Casks, Soccer and Belgium!
Hello Good Beer Fans!
We have another double dose of casks this week, some new beer releases and an updated bottle list for you. It all starts tonight – Tuesday the 5th – as we host an impromptu AleSmith night in honor AleSmith brewer Bill Batten’s birthday. We will be tapping a cask of Nautical Nut Brown at 5:30 pm and we’ll also have AleSmith IPA, Speedway Stout and the brand new My Bloody Valentine all on tap. The Nut Brown is a full size cask and should last all night, but you never know. Also new on tap right now is Alpine Nelson IPA – it is a rye IPA made with New Zealand hops that make it smell like a Sauvignon Blanc. Also on the draft list is the dark and spicy Bison Organic Gingerbread Ale, the very fruity Lindeman’s Framboise (raspberry beer), and there is a little bit left in our kegs of Pyramid Snow Cap and St. Feuillien Noel. For those concerned about the Pliny the Elder, it will hopefully return this week. Russian River is making another batch of Pliny the Younger right now and that disrupted our supply chain of Pliny the Elder.
There are also quite a few new bottles to tell you about. We have our first bottled beer from Poway’s Lightning Brewery, Old Tempest Ale. It was brewed back in last July and aged in the bottle at the brewery for winter release. It is a 9% alcohol English Old Ale. All four new Fantome beers are now on the bottle list – regular saison, the dark and spicy Noel, the fruity Dalmatienne and the pale colored Hiver (winter). We have several Urthel beers back in stock – Hop It!, Tripel and Bock. We now have all 3 Oud Beersel lambics available – kriek, framboise and geuze. All of them are great and strike a nice balance between sweet and sour. Speaking of sweet, we have Honeyrun fruit meads in stock – Elderberry, Cherry and Cranberry with Blackberry on its way soon. Port Brewing’s Older Viscosity and Lost Abbey’s Angel’s share are on our special release list. And we have some new beers from far off places – Nogne O Imperial Stout from Norway is back, Simpatico barleywine from Argentina and 4 beers from Italy – Scires Cherry Ale, Dau Saison, Demon Hunter and Baladin Nora Sour Edition which is a sour version of the brewery’s Egyptian inspired wheat ale. Look for St. Feuillien Tripel 3 liters to be on the list later in the week. I also finally went through and updated our website bottle list. So for at least this week, it is 100% current.
Wednesday is international soccer day at the pub. We have a full slate of games starting at Noon with England v. Switzerland, which will also air at 5 pm. We’ll also have Italy v. Portugal on at 11:45 am, Republic of Ireland v. Brazil at 2 pm and 8 pm, Turkey v. Sweden at 4:45 pm and to top it all off – USA v. Mexico at 6 pm. We’ll have the sound on for the England game at lunch and the USA game at 6 pm. For a complete listing of all of our televised soccer games, go to the News section of the website (www.obrienspub.net) and click on Soccer. You can also sign up for our soccer-specific email by sending your address to brewhaus@hotmail.com.
Thursday the 7th we get back to the beer with not one but TWO casks of Alpine Nelson IPA. I’ll tap the first one at 5 pm and the second one right after the first one is gone. I am really looking forward to this – the draft beer on tap right now is utterly delicious and I am expecting the cask to be fantastic. And don’t worry, I already have another keg of the Nelson in the coldbox. Friday the 8th we tap two very big beers for your drinking pleasure – Sierra Nevada 2008 Bigfoot and Avery Czar Imperial Stout. This is the 25th anniversary edition of Bigfoot – unbelieveable! Over the weekend we’ll have our 10% off all bottles special on Saturday and Sunday. And even though football is over (ok, there is the Pro Bowl, but that is a joke of a game) we will continue to be open on Sunday year round from Noon to 6 pm with Fish and chips and Fish Tacos every Sunday (and Monday too).
Last fall, Bill Snider from Ciao Travel and I sat down and spread out my enormous Beer Map of Belgium and planned what must be the most outrageous beer travel package imaginable – 12 breweries, 6 castles, the 24 Hour Belgian Beer Festival and the Night of the Great Thirst Festival all from just $1799 (air and hotel included!). For the complete trip itinerary, please visit: www.ciaotravel.com. Tour 2 spends nights in Brussels and Gent and Tour 3 adds a trip to Amsterdam (one of the truly great drinking cities of the world).
Now with just under three weeks to go we have just 4 spaces left for you to join us!
And Bill at Ciao Travel has come up with a few more reasons for you to join us on the 2008 Great Belgium Beer Tour:
WINTER AIRFARE
Save $100 on your GBBT trip if you book and ticket by Friday February 15th!
FREE BEER!
The 1st two persons to book a GBBT trip this week will receive a $100 O’Brien’s Gift Certificate
(Valid for new bookings only)
HURRY, THERE ARE JUST 4 SPACES LEFT!!!
Looking further ahead we will have a cask of AleSmith’s My Bloody Valentine on Valentine’s Day, Thursday the 14th. If there is anything left, we will serve it again on Friday the 15th. We will also be doing a Lagunitas night on the 15th with the IPA and the Hairy Eyeball on tap. We will be open on President’s Day, Monday the 18th normal hours and have our usual pitcher special – $8 pitchers or $12 Strong Ale Pitchers – from 4:30 pm until 10 pm. Further down the road you can look forward to casks from Green Flash, Pizza Port Carlsbad and Ballast Point (Sculpin IPA – which will be bottled soon!).
That is all for now. We’ll see you soon over a great beer. Cheers, Tom