Fellow beer lovers, I have opened a Mybeerpix.com. Beer Gear shop.

When you purchase beer gear from this shop you’re not only going to look great in your new clothing, you’re helping a good cause — Namely me, Beer Molly, and my love of drinking fine craft brews!

So, come on over and take a look and I’m sure you will find something that you like. You’ll need to pick up a couple of shirts for your friends too. You know they will all want one too.

Cheers!

Beer Molly

» My Beer Pix T-Shirts

Jason and Todd Alström, founders of beeradvocate.com
photo courtesy of New York Times

Guess what? Even the New York Times has figured out that there’s way way more to beer than the fizzy yellow stuff you get in the 24 packs at the gas station (which I pick up occasionally because it’s a cheap and effective snail and slug killer).

From the article:

The Web site [beeradvocate.com] is just one of the gathering spots for beer lovers — not the guys sitting in front of the tube with a six-pack of mass-market brew, but a rapidly growing body of connoisseurs who are as devoted to their chosen beverage as wine lovers are to theirs.

The article, which is focused on the Alström boys who run beeradvocate, is good but a tad inaccurate:

“As far as the vocal component on the Internet, it’s all men,” Todd Alström said. “But at beer festivals and on the social end, it’s more even.”

I believe Beer Molly would disagree with that. This is her site.

» Read: Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation (via The New York Times)

Just got my newsletter from Tom Nickel, owner of the most excellent O’Brien’s Pub and a co-founder of some great beer-bashes like the Strong Ale Festival and the 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party. It looks like there’s all kinds of good stuff going on at O’Brien’s over the next week or so.

If you’re going to be down in San Diego for Spring Break (and honestly, there’s no better place to be this time of year), you should make sure to swing on by, quaff a pint or two and say hi to Tom. He’s hard to miss — just look for a mountain of a guy with a beard that wraps up and over his ears and around the base of his shaved head.

Here’s Tom’s newsletter:

From: “Tom Nickel”
Subject: Lightning Strikes, Mead and the Final Four

Hello Good Beer Fans!

First off I just want to say how great it was to see so many pub patrons at the Belgian Beer Party this past weekend at Pizza Port. Thanks to everyone who braved the line and the crowds. More than 200 cases and 20 kegs were consumed in the 12 hours - it was a ton of fun. And I love any excuse to put on my monk outfit.

On the pub front, we still have our Belgian pre-party ales on tap - De Koninck Winter Ale, Geants Saison Voisin and in place of the Duchess keg that wouldn’t pour I tapped our last keg of the Dutch Mastreechs Ajit Flemish Red (same style, but drier than the Duchess). When that blows, I have some of the Monk’s Cafe Sour Brown to tap, which is made by Petrus, but is a special blend (less sweet than the Petrus Oud Bruin) just for Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia. Also new on tap is the great Avery Maharaja Imperial IPA - nearly 10% and quite a hop punch. The AleSmith IPA is back on tap as is the Boddingtons Pub Ale.

I will have a bunch of new bottles on the menu this weekend. We do already have bottles of the great Malheur Brut in stock - it is champagne-style similar to the Bosteels Deus Brut des Flanders. I will have some bottles from the festival in limited quantities available as of Saturday.

This week’s cask beer is the Alpine Irish Red on Thursday the 29th at 5 pm. And as an excuse to get our cook Humberto to make more Guinness Gravy, we are re-visiting our St. Patrick’s Day with Corned Beef and Cabbage (along with mashed potatoes and the delicious Guinness Gravy) and Bangers and Mash with Guinness Gravy. Unfortunately, you will not be able to order pint glasses full of the gravy to drink - but you will want to. So if you missed it on St. Patty’s, or just didn’t get enough Corned Beef, this is your chance.

Friday the 30th is our Lightning Brewery night with Fulminator Double Bock, Thunderweizen (a German-style Hefeweizen), Black Lightning Porter and Pilsner. We will also have some logo pint glasses for sale from the Poway-based brewery. And it sounds like the owner and brewer will be coming by to have a pint or two. All of the Lightning beers will be on tap by 5 pm Friday and on special all night. Lindsey will be dubeting the new Camembert Burger at Friday lunch as well.

Saturday is the Final starting at 3:07 pm with Ohio State v. Georgetown. The Florida v. UCLA will be on immediately after. We’ll show both in High Def. The Championship is Monday night at 6 pm. Every Monday we feature $8 pitchers of all local and craft brews and strong ale pitchers are just $12 from 4 to close. We also run our great beer battered fish and chips and fish tacos every Monday and Sunday.

Sunday, April 1st is our Mead Day and Mead Tasting. David Myers, owner and meadmaker of Redstone Meadery will be leading a tasting of meads from the International Mead Festival at 5:30 pm (he also organizes the International Mead Fest). I unpacked the boxes of meads this week and the list will be very impressive. Here is a sample of what will taste - Redstone 2003 Boysenberry Reserve Mead, Rabbits Foot Apple Cyser, Dwojniak Herb Mead (from Poland), Jardins Melliferes Blueberry Mead, Adytum Cellars Harvest Moon Mead, Long Island Root Beer Mead (really!) and many more! Cost is $25 and includes some light snacks prepared by Lindsey. Sign up at the pub to reserve your spot - we have about a dozen spaces left. We will have a mead making demonstration on the newly expanded patio at 3 pm and David will be around between 2 and 4 pm to answer questions about mead and pour some Redstone Meads by the glass.

