What’s Happening

Hello Beer Fans!

There is a lot of great beer news to share this week.  There a bunch of upcoming festivals and tastings coming up in August, we have an incredible cask line up for the next few weeks and I have a slew of specialty beers to tap around my birthday.  And there are still lots of great beers on tap from our Christmas in July promotion including Scaldis Noel, N’ice Chouffe, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot and I just tapped a second keg of the fantastic St. Bernardus Christmas.  Blind Pig IPA will be back on tap tonight and we have a keg of Hopnotic from San Diego Brewing Company on tap along with Alpine Nelson Rye-IPA and Alpine Duet IPA.

The great cask line-up starts tonight, Thursday the 30th, we a cask of Alpine Exponential Hoppiness.  This big hop monster clocks in at nearly 11% alcohol and is chock full of hops.  We’ll tap it at 5 pm and due to its strength I expect it to be on tap most of the evening.  Look for Ed’s Lasagna and the Camenbert burger on special from the Kitchen.  On Friday the 31st there will be some great specialty beers from the good folks at Coronado Brewing – Idiot IPA, Lime Lite Wit (it uses lime zest in place of orange peel) and Hoppy Daze, which is a Belgian-style IPA that is 9% alcohol.  Over the weekend, I expect the Scaldis Noel keg to be gone.  When it is, I will tap the first of the August birthday beers – Brewdog Paradox, which is an Imperial Stout aged in Scotch Whiskey barrels.

New Bottles

We also have a bunch of new bottles around the pub.  Russian River Temptaion is available in 750 ml bottles – and we still have Consecration and Damnation around.  The Deschutes Black Butte XXI, made for the brewery’s 21st anniversary, is a double black butte that is partially aged in bourbon barrels.  We have Affligem Noel for sale for just $10 as part of our X-Mas in July.  Brewdog and Mikkeller from Denmark have collaborated to bring us Devine Rebel, a big 10% abv barleywine that is partially aged in Scotch Whiskey barrels.  And Stone’s latest collaboration, Juxtaposition is out.  Stone teamed up with Cambridge Brewing in Massachusetts and Brewdog (from Scotland) to make what they are creatively calling a black Imperial Pilsner.  It is a strong, dark, 10% abv beer that has a nice mellow roast character to it.  St. Bernardus Tripel is also new on the list as is Hanssen’s Oudbeitje, which is a sour strawberry lambic.
 
Birthday Week

I always like to stash away some great beer to tap around my birthday.  Rather than run one crazy week of events this year – which there is too much beer to do anyway – I am breaking it up and running some the birthday week form the 6th to th 14th (Thursday to the following Friday) and peppering in some great beers all month.  The fun starts on Thursday the 6th with a double cask night from Alpine – Duet IPA and Bad Boy IPA.  Bad Boy is one of my favorite local beers and I am really excited to have it on cask.

The weekend of Alpine Ultimate Hoppiness will start on Friday, August 7th.  We will have 8 different hoppy ales from Alpine on tap.  It starts with Alpine Ale and then moves to the IPAs – O’Brien’s IPA, Duet IPA, Nelson Rye IPA and Sippin’ by the Dock of the Bay IPA which was made by Alpine for the American Homebrewers Conference up in Oakland.  Then we do the double IPAs – Pure Hoppiness and Bad Boy and the triple IPA – Exponential Hoppiness.  The folks at Alpine are excited since even they have never had these 8 beers all on tap at the same time.  If you can’t make it by on Friday, don’t fret.  Several of the beers are on tap right now and most will be on tap by Thursday night, the day before.  And all of them are in full size kegs so that I expect most of them to be on tap for the entire weekend!

The following Friday, August 14th we will host another great night of local and cask beer with Port Brewing and Lost Abbey.  Head Brewer Tomme Arthur has lined up some great beer for us including casks of Angel’s Share Barleywine and Older Viscosity.  On tap, look for Panzer Imperial Pils, SPA (Summer Pale Ale), Wipeout and Hop 15 along with some Lost Abbey specialty kegs.  We’ll also have bottles of Red Poppy Flemish Ale, Bourbon Barrel Aged Santa’s Little Helper Imperial Stout and the new Duck Duck Gooze.

I have a ton of other great beer to tap including Deschutes Black Butte XXI, Cantillon Iris 2007, Sierra Nevada Empire Strikes Black, Russian River Temptation, Val Dieu Grand Cru and I have a keg of Ballast Point Dorado double IPA for Wednesday, August 12th which is when the USA plays at Mexico in World Cup Qualifying.  And though it is beyond the birthday week time-frame, I am going to a night of draft beers from Dupont on Friday the 21st just because I can.  I will have more details on what is getting tapped when next week.  And Lindsey will have a bunch of great specials from the kitchen including Seafood Etouffee, Humberto’s Chili Verde and Mac n’ Cheese.

