olllllo's 2009 Bay Area AHA/NHC Tattler

Tuesday, June 16.

Bailed out of work early and had a customary SABL at the airport. I didn't think that the canned Heineken on the plane were worth downgrading to so I drank the complimentary nondescript red wine for the 2 hour flight.

Checked into the hotel and hit the BART to meet up with 3 other brewers from my local club, Arizona Society of Homebrewers (ASH) at 21st Amendment Brewery Cafe 563 2nd St, San Francisco, CA.

It turned out to be some sort of reverse masquerade party wherein we all reveled our various handles and affiliations.

ex. Keith from (ASH) is Mylo on HBT is MyloFiore on BN. He was with Ben from ASH and beerocracy from BN (also David from ASH), charlie is Push_Eject from BN and HBT.
BDawg - Steve, Schumann, and numerous other BN peeps were there. The infamous asshat was passed around.

21st Amendment Primus Belgian Strong Golden.
In the background, sopme of the BN Army.


Rathskellar Alt. Clean Dry Roasty Bitter and the beer list.


Disco Ball in the 21A Brewhouse


Later that night, most of us hit the Trappist for a night cap. Nichole (a BN regular) was tending bar.


I believe that split a bottle of Consecration with someone. Other notables, Allagash Confluence, de Ranke Kreik, Cantillon Kreik.

Stay tuned for Wednesday. Anchor tour with Beeriffic, Toronado, Rogue and Linden St for BNA4.

Hard to tell what's going on. Your pics are pretty dark.

arturo7 said:

Hard to tell what's going on. Your pics are pretty dark.

Click to expand...

People were drinking beer.
Fun was had.

Nicole is incredible. She is part of DOZE, BN Army and a Mad Zymurgist...
Crazy awesome girl. I am sure she treated you well

Wednesday, June 17

I slept in for a bit and then managed to pick up my Conference badge and the swag bag. We were treated with a Brother Levonian brewed as a tribute to an area homebrewer that recently passed. The beer was brewed at Lost Abbey. Later in the week we saw bottles of Brother Levonian on sale at Toronado for $20.00. The othe beer was a West Coast IPA brewed at Alpine.


Beerriffic was wise enough to set up an Anchor tour. Not sure why I didn't think to snap a pic of the two of us. Hopefully he has one. It was good to meet Beerriffic and Mrs. Beerriffic.

Just a quick note about the photos, some of them are from the camera phone others are from a better camera. I don't always carry the nice camera, especially when I am drinking. I usually post to twitter directly from the phone, so it's less hassle. You'll have to deal.

The tasting room had a series of photos when Janis Jopin visited Anchor Brewing.


Here is one from Anchor's site:





Mashing


Open Fermentation.


Anchor was very generous with the samples. For a free tour you got as many half pints as you wanted. They offered up the Summer Ale, Steam, Liberty, Porter, Forghorn, and Small.

next... Toronado!

Man, I wish I went. This year probably would have been my best chance since it was so close, but I was sick as a dog last week too so that would not have gone well.

Makes me miss living in SF. I never got to tour Anchor, the waiting list was months long and were only open when I was working. Working on 2nd st gave me easy access to 21st amendment though.

Toronado is an awesome place. their barley wine fest last year was unbelievable. I think they had 100 barley wines. Needless to say, the bike ride home was fun.

Check out Zeitgeist, if the weather is nice, for an awesome beer garden.

I missed out on the Big BNA4 bus tour and also the Beer-by-Bart tour, but I did manage to tag along with Beer-by-Bart after Anchor. We had the choice to go to Toronado or Magnolia. I chose Toronado. I'd hit Magnolia later in the week.




We got there during Happy Hour, so the normally $4.50 pints of Pliney were only $3.50. Beers I recall were Drakes 1500 Ale, Allagash White, Moonlight Working for Tips (redwood spruce tips - no hops), Russian River Consecration with most beers having a regular pint price of $4.

I ended up talking to a guy named Mark from Kansas. He told me that his 5yo son made the cider that went to the second round. Since we were all wearing various NHC garb and wristbands we got to talking to many of the locals that wanted to hear our thought on the local beer. I for one could not stop telling them how lucky they are and that they should be proud.

I picked this up on Haight.


Later, on the flight home, the item went through secondary screening. Almost every TSA officer wanted to know where I bought it. The first TSA agent thought it was a picture of me.

Candle can be got here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/trunk-san-francisco

The beer dungeon at Toronado.



Next we got on a Bus a Bus a Motha****in Bus. I'm on a Bus.


Over to Rogue, but only long enough for a pint.

I wanted to get back to the Hotel to get ready for BNA4 at Linden St Brewery.

That's next.

I realize I'm a bit behind on my updates, I have some video that I need to comb through and clear off the flip cam. I have some stuff to tape this weekend.


Here's a pic of me and DeathBrewer, one of the surprise highlights of my trip.



Bear in mind that this was BNA4 and there were alot of big names out there. I recall not acknowledging Greg Koch's celebrity status and just saying hey as he introduced himself to me because I was talking to Sean Paxton, the homebrewchef.

Probably regret that move, but what they hell, we're all brewers, right?