What’s Happening

The USA faces Brazil in its first FIFA tournament final ever at 11 am Sunday the 28th.  We will open at 11 am for the game with a full kitchen and some breakfast burrito specials.  We are expecting a great crowd for the game so please be prepared to share tables if there are open seats.  Look for O’Brien’s IPA on tap from Alpine Beer Company.

I will tape the third place match between South Africa and Spain to show immediately after the USA game around 1 pm.

Also, the UEFA Under-21 Championship final is now set – England v. Germany at 11:45 am on Monday the 29th.  The Gold Cup starts next weekend.

Hopefully we’ll see you soon for another thrilling USA soccer match.  I will be at the San Diego International Beer Festival all day Saturday – the Friday session was amazing, 310 beers from 17 countries.  Canyo imagine drinking Malheur Brut and Drie Fonteinen Geuze at a County Fair?  Cheers, Tom

Hello Beer Fans!

I am finally recovered from the Real Ale Festival and my attempt to try every beer.  I came close, but could not make it through all 60 beers over the weekend.  If couldn’t make it by the festival, at least we have some great cask beer coming up for you in the next week.  Tonight, Thursday the 18th we will be pouring the very tasty (and one of the best at the fest) Ballast Point Sculpin IPA at 5 pm.  I also have a cask of Silver Mullet IPA from Rock Bottom in Glendale, Arizona and if there is any left from last night, I will put out the Pizza Port Carlsbad Port Van Porter.  There is also plenty of great draft beer on right now including Redstone Black Raspberry Mead, Brother Levonian Saison, Ommegang Rouge, Sierra Nevada Empire Strikes Black and Brown Saison and there is just a little bit left of the JW Lees Harvest, which is a strong golden English barleywine.

Friday, we have a very special night of Allagash draft beers.  We’ll have Hugh Malone (Beglian IPA), Victor (Belgian ale made with red grapes) and Victoria (Belgian ale with white grapes) all on tap and Allagash Black and Curiuex in the bottle.  The kegs are just 5 gallons each so while I expect them to last through the night, I am not sure that they will all last through the weekend.

Closed for Father’s Day

Speaking of the weekend, we will be CLOSED on Sunday, June 21st for Father’s Day so that we and our employees can spend the day with their families.  It is also Humberto’s birthday on the 21st – so if you see him you can wish him a happy birthday.  We will be open normal hours on Saturday the 20th from 11:30 am to Midnight.  To mitigate being closed for a day, I am rolling out our last keg of Alpine’s Bad Boy double IPA on Saturday the 20th.  Just as a head’s up – we will be closed on Saturday, July 4th, but open both Friday the 3rd and Sunday the 5th.

Next Week

Next week we have two more great cask beers.  Wednesday the 24th we tap a cask of Craftsman’s Oyster Stout at 5:30 pm.  This is a delicious low gravity stout that uses Oyster Shells in the mash.  The shells add a mineral flavor to the beer that is really nice.  Thursday the 25th we will tap a cask of Stone’s Ruination IPA.  This beer is always great on cask.

Also on Thursday the 25th, we will feature Trappist Ale draft night with 3 trappist beers on tap for the first time – Konigshoeven Witte, Konigshoeven Quadrupel and Chimay White.  The draft Witte from Konigshoeven just came out and it is a delicious White beer.  These are the only three Trappist ales available on draft in the USA, though several others can be found on draft around Europe.

Friday and Saturday, June 26th and 27th is the San Diego International Beer Festival at the San Diego County Fair.  The two day fest will feature more than 300 different beers for sampling.  It is easily the largest selection of beer at a festival this side of the Great American Beer Festival.  For complete information on the festival visit: www.sdfair.com/beer.  The fest will run from 4-8 on Friday and 12-7 pm on Saturday.  Beers from nearly 20 different countries will be there including lots of great Belgian ales.

Malheur Beer And Cheese

We have added a second Malheur Beer and Cheese Tasting class on Sunday, July 26th at O’Brien’s at 6:30 pm.  We will be pairing Malheur 6, 10, 12, Brut and Dark Brut with 7 different cheeses from around the world.  I am very excited about the pairings with these world class beers.  Each beer will be poured in its own flight in a Malheur goblet with either one or two cheeses.  A few people who had signed up for the 19th have decided to go on the 26th, so we have a few seats available for the 19th and about 20 seats left for the class on the 26th.  Cost is $40 and you can sign up at the pub (cash only please) or contact Taste (via our Friends page) to pay with a credit card.