Next week I have lined up a double dose of hoppy Pizza Port ales. On Thursday, April 5th we will have a cask of Wipeout IPA from Pizza Port Carlsbad. And to celebrate the repeal of the Prohibition on beer we will have draft kegs of Yiga’s Revenge IPA from Solana Beach and Doheny Double IPA from San Clemente. The prohibition of beer was repealed on April 7th, 1933. So we’ll celebrate Brew Year’s Eve a little early. We will be closing down on Sunday, April 8th for Easter Sunday, but we will be open all day Saturday until 11 pm for your beer drinking pleasure.

For those interested in soccer, the UEFA Champions League resumes next week with the first leg of the quarter finals. The first games - PSV v. Liverpool and AC Milan v. Bayern Munich will both be LIVE at 11:30 am on Tuesday the 3rd. Chelsea v. Valencia and AS Roma v. Manchester United will both be LIVE at 11:30 am on Wednesday the 4th. You can find the complete list of soccer games at the pub on our website. We also have a soccer-specific email list that goes out twice a month to list upcoming games - if you want to sign up, just reply to this email.

Further off in the following week we have our first beer and cheese tasting at Taste Artisan Cheese Shop in Hillcrest at 7 pm on Wednesday the 11th. We did the pairings on Monday and we have all new beers and all new cheeses. Some of the beer highlights include Schneider Aventinus, Chimay Red Cap, Maredsous 8 and Malheur Brut. Also on Wednesday the 11th we will be debuting the new batch of Alpine Nelson IPA made with New Zealand hops.

And Friday, April 13th I have a Triple Threat of Triple IPAs planned for this spooky day - the new Alpine Exponential Hoppiness, Avery Maharaja IPA and Russian River Pliny the Younger. All three will be on tap at 5 pm and who knows how long they will last. There may be other hopy draft surprises as well.

That is all for now. We’ll see you soon over a good beer and some Guinness Gravy. Cheers, Tom

Tom Nickel
O’Brien’s Pub
20 Taps - Tons of Hops
4646 Convoy Street
www.obrienspub.net

» O’Brien’s Location on Google Maps

My Beer Buddy had a tough day so we knocked off early and went to one of our favorite watering holes, Lamppost Pizza /Backstreet Brewery in Vista.

Sage is having a Playmaker IPA that he likes and drinks here all the time. I am drinking a Austmarr Baltic Porter. I hadn’t heard of this beer before so I had to give it a try. For a porter I find it on little on the light side of color. It’s more of a dark amber with a beautiful cream color head. It’s on tap here and it’s a little too carbonated for me. But, I do like the bubbles, so that makes me happy.

The smell is light and has a toffee scent to it. It has a full mouthfeel to it. It has a nice coffee/toffee taste to with a nice cocoa finish. The alcohol content is 6.9% but the beer doesn’t have an alcohol taste. Overall, I like it quite well and would definitely put it in my “afternoon” beer category.

Update: Just talked to Dave the brewer here at Backstreet and he told me that the Austmarr Baltic Porter is a specialty of the Backstreet up in Irvine, Calif. (Which explains why I hadn’t heard about it before.) There’s only one keg on tap here, so it’ll be gone before the weekend . But on a brighter note Dave says his specialty stout, “Old Vlad Oatmeal Stout”, will be on tap starting Monday. (Beer w00t!) Better yet, for Backstreet Vista’s 3rd “Anniversarye” there’s going to be a whole bunch of good stuff available. (More on that in another post).

Molly and I are blogging to you live from Backstreet Brewery in Vista, Calif. — our neighborhood brew pub (where we are also upstanding members of the Mug Club). Molly’s a happy girl today. Unlike Brewer Dave has a number of fresh beers on tap this week. I’m always up for the house’s Playmaker IPA when it’s only the afternoon (have to pace myself), but I’ll probably nip at the much stronger HopFather IPA before we wander home for dinner. Molly on the other hand has her stein filled with Austmarr Porter. I’m not familiar with the beer, but Molly seems to really be enjoying it.

The last time we were here and the selection was extremely limited, I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it in a moment. I can see her sipping and tapping away at her laptop right now. In the meantime, here’s a shot of Backstreet’s brewing area. If you click on the image and look at the upper right, you’ll see Brewer Dave shoveling some hops (not a technical term) for a new beer he’s working on.

:: Cheers!

I’ll be the first one to admit that Belgian beers are not exactly my favorites. I’ve always found them too fruity, too fizzy, and, well… just plain weird tasting. But after attending last weekend’s 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party, I have to say I have a new-found appreciation for the broad variety of styles and flavors to be found in these beers.

