Pfiff!

.. but will perhaps come back to play.

Someday.

Labels: beer

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One of the more popular bumper stickers of the "local pride" variety refers to Fairfax as "Mayberry on acid". It's a town that prides itself on waving its freak flag high, and, to the extent that it's possible in a place like Marin county, being a funky little joint.

How appropriate then, that today, the first Monday of SF Beer Week 2010, marks the release of Iron Springs' first foray into the funky and freaky world of brettanomyces-influenced beer, with a somewhat unexpected choice from the house line-up as the guinea pig: their Chazz Cat Rye, an amber, mildly spicy rye beer that's been a mainstay on the draught list since the pub's inception. Dubbed "Rye the Funk Not", the name nicely sums up the degree of experimentalism the brewers invoked in putting this batch together. Head brewer Christian Kazakoff explained it thusly:

I was impressed with the flavor of a Rye beer I did in a firkin with oak chips soaked in Chardonnay; so, I decided to purchase a Zinfandel barrel from a local winery in Oakland and fill it with a new Rye beer I brewed that was in the pre-chill conditioning stage. It took a little over two barrels of Rye to fill the barrel. I inoculated the beer with some brettanomyces and buried it in "The Brett Farm" at Drakes brewery in San Leandro for seven months. When the secondary funk fermentation finished out in October, Persimmons were just being harvested and I love Persimmons. I added twenty pounds of chopped Fuyu Persimmons to the barrel and let it stand for another three months.

He describes the result as a pale, 7% alcohol, oaky beer, with rye spice contrasting with a slight sourness, and a lingering sweetness from the fruit. Besides the limited run RTFN will have on tap at the pub as part of their barrel-aged beer month, there are a dozen or so cases of 750ml bottles that were hand-corked and caged in the Belgian style which are conditioning with champagne yeast and awaiting label artwork for a small release in another month or so. Compared to its second cousin twice removed, it's drier, fairly stronger, and plays its hops much further in the background, letting each of its unique qualities come out to play in distinct order: a spicy, leathery aroma leads into an initial taste of old barrel, ceding to hints of the rye and West Coast hops before the fruity persimmon finish (which I wouldn't have been able to distinguish if it hadn't been for the multiple sessions of a friend's persimmon wine I've had the joy to experience over the past year) cleans up the palate, dryly, with that slight sourness that stirs the appetite and warrants a second taste.

It's warming to see experimentation such as this taking place so close to home (even if the intentional "infection" occurred in Contra Costa), and with today's news that Mill Valley Beerworks got their brewer's notice from the TTB, it might not be long before we're seeing the first spontaneously brewed Marin beer. Perhaps I'm fantasizing a little. But it's a fun fantasy to harbor when enjoying something as wickedly complex and time-consuming yet blithely titled Rye the Funk Not.

Labels: beer, local, sfbw

"I can't imagine getting in line for a beer," came one slightly tongue-in-cheek comment from the small assemblage of local beer writers huddled beside a table overflowing with Ryan Farr's chicharrones, as we discussed the completely unforeseen mad dash that had occurred earlier in the day up at Russian River, where demand for their annual February release* had formed, to say the very least, a "line". Even Natalie Cilurzo's own estimates on the lifespan of this year's batch of Pliny the Younger ("I don’t know how long it will be available at the pub. However, I venture to guess less than one week and more than one day!") turned out to be quite generous, as by 6pm Friday afternoon, after about 7 hours of being poured, the 600 gallons on tap at the Santa Rosa pub had already dried up. Even Mario, a Santa Rosa native and stalwart supporter of all things Russian River chimed in to say (unbeknownst to all of us that just as we were making the rounds at the SF Beer Week gala, the atmosphere up in Sonoma had already turned somewhat grim) had he would have been happy to wait until Saturday to get his share, had he been able to foresee the unprecedented crowds that had appeared well before the door's had even been opened. After all, last year there'd been no crowds at all, no lines, not the slightest bit of fuss - that easy, relaxed Sonoma pace had been shattered this time around, the pub apparently having fallen victim to its own success, the obsessive completists monitoring the ubiquitous top ten lists, and the ease with which social networking tools can amass armies of beer fanatics like blinkered, hops-driven flash mobs.

Not that it mattered entirely on my part, thanks to Mario having stashed my very own growler of the stuff by the gala entrance. And as we departed into the early evening, someone perched outside the event noticed the bottle I was casually swinging from my pinkie and called out, "Hey, is that Younger?", forcing me to glance over my shoulder the whole way back to the parking garage in fear that we were being followed...

Despite all the hype and a reputation it couldn't possibly live up to, it remains a wonderful treat of a beer, and one for which I'm happy to say that I didn't have to stand in line. A fortuitous way to begin SF Beer Week 2010, indeed. Expect it to make some further, albeit brief appearances over the course of the week, in your finer Bay Area drinking establishments.

* And as for that other February special release, the darling Valentines' Day black Belgian ale dubbed "Rejection", expect that one to make an appearance at Toronado tomorrow night.

Labels: beer, events, local, sfbw

"Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness: on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming at something else, they find happiness by the way.

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so."
- John Stuart Mill

For the better part of the year, Fairfax locals had been teased with the promise of the impending opening of an outpost of San Francisco's Gestalt Haus, a venue that's but a smudge on the map in the SF beer scene but one that had the potential for making a big mark in our little burg. For months, the little ex-furniture shop on Bolinas Avenue sat unchanged, wrapped in the same secretive butcher paper and adorned with a coming soon sign that indicated, curiously, that despite the name, our local version of this popular little bike-friendly sausage-and-a-pint shack was, for better or worse, entirely unaffiliated with the SF joint of the same name.
Then, back in September, thanks to messages out of the blue posted both on the mtbr.com forums and Twitter, we discovered they'd be hosting a quick and dirty open house. Turns out they'd gotten their liquor license squared away, yet were still tied up in logistical wrangling with the health department, so they'd planned on pouring a fresh keg of Hofbräu lager for suggested donations of $2 a cup while showing off their nearly completed digs. A ton of obvious work had gone into the place, most notably the 14' redwood bar at the center of the action, adorned with two gleaming towers promising some fine German draught choices and some equally fine local selections. The jukebox was loaded with the appropriate amount of Fugazi, the tables were set, the bike racks were loaded in, and things looked ready to go, simply waiting for the green light to finish the kitchen, and they'd be open in two weeks.

