Greetings devotees of fine malt based beverages.
Yet again it seems that there is just too much good stuff to write about. I will make no promises about being brief, but I will promise lots of good information on our Wet Hop Festival, New Merchandise, Beer and Cheese Tasting, our latest awards, Blind Pig and Pliny the Younger, new bottles and food specials and of course some great cask beers!
So lets get on with it.
First Lindsey and I and the entire staff would like to thank everyone who voted in the SignOnSanDiego.com Best of Readers poll. O’Brien’s repeated as Best Pub and Best Neighborhood Bar for 2006! Alpine unfortunately finished second to Karl Strauss in the Best Brewery section with Pizza Port and Stone rounding out the top four. Liar’s Club won for Best Beach Bar and Churchill’s took best North County Bar. You can find the complete results at the SignOn website. Our next voting opportunity will be in November for the AOL City Guide where we have been nominated for Best Beer Selection (of course).
As for what wonderful goodies you can expect this week: We have a cask of Ballast Point’s delicious Three Sheets Barleywine. It is around 9% and should be nice and hoppy off the cask. We are tapping it tonight (Wednesday the 25th) from 6-8 pm and on Thursday the 26th at 5 pm until it is gone. If all goes well, we should even have a keg of Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA on tap.
The big news this week is Friday’s Russian River Night featuring Blind Pig IPA and an extremely rare keg of Pliny the Younger, the 11% alcohol tripel IPA. We’ll also have Damnation Belgian-style Golden Ale and of course RR IPA and Pliny the Elder. Everything will be on tap at 5 pm and hopefully it will all last through the evening. We have the only keg of Pliny the Younger in Southern California, so ejoy it while it lasts. And on Friday you can check out the new Cambozola Chicken Melt and Cambozola Burger. Cambozola is a great creamy Italian cheese. If you are hungry right now, try Lindsey’s great White Bean Chicken Chili made with Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale.
Over the weekend we are doing our second Beer and Cheese Tasting with Taste Artisan Cheese Shop. This one is Sunday, October 29th at O’Brien’s at 6 pm. The class is basically sold out, but there might be a few seats that open up. If you are interested in going, or if you are interested in a potential third class, please email Mary at the Taste Cheese Shop at: mary@artisancheeseshop.com . We will probably do another tasting in the early part of next year.
Tis the season for Christmas Ales and the winter beers have already started rolling in. We just got Delirium Noel and Gouden Carolous Noel in. The amazing Deus Brut des Flanders Champagne-style beer is back in stock after a long absence. I found a box of Stone 2003 Double Bastard that I did not know I had, so it is on the bottle list. And finally, anytime after 8 pm tonight we will have the special anniversary edition of the St. Bernardus abt 12. It is supposed to be a slightly stronger version (11% alcohol) of the regular abt 12 brewed for the 60th anniversary of the brewery. It comes in a nice metal tin in a 750 ml bottle. There will be lots of new additions to the bottle list in the next few weeks, so keep checking back.
In addition to new bottles, we have ordered new merchandise and it should be in this weekend. Included in the order are long sleeve shirts and new men’s t shirts. We got a bunch of samples for new women’s wear as well. Look for it all to be out by the beginning of next week.
The heart break Chargers play the Rams on Sunday the 29th at 1:05. Hopefully they can muster some defense this week. Also this weekend is the Tijuana Beer Festival, the 27th – 29th. On Saturday and Sunday the festival is on Revolucion and features lots of music as well as Mexican and American craft beer. For more info goto: www.tjbeerfest.com. We also get an extra hour of sleep this weekend as Daylight Savings Time ends. Next year though we will get a few extra weeks of Daylight Savings Time as Congress extended its period from early March to early November.
Al of this and I have only gotten to Sunday – I told you there was a lot of good stuff.
