Halloween and SD Beer Week!!!
Hoppy Halloween Beer Fans!
This Friday, October 30th is our big Halloween Costume Party at the pub. Most of our decorations are up already and all of the bartenders will be in costume. Everyone showing up in costume will get $1 off your first pint. We’ll have some great beers on tap including AleSmith Evil Dead Red, Dogfish Head Punkin, and Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin in addition to our regular line up of great hoppy ales. It is always a super fun night to be at the pub and we hope to see you there.
Before the party on Friday we will tap a cask of AleSmith Evil Dead Red at 5 pm on Thursday. We will likely still have a few of the wet hop beers around as well as there were a few we had more than one keg of including Sierra Nevada Harvest and ESP and Port High Tide. Allagash Interlude is on tap now too. From the kitchen look for Beer Chili on Thursday, Cambazola cheese specials, Potato Skins and some Guinness Beer Cheese for Halloween.
Beer for Breakfast
Thursday morning we will be opening up early from 8-10 am to show the USA under-17 soccer match against Malawi in the U-17 World Cup. Humberto will be cooking up breakfast and we will have OJ, Champagne and Mimosas along with our traditional beer for breakfast. So if you want to come cheer on the USA, or just grab some great breakfast, please stop by. The USA men’s team has scheduled friendly matches on Saturday, November 14th and Wednesday, November 18th in Europe against Slovakia and Denmark respectively. We are hoping to have our San Diego chapter of the American Outlaws supporters group official by the 14th. If you are interested in signing up, go to: www.theamericanoutlaws.com. You can also get on our soccer specific by replying to this email and letting me know you want to be on it.
Over the weekend, we will be open normal hours on Halloween from Noon to Midnight. On Sunday, the Chargers face the newly humiliated Raiders at 1:15 pm. I assume that the final tickets will be sold and that the game will be on TV. All weekend long, we will have our 10% off all bottles special.
Beer Week
Next weekend starts the first San Diego Beer Week. We have an amazing list of events for the 10 days. We will tap more good beer than we can possibly drink – I promise! You can find the complete list of events all over town at www.sdbw.org. There are beer dinners, classes, tastings, festivals, meet the brewer events and pint nights all over the county featuring local breweries and great breweries from out of town. This will truly make San Diego beer mecca for 10 days. We will start a night early on Thursday the 5th with a cask of Port Brewing’s High Tide Fresh Hop IPA at 5 pm.
We are going to start Beer Week off with Alpine Beer Company weekend November 6th, 7th and 8th. On the 6th we will have a 4 batch vertical tasting of Exponential Hoppiness along wtih at least 6 other Alpine beers on tap. We will continue to tap around 10 Alpine beers including Duet IPA, Nelson IPA, Pure Hoppiness and O’Brien’s IPA all weekend long. If all goes well, we will have more Alpine beer on tap than Alpine will. The 6th and 7th are also the nights for the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival so whichever night you don’t go to that fest, stop by the pub for some great Alpine beer.
Sunday the 8th we are doing an all local Beer and Cheese tasting with Taste Artisan Cheese Shop at the pub at 6:30 pm. We have culled together some of the best local beer pairings from previous tastings along with pairings that Taste has done with other breweries and thrown in some great new ones to make a really great class. We even have some more of the Stone 12th Anniversary Chocolate Oatmeal stout for the class and beers from Alpine, Ballast Point, AleSmith, Green Flash, Lost Abbey and Pizza Port. The cost is $40 and you can sign up at the bar (cash only please) or you can contact Taste at 619-683-2306 to use a credit card.
Monday the 9th is Green Flash night with a cask of Palate Wreck for Monday Night Football (Steelers at Broncos) along with some amazing kegs of specialty beer from head brewer Chuck Silva – Superfreak, Little Freak, Grand Mantis (barrel aged Grand Cru), Coffee Double Stout, Belgian Brown, Belgian Stout and Hopless. Chuck will stopping by as well to share some beers with and answer questions. I will also be on the 91X Beer for Breakfast Monday morning as the station will be doing its Beer for Breakfast bit every day of the week.
Tuesday the 10th is AleSmith Night with the very rare Kopi Luwak Speedway Stout at 6 pm. We will have a very limited amount of this beer, so we will only be serving it in 5 oz samples. Owner-brewer Peter Zien will be there to tell us about this beer and the very rare coffee it uses and the rather unique production method that makes the coffee so rare. All I will say is that it involves civets (an Asian weasel-like creature) and their by products. We will also have some other great AleSmith beers on tap and in the bottle. We will have regular Speedway Stout on tap for a side by side comparison.
Wednesday the 11th is Rodenbach night and we will have Rodenbach Grand Cru and regular Rodenbach on tap. We will surely have some great beers from our earlier events on tap along with several other new beers. When I have all of the details for Wednesday night settled, I will post it in the email.
Thursday the 12th is a double cask night with Alpine O’Brien’s IPA and Ballast Point Sculpin. It will also be Ballast Point night with at least 5 specialty beers on tap. The brewery is waiting until after its anniversary party this weekend to determine the line up for this event. So when I know – you will know. We will also have Chimay on tap and specials on Chimay cheeses.
Friday the 13th will be a Best of Beer Week night. We will be tapping more good beer than we can possibly consume in the first 7 days of Beer Week, so on Friday we will be highlighting great beers from throughout the week in one gigantic night of San Diego specialty beer.
Saturday the 14th will be Bear Republic night with several specialty beers including a special O’Brien’s Blend from the brewery. It has not even been made yet, so when the brewers tell me what it is, I will pass that along. We’ll have brewer/owner Rich Norgrove down to share a few beers with us and tell us stories about his race cars.
Sunday the 15th is our annual Lost Abbey Rare Bottle tasting with head brewer Tomme Arthur and snacks by Pizza Port owner Vince Marsaglia. Tomme has lots of oddball beers stashed away that he only uses for special events. We get to sample some of these super rare beers as he tells us about them. We should have 10-12 beers total along with the light snacks. Cost is $40 (cash only please) and you can sign up at the bar – hurry, there are only about 6 spots left.
European Pub Crawl
And as if all of this was not enough for you, our good friend Bill Snider of Ciao! Travel has released the amazing itinerary for the 2010 Great Belgian Beer Trip. There are four incredible options that include Amsterdam, Ghent, Bamberg and Munich. This is the 6th year that we have partnered with Ciao Travel for a European Pub crawl and every year the trip has been a ton of fun. I am really looking forward to going in 2010. There are flyers at the pub with discount offers valid through November 15th, 2009. You can also check it out online at www.ciaotravel.com. And you can almost always find Bill around the pub willing to talk about trip and its many wonderful destinations.
The San Diego Strong Ale Festival will be at Pizza Port Carlsbad on December 4th and 5th. VIP tickets should be on sale next week for the 1-4 pm session on Friday. Some of you may have seen some heavily bearded guys who looked like they were in a rock band last Thursday. Well, they were in a band – Valient Thorr. A great hard rock/metal band that reminds me of early Iron Maiden musically with more politically minded lyrics. They played the Casbah last week and stopped by the pub for a good beer before the gig. You can find out more about them at www.valientthorr.com.
That is your good beer news for now. We’ll see you for Halloween weekend! Cheers, Tom