Looking ahead, keep an eye out for Aecht Schlenkerla Smoked Marzen on tap along with Coronado’s Idiot IPA and Alpine Irish Red.  We will have a New Belgium Brewing Night on July 10th and a Weihenstephan night on the 17th.  The cask on July 2nd will Alpine O’Brien’s IPA and you can look forward to casks of Poor Man’s IPA and Wipeout IPA from Pizza Port Carlsbad and Summer YuleSmith from AleSmith later in July.

That is your good beer news for now.  We’ll see you soon for a great beer.  Cheers, Tom

Hello Beer Lovers!
 
There is always a lot going on in June on the beer calendar.  This weekend is both the San Diego Real Ale at Pizza Port Carlsbad on Friday and Saturday and the San Diego County Fair homebrew competition on Sunday.  The San Diego International Beer Festival at the County Fair is at the end of the month on the 26th and 27th.  So with lots going on (much of which I am helping to organize) I am going to try and keep this short and sweet this week (we’ll see how that works out).
 
Real Ale Fest
 
The VIP session for this weekend’s San Diego Real Ale Festival is almost sold out.  Just over 30 tickets remain and you only have today to buy them as sales will be cut off Wednesday night.  We are expecting 51 beers for the festival from 49 different breweries and 7 cask beers for the VIP session including Port Older Viscosity, Green Flash Grand Mantis, Ballast Point Ginger Big Eye, Three Floyds Robert the Bruce and Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest.  VIP Tickets are $40 and can be purchased at www.pizzaport.com (you can also find directions to the fest on the website).
 
Tickets for the normal festival hours of 4 pm to 11 pm Friday and 11 am to 11 pm on Saturday will be on sale at the door for $25 – there are no advance ticket sales for the general festival.  Admission includes a festival glass and 8 taster tickets each good for a four ounce pour.  Additional tastes are just $1.  This is truly one of the best cask ale festivals in the country – and one of the largest collections of cask ale outside of the UK.  Everything from Milds and Bitters to IPAs, Double IPAs and even Imperial Stouts will be served up cask conditioned for your drinking pleasure.  There are plenty of nearby motels and campgrounds and the Coaster runs until 9 pm on Friday and 6:30 pm on Saturday.  Did you know that you can bring your own beer on the Coaster?  Makes it an even better way to visit Pizza Port…
 
At the Pub
 
Back at the pub, on Thursday, June 11th we will host a pre-party for the fest at the pub – Casks of DOOM!  On cask we will have AleSmith 2008 Decadence English Barleywine, Alpine Exponential Hoppiness and Port 3rd Anniversary double IPA – all over 10.5% alcohol.  Due to the very high alcohol of all of these casks and their rarity, we will be limiting pours to 10 oz so that everyone can enjoy them safely and comfortably.  We will also have several specialty beers from Sierra Nevada including Brown Saison and the collaboration brew Empire Strikes Black Imperial Stout – brewed with myself, Tomme Arthur and Jeff Bagby among others. 
 
Look for specialty Sierra beers on tap all weekend at the pub including the fantastic 2009 Bigfoot and our house blend Big P – half Pale Ale, half Bigfoot.  We also have the Ommegang Grand Cru Rouge Flemish Ale and Ballast Point Sour Wench Blackberry Ale on tap and a very rare keg of J.W. Lees Harvest Ale, which is a massive English Barleywine (my favorite description is that it is like drinking a plate of buttermilk pancakes with syrup – along with 12% alcohol!).
 
On the Kitchen front, Lindsey will have her great Sierra Nevada Beer Chili for Thursday along with a Southern Hemisphere Harvest White Cheddar Beer Cheese for both burgers and Sausage plates.  She also has lots of Beer Cheese flavors packed to-go including Guinness and Cheddar, Guinness Chipotle and Cheddar, Affligem 5 Cheese Italian Blend and for the first time our regular Russian River IPA White Cheddar beer cheese.  The stuff is great with crackers, on a sandwich or bagel and is absolutely divine on a baked potato.  Other great food specials to keep an eye out for – Focaccia Patty Melt, the insanely good Roast Beef Cobb sandwich and Beer Brats, which were so popular last week, I didn’t even get to try one.
 
Working backwards here, Wednesday the 10th will be Saison night at the pub with Ballast Point’s Brother Levonian Saison and Sierra Nevada Brown Saison both on tap.   The Brother Levonian is a traditional saison inspired by a homebrew recipe of the late Dave Levonian.  The Sierra Brown Saison is a light brown in color with a dry spicy finish that reminds me of some of the Fantome saisons.  Look for a discount merchandise box at the pub starting Wednesday night as well.  We have a lot of shirts, both mens and womens, that we only have one left of and we are heavily discounting them to make room for our next order.

