Last Thursday afternoon I attended a Glass Bottle Workshop put on by the California Small Brewers Association. It was held at and hosted by Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California. A few dozen brewers, suppliers and one journalist packed in the party balcony at Lagunitas to talk about beer bottles. First, some interesting facts about the beer bottle industry today.

In 1985, there were 110 glass plants in the United States. Today, that number has dropped to less than half, or 49 remaining glass plants. Of those, 42 of them (or about 84%) are owned by the three largest companies; Owens-Illinris oe O-I (19 plants), Saint-Gobain (14) and Anchor (8). Seven companies own the remaining eight, with Gujarat Glass International owning two and the rest operating a single plant each. Like most modern industries today, consolidation has whittled the landscape of glass manufacturers down to a few giants with a handful of small players hanging on for dear life. Typically, that’s good news if you’re a big consumer of glass but not so good if you’re a small player. Part of the reason for the shakeup in glass makers ocurred in 1992-94, when there was a huge decline in the market, caused primarily when most soft drink companies converted from glass to plastic bottles. Longnecks far outsell the shorter Heritage bottle and twist-offs currenty outsell non-twist off.

The breakdown of glass bottles is currently as follows:

  1. 85% Beer
  2. 17% Food
  3. 9% Beverages
  4. 5% Non-Food Jars
  5. 5% Wine
  6. 3% Spirits
  7. 3% FAB (Flavored Alcoholic Beverages)

Tony Magee (from Lagunitas) and Mark House (from Pyramid) led a round table panel discussion about issues facing small brewers regarding bottles.

Later Magee led a tour of Lagunitas’ new bottling line, installed last January, by the Italian company Sympak.

After some supplier presentations and an open discussion, the afternoon ended with a beer social. Here Dan Del Grande from Bison Brewing enjoys a pint from Lagunitas.

And here’s a story about an O-I plant in Colorado entitled the House of Glass from the Scripps Howard News Service.

City Beer Store Holiday Beer Tasting

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Friday evening there was a fun little event at the new City Beer store, San Francisco’s first and only store selling nothing but great beer. Owner Craig Wathen (with a little help from Jen Garris) assembled several bay area holiday beers from Drake’s, Marin Brewing and Schmaltz Brewing. Also several local brewers brought growlers of their beers, such as Triple Rock’s Reindeer and Thirsty Bear’s barleywine from 2004. The store is a small space, but there was a great turnout and the place was packed almost the whole time I was there. And did I mention they have a fantastic selection of some of the yummiest beers around. Please support the store as often as you can. As a beer community, we need to help one another. And we need a store like this.

The City Beer Christmas tree.

Drake’s brewer Melissa Myers, with her father in town for a visit.

City Beer Store owner Craig Wathen at the taps.

Craig with some of the Bay Area beer cognoscenti around the tree.
 

City Beer Store
1168 Folsom Street — at 7th
San Francisco, California
415.503.1033