Two weeks passed quickly, without any news, and then it was October, and the still unchanged storefront facade caused me to wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing, riding down the hill through the late summer's breeze on that fine September evening, filling up on an honest pint of Munich's finest while gamely chatting up the obviously excited, if not slightly terrified, proprietors of our town's newest watering hole. And with the annual hubs n' hops Biketoberfest fast approaching, it was starting to become a bit of a concern, how the place would survive having missed, in its construction phase, all the year's big crowd draws, all the events that actually get folks to take that wrong, long left turn and wind up here on the dark side of Mt. Tamalpais, before the winter sets in and the rain cloud obscures our existence from the rest of the world until May.

And so, then, the day before the festival, something very strange happened.

They moved.

Apparently, things with the health department weren't progressing as quickly as the Haus folks would've liked, so when a nearby bookstore that happened to already have both a liquor license and a fully functioning kitchen abruptly closed its doors, Gestalt Haus just as abruptly moved in and made themselves at home. And with untold back-breaking hours building a plywood bar from scratch and moving the keg coolers and draught towers and picnic tables and glassware, they opened their doors just in time to see the largest parade of pedal-pushing beer drinkers of the season ride past, and stop in.
And it may just be the "how much weight will this support?" feeling one experiences when bellying up to grab another Maß from the bar that lends the place's name such appropriateness. While the original's tagline - beer, brats, and bikes - was supposed to convey its gestalt, whole experience being greater than the sum of its parts, the gestalt at our own, potentially short-term bar (because they do still hold the lease up the street, and aren't pinning themselves down just yet) is quite different, and pretty endearing. The parts here - communal seating with a real Stammtisch feel, excellent, simple beers in proper glassware, great natural lighting and a quiet, relaxed vibe - add up to a gestalt that virtually defines "session". Not much worth commenting on by themselves, but put together, it adds up to something of real worth, and in a place that's better for it.

And did I mention they have bacon potato chips?

Labels: beer, local

Lowered expectation warning: The following is a complete cop out.

I don't know if it's the weird muggy heat or the headache that's accompanying it or what, but despite digging as deeply into my smartass as possible, this month's Fermentation Friday isn't happening for me. Sorry to disappoint, Matt. No matter how hard I force it, this baby's not moving out of neutral. While I'm stuck in the driveway here with the engine running, I wonder if I'd been deluding myself in the past in thinking I was witty enough to word my way around any topic, but this one ("I want to know if and why you break away from the norm") has me completely con- and dumbfounded. For the life of me, I can't remember the last time we brewed anything that one might consider "normal". (This should not be taken as boasting: I never said they were any "good".) Years ago, deeply hidden in the ancient mists of my already cloudy memory, I seem to recall brewing up batches that didn't include homegrown herbs, oddly modified grains, obscure hop varieties, unusual sugar sources, or peculiar tinctures, beers that you could matter-of-factly call "a stout" or "a West Coast pale ale". In fact, when joking last week about how we were simultaneously putting up a batch of kombucha while prepping a yeast starter for our holiday ale, and how haha funny would it be were I to swap the two by mistake, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the thought had, yes, momentarily, crossed my mind. Seriously. What if?

So, rather than waste any more of your precious Friday reading time (go out and kiss a girl or pet a dog or vice versa), we'll make our entry simple. Here's the recipe for this year's holiday ale (the original gravity reading of which you see pictured up above), and here's a link to the song that's been stuck in my head all day. And if you need a reminder on how to make the amber candi sugar yourself, here are the instructions. Enjoy.

Many thanks to Matt at A World of Brews  for hosting this month's mind-boggling Fermentation Friday, a monthly blogging carnival gathered around the topic of homebrewing, originated by Beer Bits 2. 

*About that title.

Labels: fermentation friday, recipes

The first order of thanks has to go to our ably dexterous mate in the galley, Mr. Alex of Drink A Week, here caught childishly trying his hand at the delicate art of beer blogging*, who not only kept the food train running for the five hours that we were serving, but managed to keep a live microblog feed of the event running simultaneously for his dozen or so followers. If there's a kitchen assistant who can handle a bigger heap of verbal and physical abuse during an event than Alex can, I'd be shocked (and if you know of one, please let me know as I could probably use them next year).

Second in line for kudos is Dave Hauslein, the beer manager for Healthy Spirits, without whose help the wicked variety of beers we had chance to sample would not have materialized (here seen apparently doubling up on his portion of the polenta and sopressata). Dave goes way out on a limb to provide an unmatched service to local weird beer lovers, not only stocking the big name trends of the day, but allowing space for bottles that may sit a little while just waiting to be united with a certain taster with an adventurous palate.

(And on the topic of thanks, while I know Des is listed as a contributor on the masthead here, that's really just a formality that allows her to pop into any of my published posts and clear up any unbearably unsightly editing errors, and as such it would be completely uncouth for me not to publicly thank her for the enormous contributions, in cooking, hospitality, and the immense clean up effort, that she donated to what is truly my singleminded obsession of hosting this annual affair.)

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't thank our guests for not only taking a chance in coming in blind to our little experiment, but also for doing my job for me in taking