Coming Soon

Looking ahead to next week, we will have the Confederations Cup on TV with the USA playing Italy live at 11:30 am on Monday the 15th.  Most of the tournament will be shown on the ESPN networks – I will post a new soccer email next week.  We might have some cask beer left from the fest at the pub early in the week – if so, I will post it up on the website.  I won’t know until at least Sunday night though, so check in on Monday.  No matter what, we’ll tap a Ballast Point Sculpin IPA cask on Thursday the 18th at 5 pm with a draft keg for when the cask blows.  Friday the 19th look for an Allagash night with some great specialty beer including Hugh Malone (Belgo-IPA), Victor (red grapes with beer) and Victoria (white grapes with beer).  Further ahead, Thursday the 25th we will tap a cask of Stone Ruination IPA.
 
Just a reminder about some upcoming days that we will be CLOSED – Sunday, June 21st for Father’s Day and Saturday, July 4th for Independence Day.  We’ll be open normal hours all other days until Labor Day in September.

Beer and Cheese
 
Our Malheur Beer and Cheese Pairing on Sunday, July 19th is more than half sold out.  If you would like to go, I would suggest saving your place in the next 10 days.  We may start a waiting list for a possible second class – not sure yet though.  Cost is $40 and will include 5 different Malheur beers: 6, 10, 12, Brut and Dark Brut expertly paired with 7 different cheeses.  Sign up at the pub, or contact Taste (find them on our Friends page on the website) to use a credit card.
 
That is your good beer update for now.  We’ll see you soon for a great cask conditioned beer.  Cheers, Tom

The VIP session for this weekend’s San Diego Real Ale Festival at Pizza Port Carlsbad is almost sold out.  Just over 30 tickets remain and you only have Tuesday and Wednesday to buy them as sales will be cut off Wednesday night.  We are expecting 51 beers for the festival from 49 different breweries and 7 cask beers for the VIP session including Port Older Viscosity, Green Flash Grand Mantis, Ballast Point Ginger Big Eye, Three Floyds Robert the Bruce and Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest.

Tickets for the normal festival hours of 4 pm to 11 pm Friday and 11 am to 11 pm on Saturday will be on sale at the door for $25 – there are no advance ticket sales for the general festival.  Admission includes a festival glass and 8 taster tickets each good for a four ounce pour.  Additional tastes are just $1.

This Thursday, June 11th we will host a pre-party for the fest at the pub.  On cask we will have AleSmith 2008 Decadence English Barleywine, Alpine Exponential Hoppiness and Port 3rd Anniversary double IPA.  We will also have several specialty beers from Sierra Nevada including Brown Saison and the collaboration brew Empire Strikes Black Imperial Stout – brewed with myself, Tomme Arthur and Jeff Bagby among others.  Look for specialty Sierra beers on tap all weeekend at the pub with Bigfoot coming on tap soon. 

Wednesday the 10th will be Saison night at the pub with Ballast Point’s Brother Levonian Saison and Sierra’s Brown Saison both on tap.   The Brother Levonian is a traditional saison inspired by a homebrew recipe of the late Dave Levonian.  The Sierra Brown Saison is a light brown in color with a dry spicy finish that reminds me of some of the Fantome saisons.

Next week – Sculin on cask on Thursday the 18th with a draft keg for when the cask blows.  Friday the 19th look for an Allagash night with some great specialty beer including Hugh Malone, Victor and Victoria.  Thursday the 25th we will tap a cask of Stone Ruination IPA.

That is your good beer update for now.  Cheers, Tom

Hello Thirsty Beer Fans!
 
June is a busy month for beer events and beer festivals.  The San Diego Real Ale Festival is coming up June 12th and 13th at Pizza Port Carlsbad.  VIP tickets are availalbe now at www.pizzaport.com for $40.  The VIP session will be from 1-4 pm on Friday and there will be 8-10 VIP beers including a cask of Port Brewing’s Older Viscosity.  There are less than 70 VIP tickets still left, so if you want to go, purchase them before the end of the weekend.  And at the end of the month we have the San Diego International Beer Festival at the San Diego County Fair.  The two day fest, June 26th and 27th will feature more than 300 different beers making it the largest collection of beer west of the Great American Beer Festival!  Check out www.sdfair.com/beer for more info.
 