Next week we have our annual Halloween Party on Tuesday, Oct. 31st. We’ll have a special cask of Reaper Ales Ritual Dark Ale on tap at 5 pm. Costumes are heavily encouraged and anyone showing up in a costume will get their first beer for just $2. This is a really fun night every year so don’t miss it. Also on Tuesday the 31st, the UEFA Champions League resumes with LIVE games at 11:30 am including Liverpool vs. Bordeaux. For a complete run down of all our soccer games on tv, reply to this email and get on our soccer only email list. I also have a board on the back wall listing all of the upcoming games.
The big news for next week is our annual Wet Hop Beer Festival. Wet hopped beers use hops right when they are picked and still mostly water before they are dried. Because of the increased water content, brewers have to use lots and lots of hops in the beer. This makes for very hoppy, but not very bitter beers. The hop characters are fresh and fantastic and unlike anything you can get the rest of the year. I am expecting about 30 beers at this year’s festival from 6 different states.
This year’s festival will feature a major first – casks of Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale. Yes, you read that right. We are the first pub on the planet to serve Sierra Nevada cask conditioned beer outside of the brewery’s restaurant in Chico. I am not sure what day they arriving, but I would like to serve one on Thursday the 2nd and the second one on Friday the 3rd. I will let you all know next week. In addition to cask Harvest, we will have 2005 and 2006 draft Harvest and the Sierra Nevada 20th Street Ale made with hops grown on the Sierra Nevada brewery property. And we’ll have kegs of ESP – Extra Special Pale which has wet hops added in the conditioning tank and is stronger and more bitter than the regular draft Pale Ale (more like the bottled version).
The plan for the Wet Hop Festival is to have the Sierra Nevada Harvest cask the Stone 10th Anniversary Wet Hopped cask on tap on Friday the 3rd at 5 pm along with most of the 20 or so California wet hopped beers. Then on Saturday we will have all of the California wet hopped beers on tap including Russian River Hop Time, 2 versions of Moonlight’s Homegrown, Magnolia’s High Time, Pizza Port Rip Tide and High Tide and many, many more. Then on Sunday the 5th we will tap all of the out state beers including Deschutes, Papago, Nodding Head, Mountain Sun, Pumphouse, Great Divide and Left Hand.
I will have a complete list of what is coming by Thursday of next week up at the pub. It promises to be one great weekend of beer with new beers on tap all three days. There is no admission for the festival, just pay as you go. Samples will be available in 5 oz and 10 oz samples for all beers, and pints in most cases. We ask that you order no more than four 5 oz samples at one time, please. Check the events board at the pub to see if the Harvest Cask will be tapped on Thursday.
As for events further down the line, the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival is Friday and Saturday, November 10th and 11th, 6-10 pm both nights, at the World Beat Center in Balboa Park on Park Blvd. Pre-sale tickets are now available at the Guild website: www.sandiegobrewersguild.org. Ticket sales for each night are limited. Every San Diego brewery will be there showing off their best beers. This is a great festival and the only one in town that features only local beer.
We have a New Belgium release party for their new 2 Below pale ale on Wednesday the 8th and a Double Double Bastard night on Friday the 17th. It will feature 2005 and 2006 Double Bastard on draft and 2003 and 2004 Double Bastard in the bottle – 4 years of Double Bastard in all.
And there are still seats available on our 3 city pub crawl through Europe. You can visit Amsterdam and Brussels or Brussels and Prague, or all three! For more information on the trip including itinerary and costs, please visit Ciao Travel at www.ciaotravel.com. Owner Bill Snider is a pub regular and good guy (in addition to knowing a few things about beer, jazz and travel). Lindsey and I went last year and plan to go again this year. It is really fun to travel around Europe and keep bumping into people you know in almost every pub. There are also information handouts at the pub at the front of the bar.
Are you tired of reading yet? Because my hands are getting tired of typing. And the Sierra Celebrations aren’t helping any. Celebration will be on tap soon at the pub. Thanks again for voting us Best Pub! See you all soon over a great beer, Cheers, Tom