2008 Anchor Trip: Anchor Party!

(click images to make 'em BIG)

When we last left off, I was telling you about the Barleywine Festival at the Toronado. After that, Amy and I hitched a ride with a nice Brit named Phil over to the Anchor Brewery. In case you've been wondering, the deal is that every year the employees at Anchor pick one club to be the California Homebrew Club of the Year. They use a top secret formula that balances achievement in competition with the homebrewing and beer education/outreach. Or something. Anyhow, 2007 is the 6th year we've won.

What happens when you win? You get a big, fat party thrown in your honor. How big? About 150 Falcons made the trek from our home in Los Angeles. Plus we brought along at least 50 friends from other clubs in the state (and a random Brit off the street). The party works like this -- Anchor gives us free run of the brewery (though sadly this year the hop room was locked...) and as much Anchor Beer as we can drink. Plus, they cook us tri-tip and chicken for lunch. And our band plays (yes, our club has a band). Beers we drank:

• Steam
  
• Liberty
  
• Bock
  
• Porter
  
• Summer Wheat
  
• Old Foghorn

That's right, not only Old Foghorn on tap, but as much as you could drink. The whole thing was a total blast. The beer rocked, the band rocked, the food was outstanding and eternal cheers to the Anchor employees for volunteering to play host to a bunch of beer snobs slobs and their beautiful wives. Und now, pictures!!!

Derreck and President Cook



Earnesto, Jimmy and Amy



Babu and Beardo



That's Dave. Hope his finger is OK



Jeremy Raub looking dapper. And happy



Craftsman brewer extraordinaire, Merlin Cup winner and all around good guy Todd Peterson



Anchor Employees



Fletch and Amy



OK -- about half way through the party, Anchor dude Bob Brewer (yes, his real name) stops the festivities to present us with the California Homebrew Club of the Year Trophy. Accepting the honor is none other than our dear President, Steve Cook.



Madonna and Child Steve and the Trophy



But what's this? The copper mug atop the trophy comes off? But why?



And why is Mr. Brewer filling up the 2-pint mug with Anchor Steam? Is Steve going to pass it around so that we can all share in the victory/celebration?



Steve sure does look happy, doesn't he?



We sure as hell ain't no wine club.



One last pose for the cameras and then...



Chug! Chug! Chug! Yup, tradition holds that the winning club's president has to slam the entire 2 pints in one gulp. Steve spents months in training.



The amazing part? Steve didn't spill a drop. All that training paid off.



OK, so let's have a peak at the brewery. Obviously (see below) Anchor is one the most beautiful breweries around. Yup, real copper, scavenged from some brewery in Germany. On the left is the boiling kettle and to the right is the mash tun.



Here's a cool shot of inside the lauter tun (the grain is pumped from the mash tun to be lautered in a separate vessel). See the pipe coming down fro the top which empties into that asket looking thing? That's the pipe for the HLT. The water falls into that basket and then flows out to the sparge arms. Pretty fricking cool. The bottom is all stainless.



Here's that lauter tun. Just a thing of beauty. You can see Anchor's lab in the background.



Sigh... This is Anchor's grant. Useless, yeah, sure, but look how beautiful it is. Though I should point out that Patrick Rue's Bruery has a grant.



Some more beer porn for you



I can read your mind, "What in the hell is that?" That my friends, is one of Anchor's six open fermenters. They have four in this big ole clean room, and two others in back. Each cool ship (in the first room) holds 120 barrels.



The Trub Also Rises



Sailing the Seas of Yeast



Here's on of the two fermenters in the back. These two are deeper and squareer than the four up front. The yeast also seemed stained darker, so I think Porter is being fermented in this picture. Do different shaped fermentors work better for various beers? Probably. [Edit: Drew is claiming that all four up front ferment steam and the two in back are for everything else. So, there you go.]



Now that's a plate chiller



This switchboard, which lets the brewers route beer all over the brewery, used to really impress me. And then we went to Lagunitas. You'll have to come back in a few days to see that. Still, very cool.



And finally, former Three Floyds and Firestone Walker brewery Jim Cibak was there. Jim's moving back to Indiana where he and some pals are opening up Crown Brewing. Expect lots of DIPAs, Barleywines and Imperial Stouts. Hey, my kind of guy.



Cheers!

2008 Anchor Trip: Part 2: Thirsty Bear -- Fail

Sigh... I remember about a decade back when Thirsty Bear was a decent little brewpub. Sure, the place was still loaded with yuppie scumbags and they seemed a bit more concerned with their tapas than beer taps, but it was a good place to go and grab a pint after work and an even better place to grab a keg from when you were tossing a party. The only beer I remember from 1997 was a pale ale -- typical American brewpub fare to be sure. However it was well made and quite good.

At some point in time Thirsty Bear has gone organic on us. Too bad, for as nice an idea as that is (hippie), organic beer means you are working with inferior malt and hops. The beer just ain't going to taste that good. Think sulfates and wine. Combine less than ideal ingredients with less than stellar techniques and you have a recipe for blah. Or, in the case of Thirsty Bear, several recipes.

Dr. Drew reserved the upstairs room for the Falcons, but only about 25 of us showed up. It was a last minute deal and most other people did their own thing or went to Magnolias. Still, we were there to drink (at least I was) so I had to try everything.

The first red light was their "Valencia Wheat." Turned out it was a Wit. Only because they have no faith in the beer-intelligence of their patrons do they cynically call it a wheat. It should be pointed out that they have no problem with an item on their dinner menu called, "Kokotxas." Worse than purposely mislabeling a beer is serving a bad one. This supposed Wit was sharp, tart, the color of Mountain Dew and about as far from a Wit as soda water is from Hoegaarden.

They also had a beer on called, "Golden Vanilla" -- it's a blond described as "light and smooth in taste" that for some reason has been infused with Vanilla Beans. I think that some reason is absurd levels of Diacetyl. In fact, most of the Thirsty Bear beers seemed to be suffering from big bunches of butter flavor. We did mix in one part Vanilla beer to two parts nitro-tap Stout, but... it didn't really help. They had a less than hoppy butter-balled IPA and an English ESB on a nitro tap... That one really sucked. So we left.

To 21st Amendment!!! Oh man, did that save the night. Every Falcons' frown immediately got turned upside down. Who am I kidding? We weren't just smiling, we were downright drooling. Turns out it's strong beer month in San Francisco (someone forgot to tell Thirsty Bear) and 21A had big beer flowing out their wazoo.

Jimmy and Earnesto Smiling at 21 Amendment


I sampled a 9% Belgian brewed in honor of Michael Jackson called "Beer Hunter." A big-ass Impy stout with a little too much espresso and a 10% watermelon wheat wine that is a punched of version of their regular watermelon beer (amazingly, you could taste the watermelon -- Drew was saying it takes 500 pounds of melon for their "normal" offering).

But I'm really here to talk about Hop Crisis. 21A whipped up a mother of a high gravity DIPA that weighs in at a liver-busting 11.8% abv. More over, it smells and tastes absolutely delicious. Everyone we came with had at least one glass. I had two. Some had more. It just ruled, big time. I want more. Better than Pliny the Younger. I know, I know. But it is.

Here's me after two glasses of Hop Crisis and that big espresso Stout.



Nuff said.