Back on the pub front, there is also plenty going on.  This Wednesday, June 3rd we have the USA v. Costa Rica soccer match at 7 pm.  Lindsey will be serving up lots of special food with her beer cheese including Beer Cheese Plates, the Italian Beer Cheese Melt and the awesome Bacon Guinness Burger.  And we have plenty of great new beers on tap to try – Ballast Point Sour Wench Blackberry Ale (great blended 50/50 with stout or porter – tastes like a liquid black forest cake), Full Sail Imperial Porter, Alvinne Melchior (a mustard seed Belgian ale) and Hoptown Brewing is back on tap with its Golden Ale.  Back on the bottle list is Rodenbach and Rodenbach Grand Cru.  They just came back into the market and we got the very first bottles in Southern California last Friday.  They both taste as good as ever.
 
Thursday the 4th we have not one, but two fantastic cask beers from Alpine – Bad Boy Double IPA and Nelson Rye IPA, both on tap at 5 pm.  We have been lucky enough to get a ton of the draft Bad Boy and it is incredible.  I really can not wait to taste the cask version.  Friday the 5th we will feature two great hoppy beers from Deschutes on tap - HopHenge and Red Chair IPA.  Over the weekend, we have another USA soccer match at 5 pm Saturday versus Honduras.  And as always, we will have 10% off all bottles including single import bottles to-go and our great beer battered fish and chips and fish tacos on Sunday and Monday.
 
Next week we will get ready for the Real Ale Festival with a triple cask pre-party of doom.  No one really needs a pre-party for a two day beer festival.  And definitely the last thing anyone needs is a pre party for a two day beer festival that features three different casks all over 10% alcohol.  Well, that is what we have.  I didn’t really intend for it to be this way, it just kind of happened.  We will have AleSmith Decadence 2008, Alpine Exponential Hoppiness and Port Brewing 3rd Anniversary all on cask at 5 pm on Thursday the 11th.  So if you can’t make the fest, you can at least drink lots of great cask beer at the pub.  And if you are going to the fest, you can just keep the buzz going one more day.  We should also have the new Sierra Nevada collaboration The Empire Strikes Black Imperial Stout on tap for the evening just in case 3 strong cask beers isn’t enough.
 
For the festival weekend, we will feature Sierra Nevada Specialty Beers on the 12th to 15th.  In addition to the aforementioned Empire Strikes Black, we will also have Bigfoot, Brown Saison and ESB on tap along with our house specialty Big P – 1/2 Pale Ale, 1/2 Bigfoot.  All of the beers will be on tap Friday through Sunday at least so you can stop by anytime and enjoy them.
 
Looking further ahead we will have a cask of Ballast Point Sculpin at 5 pm on Thursday the 18th.  As we always do each year, we will close down on Sunday, June 21st for Father’s Day.  It gives us, our family, our employees and their families a chance to spend the day with each other.  This is a small, family owned business and though it may not seem an important holiday to some, it is important to us to allow our employees to spend it with their loved ones.  You can drink to your heart’s content on Saturday the 20th from 11:30 am to Midnight, or be there as we open at 11 am on Monday to avoid mixing your hop fix.  You could also take the opportunity to try one of the other great beer stops in town – go up to Pizza Port or Churchill’s, try Downtown Johnny Brown’s downtown, go down the hill to San Diego Brewing Company or try the new Blind Lady Ale House or Toronado near by, maybe even pop in somewhere for a brewery tour and tasting – visit the Brewers Guild website for a list of ideas at www.sandiegobrewersguild.org.
 
Next month we have a very special beer and cheese pairing set up with the Malheur beers of De Landsheer Brouwerij in Belgium.  We are teaming up with George and Mary Palmer from Taste Artisan Cheese Shop to bring you this special one night only event at O’Brien’s on Sunday, July 19th at 6:30 pm.  We will feature Malheur 6, 10, 12, Brut and Dark Brut paired with 7-8 different cheeses.  Each beer will be presented in its own flight.  Cost is $40 and you can sign up at the pub (cash only please).  I expect that this event will sell out early, so if you want to go, reserve your seat sooner rather than later.
 
Looking much further ahead, it seems as though San Diego Beer Week is finally coming together.  The inaugral event will be Friday, November 6th through Sunday, November 15th.  Expect 10 days of great beer events, tastings, casks, beer dinners, mmet the brewer events and of course, the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival – one of the best in the county.  As details become available, you can of course find them here.
 
That is your good beer news update for now.  We’ll see you soon for a great beer. Cheers, Tom