Beer Events

This weekend at the Del Mar Racetrack there will be a beer festival which is free with your admission to the races.  The Stone Anniversary Party is coming up on Saturday, August 22nd and tickets are going fast.  The event is expected to sell out so don’t show up with out a ticket.  The fest is at CSU San Marcos and will happen in two sessions each lasting three hours.  Pizza Port San Clemente is hosting a Session Ale festival on Saturday, August 15th on the roof top parking lot that will feature only beers at or under 5% abv.  Think of it as the evil opposite cousin to the Strong Ale Festival – which will happen on December 4th and 5th at Pizza Port Carlsbad.

The Cooks Confab, a local chefs group, is pairing up with local craft brewers for a first rate evening of food and beer on the rooftop of the Stingaree downtown on Sunday, August 9 from 6-9 pm.  The event is called Craft Beer: Grain to Glass, Farm to Table.  Six breweries, which include AleSmith, Lost Abbey, Stone, Green Flash, Lightning and Ballast Point will be paired with two Confab culinary teams and they will present two plates to complement each one of the chosen beers.  For reservations please call 619.544.9500. The cost for the six courses is $90.00 per guest and includes all food, beer and beverages, tax and gratuity!  For more info, visit www.coooksconfab.com.  A portion of the proceeds will benefit Slow Food San Diego.

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

Hello All,

Just a quick web update this week.  We have a bunch of beers on tap for our Christmas in July promotion.  On tap you will find St. Bernardus Christmas (2 kegs!), Scaldis Noel, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Sierra Nevada Bigfoot and for right now, St. Feuillien Noel, which is likely to blow soon – it will become N’ice Chouffe later today.  We also have Affligem Noel in the bottle that will be on special tonight (Friday, 7/24).

Over the weekend, the US Men’s soccer team is in its second final of the summer, this time against Mexico at Noon on Sunday.  To help cheer on our boys, we will tap a keg of Ballast Point Sculpin IPA for the game.  I expect the keg to be on tap all day and well into Monday, but maybe not beyond that.

There are still a few seats left for our Malheur beer and cheese pairing this Sunday, the 26th at 6:30 pm.  Please sign up in advance as we can not accept walk up customers to the event – all of the cheese is brought from off site and we need to know how much to bring in advance.  You can sign up at the pub (cash only please) or contact Taste Cheese shop 619-683-2306 to pay with a credit card.

Next week look for casks from Alpine – O’Brien’s IPA on Wednesday the 29th and Exponential Hoppiness on Thursday the 30th.  We’ll have some Coronado specialty beers on tap next week as well – Lime Lite Wit, Idiot IPA and Hoppy Daze Belgian-style IPA.

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

Greetings Beer Fans!

The weather is hot, and that means that cold, hoppy beer is tasting great.  And thankfully, we have quite a bit of it right now.  In addition to our normal line up of Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA, Blind Pig IPA and Russian River IPA we have both Alpine Nelson Rye-IPA and Alpine Duet on tap.  And of course Alpine Pure Hoppiness and Russian River Pliny the Elder.  If you are a sucker for a dark beer, then check out the Coronado Blue Bridge Coffee Stout – it’s even made with local coffee.  Our first of the Christmas in July beers – Delirium Noel – is now on tap as well.

I have also updated the bottle list and there are some fine new additions.  Locally, Ballast Point Sculpin joins Droado double IPA on the list.  AleSmtih Summer YuleSmith and Decandence 2008 are avaialble.  On the import side, we have Gouden Carolous Noel out for X-Mas in July fest and we have added St. Bernardus Tripel.  Also new on the list are Avery 16 Saison, Avery Maharaja, Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme, Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh 40, Schneider Organic Edel Weisse and New Belgium La Folie.  All of the above bottles will be on special this weekend, as they are every weekend, for 10% off.  And that also applies to any single import bottle purchased to go.

This Week

Later in the week you can look forward to our annual cask of AleSmith’s summer version of YuleSmith.  The summer version is a double IPA, while the traditional winter offering is a double red.  The cask will go on at 5 pm on Thursday the 16th.  When the cask blows, I have a draft keg to tap right afterward.  All of our local beers will be on special from 4:30 to 8 pm.

Friday the 17th we host a night of beers from Weihenstephan in Germany, the world’s oldest brewery.  We will have four beers on tap including: Original Lager, Hefeweizen (which is incredible), Vitus (weizenbock) and Korbinian (double bock).  All of the beers are great.  The Vitus is a wheat double bock around 7.7%.  It is a dark, malty lager made with a wheat beer yeast for a spicy nose and aroma.  It is a very cool style of beer and one that I really like.  The Korbinian double bock is a traditional double bock around 7.5%.  And just to get you in the mood for German beer, the kitchen will be serving up bratwurst with our house made spicy mustard.  I expect all four beers to be on tap all day

Over the weekend, the USA men’s soccer team plays Panama at 5 pm in a Gold Cup Quarterfinal.  The Gold Cup is the regional championship for North and Central America and the Caribbean.  If the USA wins, we will play again on Thursday the 23rd.  The final is Sunday, July 26th at Noon and if the USA is in it, I have a keg of Sculpin to tap.
 