The party was this past Saturday at the Pizza Port in Carlsbad, California. You couldn’t have asked for better weather for an outdoor party like this. Sunshine, bright blue skies and temperatures in the mid-to-upper 60’s made the party start off perfectly. Beer Molly insisted we get there right after it opened at 11 am so we’d have a chance to do several tastings before the crowds arrived.

Good thinking on Molly’s part. Early on there were only a hundred or so people there, but by 1pm that number had tripled and by late afternoon the place was packed with Belgian beer lovers.

There were at least 100 different beers there both on tap and in the bottle — far more than our 10 tickets (or sampling ability) would allow. Wits, Lambics, Trappist Ales, Belgian Strongs — if it was a Belgian-style beer, it was there. But while Belgian-style, the beers themselves weren’t all from Belgium. Beers from the U.S., Canada, The Netherlands (and Italy of all places) were in attendance.

The Beers
Not really familiar with Belgian beer styles, Molly and I chatted with the barman running the tap for a moment, mentioning we liked dark beers and strong ales. He suggested we start with Trois Pistoles from Unibroue, which turned out to be far better than I had initially expected. Dark, rich and fruity, it’s also quite strong (9% ABV). Not something I’d choose for drinking around the pool on a hot afternoon, but definitely something I’d enjoy sipping after dinner sitting in my favorite leather chair — almost like a port or brandy

Shortly after the Trois Pistoles we decided to go to the other end of the Belgian Beer spectrum (and a new continent) and sample Allagash’s White. Light, clean and very refreshing, this is a beer I could enjoy poolside. It actually inspired me to try another wheat beer there, Jopen Adriaan Gruit Witbier from the Netherlands. I didn’t like it as much as the Allagash, but nonetheless, I think I like Witbier more than Hefeweizens, which I find to be flavorless.

After the Wits Molly moved on to the Fantome Chocolate and I tried the La Chouffe Houblon IPA. Molly and I won’t be giving up our favorite chocolate porters or IPAs any time soon, but at least we have a new appreciation for their interpretations over in Belgium.

The People
Following those the day moved on quickly. Molly needed a beer nap and a change of clothes, so we left the party and returned a couple hours later to find it absolutely jam-packed with people. We elbowed our way in and resumed our tastings of all sorts of beers (lost track to tell you the truth). One of the best things we did experience is all the really cool new people we met. Unlike wine-tastings where everyone is aloof and stand-offish, beer tastings are always full of fun people laughing and having a great time. We met lots of good people from all over the country, Australia, England and — shock of all shocks — Belgium. We also got a chance to meet Adam Avery of Avery Brewing in Boulder, Colorado. A very cool guy and a lot of fun to enjoy a drink.

Ultimately we ended up leaving well after the party closed at 11 pm. I pretty much had to drag Molly away since she was off chatting with Tom Nickel, a co-founder of the Belgian Beer Party and owner of Obrien’s Pub in San Diego, and she didn’t look like she was going to quit any time soon. (Sidenote: Tom has shaved his bead so it meets his beard and curls into a sort of ram’s horn shape on either side of his scalp. Molly couldn’t stop staring at this. Sorry if she weirded you out Tom, that’s just the way she is.) Unfortunately we had to be in downtown LA the next morning, so the forced exit was unavoidable.

Overall, it was a fantastic event, and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone — especially if you don’t “get” Belgian beers. The variety in style and flavor are a real eye-opener, and being at an even with so many who love to explain the nuances of the beer gives you a real education and new appreciation for the craft.

A definite hat tip to Tomme Arthur, Tom Nickel, Jeff Bagby, and all the folks at Pizza Port who made this possible.

» Check out the photo slide show from the 12 Hour Belgian Beer Party

We’ve been in LA all day and decided to take a break at Pizza Port in San Clemente with a couple of friends who live there (San Clemente, not Pizza Port).

Like all of the Pizza Ports, they carry some standards and then a few of their own specialties. Among my favs is the Pier Rat Porter, while Beer Buddy (hophead that he is) really likes the Doheny Double IPA.

BB describes the beer as really hoppy but well-matched with a big malty profile as well. He says it’s a lot like Stone Brewing Company’s Ruination, both in flavor and it’s high ABV. He and Trixie drink this stuff the same way most people eat Lay’s potato chips (you’ve can’t have just one), so I’m sure I’ll be driving us home tonight. Trix’s husband, G-Love, and I will still with the Pier Rat.

Like most Porters the beer has a wonderful dark color and is served on nitro. I do like the way beer looks when it’s being pored on nitro. It’s not too heavy in carbonation but it was just the right amount. The smell of the beer isn’t a very strong one. The first time I taste a beer I never like it. That is why I have a one-pint to try, not just a couple of sips. But, this beer I liked right off. It has a wonderful mouth feel and a lovely coffee and chocolate taste to it. There isn’t any bitterness or a heavy alcohol flavor either. For a porter it’s a little on the light side of flavor but, I could drink this beer all day. I will put this porter in my “day beer” category.