Next Week
 
Wednesday the 22nd we have a special 5 gallon cask of Great American Brown from brewer Jeff Bagby at Pizza Port Carlsbad.  We’ll tap it 6 pm.  We have another great cask from Pizza Port Carlsbad on the 23rd at 5 pm – Wipeout IPA.  Friday the 24th I plan to tap several winter beers for our X-mas in July.  I will send out an update next week, but I expect to have Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, Alaskan Smoked Porter, St. Feuillien Noel and more on tap.
 
There are still a few seats left for our Malheur Beer and Cheese Tasting on the 26th.  We will be pairing 5 Malheur beers – 6, 10, 12, Brut and Dark Brut – with 7 different artisan cheeses.  I really love all of the Malheur beers, it is one of my favorite breweries.  We’ll be pairing the beers with our friends George and Mary from Taste Artisan Cheese Shop.  The class will be at 6:30 pm on Sunday the 26th at the pub.  Cost is $40 and you can sign up at the pub (cash only please) or contact Taste to use a credit card.

Looking Ahead

At the end of the month you can check out a 5 gallon cask of O’Brien’s IPA at 6 pm on Wednesday the 29th.  On Thursday the 30th we bring down the big hurt with a cask of Alpine’s Exponential Hoppiness at 5 pm.  And then its August.

Anyone who has been coming to the pub for a few years knows that I like to celebrate my birthday with lots of good beer.  This year we will be starting the celebration a little early to help accomodate all of the good beer I have to tap.  Among the things I have been stashing so far: Cantillon Iris 2007, Brewdog Paradox, Sierra Nevada Empire Strikes Black and casks of Alpine Bad Boy, Port Brewing Older Viscosity and Alpine Duet.  And I know that there will be a few other special treats thrown in there.

The main event is going to be Friday, August 7th as we host the night of Ultimate Hoppiness.  This will be our 8 hoppy beer extravaganza from Alpine Beer Company.  We will have Alpine Ale, Duet IPA, O’Brien’s IPA, Nelson Rye-IPA, Sippin by the Dock of the Bay IPA (made for the AHA conference), Pure Hoppiness, Bad Boy and Exponential Hoppiness all on tap, all in full size kegs so that they will last all night long – and likely even into Saturday.  We’ll also be doing two full size Alpine casks on Thursday the 6th – Bad Boy and Duet IPA.  I don’t have any of the other beers scheduled yet, but when I do, you will read about it in the email.

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

Greetings Beer Lovers!

A very happy birthday to the USA this weekend!  We will be closed on Saturday, July 4th to spend the holiday with family and friends.  The pub will be open normal hours on both Friday (11 am to Midnight) and Sunday (Noon to 6 pm).  Friday the 3rd we will host a night of beers from Green Flash Brewing Company – West Coast IPA, Double Stout (which is dark and delicious) and the new Summer Saison, which is light in alcohol at 4.5% but very flavorful.

We also have lots of new beers on tap and in the bottle.  New on tap is Dogfish Head Festina Peche, a tart peach beer, and Mission Mai Bock, a German-style lager with an excellent bready-malt flavor.  We also have the Ballast Point Piper Down Scottish Ale and you can look for more of the O’Brien’s IPA from Alpine Beer Company on Friday or Sunday.  We will tap a cask of O’Brien’s IPA, tonight, Thursday the 2nd, at 5 pm.

New Bottles

Bottle-wise, there are a ton of great bottles that have come in recently.  The new AleSmith Decadence 2008 – an English Barleywine – is in stock now and tasting great.  We have the Cuvee de Tomme and still more of the Angel’s Share from Lost Abbey.  Avery 16 Anniversary Ale, which is a saison is in 22 oz bottles as is New Belgium’s La Folie sour brown ale.  The new Ola Dubh 40 from Harviestouns is aged in 40 year old Whiskey casks and has a strong Scotch nose and flavor to it.  On the sour side we have the Doesjel Lambic from Drie Fonteinen.  The beer is bottled nearly still, as are all traditional lambics.  Geuze is the sparkling version of lambic.  But perhaps my favorite of our new bottles is the North Coast Old Rasputin 12.  Brewed in honor of the beer’s 12th anniversary (I believe the brewery is now 20 years old), this is a barrel aged version of Old Rasputin and it is incredible.  We will have bottles of Sculpin IPA from Ballast Point available soon as well.

Next Week

We have a ton of great beer coming next week.  Wednesday the 8th we will have Idiot IPA and Blue Bridge Coffee Stout from our friends at Coronado Brewing Company.  The coffee stout was great last time, but we only got one keg, which did not last long, so not many of you may have tried it.  To rectify the situation, I asked Shawn at Coronado to send us two kegs so that more people can get to try this phenomenal beer.  Also on Wednesday, the USA soccer team plays Honduras in the 2009 Gold Cup at 6 pm.

Thursday the 9th we have a cask of Poor Man’s IPA from Pizza Port Carlsbad.  The beer is on tap right now and tasting great.  Congratulations to head brewer Jeff Bagby and brewer Yiga Miyashiro for winning the Best of Show award at the San Diego County Fair Craft Beer Competition for Good Grief Brown.  More than 25 gold medal beers were tasted against each other and Jeff’s beer came out on top.  The San Diego International Beer Festival this past weekend at the Fair was a great event.  More than 300 beers were available for sampling with a much better layout than last year making it easy to find and get to all of the beers.  The arena also has a new roof so that the whole festival was in the shade which was very nice.

Friday the 10th we have a New Belgium brewery night with the new Dandelion Ale. It is a Belgian blond ale, about 7.5%, made with dandelions in place of hops.  I have not tried it yet, but I am really looking forward to it.  We will also have the great Biere de Mars and Skinny Dip, a summer lager with cascade hops, on tap.  Pint glasses and NBB Goblets will be on sale.  From the kitchen, look for some new sandwiches featuring French Brie next week and the Humberto’s great Crab and Corn Chowder.

Saturday the 11th I am tapping a very special keg from Redstone Meadery – Nectar of the Hops.  This is the same base mead that is used for the fruit nectars, but instead of adding fruit, it is dry-hopped in the conditioning tank.  Owner/Meadmaker David Myers has been to the pub several times to help lead our Mead tastings.  He only sent one keg out and he told me that he couldn’t think of a better place to send out the first keg of Nectar of the Hops in California than the Hoppiest Place on Earth.  We will tap it at 4 pm on Saturday the 11th, which coincides with the USA v. Haiti soccer kick off.  It is only 5 gallons so I don’t expect it to last for too many days.

Coming Soon

After the 4th of July we are going to start our Christmas in July program.  Every year  I save back a few kegs of Christmas and Winter beers to tap in the summer.  Many of these beers improve with a few months of aging, but they often sell out so quickly in the wintertime, that we never get to taste them with a bit of age.  All through the month we will have at least one winter beer on tap.  I do not have any kind of set schedule yet.  I can tell you that I have kegs of St. Feuillien Noel, Delirium Noel, Bigfoot, Alaskan Smoked Porter, N’ice Chouffe and many others.  I will have a better idea of what will be on tap when by the next email.  In the meantime, start looking for the beers to show up next week.

Thursday the 16th is AleSmith Summer YuleSmith night.  We will tap a cask at 5 pm and a keg immediately after the cask blows.  Friday the 17th is Weihenstephan night and we will have a bunch of great German beers on tap including the brewery’s fantastic Weizenbock.  Other kegs you can look forward to this month are: Brewdog Paradox, Schneider and Brooklyn Hopfenweiss, Guinness 250th Anniversary Stout and Shipayrd XXXX IPA.

And though I don’t have a date set yet, this event is just too good not to tell you about.  It is at least 3 weeks, probably even a little more away at least.  It is the Night of Ultimate Alpine Hoppiness.  We will have EIGHT different hoppy beers on tap from Alpine.  This will be the first and likely only time that this many hoppy beers from Alpine will ever be on tap.   We will have Alpine Ale, O’Brien’s IPA, Duet IPA, Nelson Rye-IPA, Sippin on the Dock of the Bay IPA (made for the AHA conference), Pure Hoppiness, Bad Boy and Exponential Hoppiness – all fresh batches and all on tap at once.  Believe me, when I have a date set, you will all know about it.

Beer and Cheese Please

Our Malheur Beer and Cheese tasting class on Sunday, July 26th is about half full.  The class on the 19th is now sold out again.  So if you want to claim one of the last 15 seats, please sign up soon.  I would expect the class to be sold out about one week in advance, so by the 18th or so.   The class will feature 5 Malheur beers with 7 great cheese pairings.  The cost is $40 and you can sign up at the pub (cash only please) or contact Taste Cheese Shop in Hillcrest to use a credit card.

Finally, next time you are at the pub you might run into our new bartender, Andrea.  She just started last week.  We already feel that she is a great addition to our outstanding crew.  Please make her feel welcome and at home at O’Brien’s.

That is your good beer news for now.  Please have a happy and safe 4th of July.  Enjoy some great local beer over the weekend and we’ll see you soon at the pub for a great draft beer.  Cheers, Tom