We’ll be joining some of our best beer friends this coming Thursday night to talk about, teach, and taste the art of beer brewing.
A Tall, Cold Pint of NightLife
All about how beer is brewed with music by DJ Kramer and Tamo
July 15th, 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
There’s nothing better on a summer night than a tall, cold glass of beer. Have you ever wondered how beer is brewed? What ‘hops’ are? What the difference between a lager and a pilsner is? Join some of the San Francisco Bay Area’s best microbreweries and beer experts, including San Francisco Brewcraft, MateVeza, Bison Brewing, Social Kitchen and Brewery, Elizabeth Street Brewery and others, to learn all about the art of brewing beer. All of these great beers will be available for sale tonight at NightLife.
Full details regarding the event can be found HERE. Hope to see you there!
OK gang,
The World Cup is reaching a pretty exciting climax (despite the personal disappointment of a number of the match results this past weekend). As a result, we’re swinging open the pub/garage door this weekend to host you for Saturday’s quarter final matches.
Doors will open at 7am on Saturday for the Argentina v Germany match. We’ll stay open until the conclusion of the second match between Paraguay and the winner of the Spain v Portugal match later today.
Hope to see you at the ESB on Saturday! 7am – 3pm. (We’ll be closed on Sunday, July 4 to celebrate Addison’s 4th birthday).
SF Weekly came out with their “Best of San Francisco: 2010” last week. I’ve always fantasized that one day our brewery would be considered in the running with the other great brewpubs and breweries of SF (Magnolia, 21st Amendment, Speakeasy, etc.). I always figured we’d need to actually be a Microbrewery too – with a license, and a business, and a manager, and a brewer, etc., etc…
Apparently not…
That’s right folks, our little homebrewpub in our basement managed to snag Best Microbrewery of 2010 in SF Weekly. A true honor for us considering we’re not selling any beer yet.
Best Microbrewery – 2010
Elizabeth Street Brewery
Every month or so, Richard and Alyson Brewer-Hay invite friends, neighbors, and beer lovers in general to drop by their Noe Valley home and sample the brews they’ve been cooking up in 5- and 10-gallon batches since 2003. A few years back, their rumpus room was converted into a pub for the reality program. This friendly wood-and-brick nook, decorated with framed photos, armchairs, a dartboard, and many many beer bottles, is the ideal setting to enjoy free samples of Quincy’s Winter Warmer porter; Auntie Ben’s unfiltered, ultrahoppy IPA; Mummy’s Double Honey ale; or Daddy’s Chocolate Milk, a rich and creamy stout crafted from four varieties of malt, including chocolate. Brewing updates and information on the next open house are available via the ESB Web site or Twitter: @ESBale.
2010 has truly been a surreal year for the ESB. The 21st Amendment collaboration brew we made that took gold at World Beer Cup and now this.
My commitment and promise to all the folks that have enjoyed a beer at ESB over the past few years is that this will not be distracting, nor will it take away from the ultimate goal: a true family brewpub in San Francisco.
Thanks for your continued support and we can’t wait to welcome you into our wee homebrewpub over the Summer.
Before we left for the Craft Brewers Conference in Chicago, I sat down with Chris Galvin in our pub to talk about what we’re up to and hoping to accomplish with the pub. You can read the profile as a result of his interview over in Draft Magazine by clicking here.
All,
Well, I’m still feeling numb from the whole experience in Chicago last week but the capper to it all was that the Imperial ESB called “Imperial Jack” named after my late Grandfather, that I brewed with the good folks at 21st Amendment Brewery, won Gold in the Other Strong Beer category at the World Beer Cup 2010 Awards Dinner. You can see the brew day report HERE.
It was such a shock at the time that neither Allie nor I were able to fumble the video camera quickly enough to capture the moment on film. However, you can check out pictures from the evening here.
I am traveling for work this week but have a number of other videos I can share with you soon. For now, enjoy the pics. You can read the 21st Amendment blog post, HERE. The plan is to brew it again during the week of April 26, so look for it in May at the 21st Amendment in San Francisco.
Cheers!
RIchard.
Shaun and Richard brewing the Imperial Jack, January 14, 2010:
I realize I’m posting these a little out of order but I’m unfortunately constrained by the limitations of poor WiFi here at our hotel. The following video footage was all taken from the eve of the Craft Brewers Conference, 2010, Chicago. The welcome reception was held at The Field Museum and the beers on tap here were as impressive as the great hall itself. Following the welcome reception, Allie and I ventured over to The Publican to try a number of new beers on tap including the collaboration brew from Stone, Firestone Walker and 21st Amendment – “El Camino (Un)Real” (what a great name) – so called for the connection the Mission trail / El Camino Real has on the three California-based breweries..
Enjoy and Cheers!
Richard.
P.S. Yes – that is the old intro music for the Chicago Bulls
OK gang,
I realize I’m a bit delayed on getting updates out to folks from the 2010 Craft Brewer’s Conference in Chicago. Hoping you can all cut me some slack because it’s learning by day, drinking by night. However, as I continue to edit and upload videos from the events here, I felt it necessary to get one of the highlights up sooner rather than later. All you need to know is: it was 8:30am; we were all hungover; no one expected what would happen in the next hour…
Saturday marked a first for us here at the Elizabeth Street Brewery… brew day with both kids and no wife. Wow. Not the best call I’ve made. Still tired to be honest.
I’ve decided to brew a wide collection of beers behind closed doors over the coming weeks so we can have some cool and interesting ales to enjoy at upcoming open-houses for friends, family and neighbors. I’ve received quite a few emails over the past 3 weeks from new people wondering what exactly goes on here at our homebrew pub (apologies to those I have yet to respond to) so it would be nice to have beers for them when they get here.
Saturday was interesting because we were technically not open but managed to get a crowd of about 30 people over the course of the day. Good to see old friends and make new ones but again, I found myself distracted from the task at hand. What started out as 10-gallons of American amber ale, in honor of the late Bill Brand (the second time I’ve tried to replicate the B3 Bomber Ale of last year) turned into 5 gallons of extremely strong, hoppy brew. Not sure how to categorize it yet but I have a feeling it’s going to knock my socks off. It was the first time using the PACMAN yeast (Rogue Dead Guy Ale yeast) and because I had two starters (for two 5-gallon fermenters) I decided to throw them both in one 5-gallon batch. My wife – and our dining room for that matter – is not pleased with that decision so far. Extremely active. Again, can’t wait to try this one.
Saturday also marked the first time in 7 years that I had to discard an entire batch of beer. It had been contaminated somewhere between the primary and the secondary and leaving it in the carboys for an excessive amount of time didn’t help. The beer is, quite simply, undrinkable. Therefore, I have the painful task of pouring it away. I’ve only poured 5 gallons so far… it was like crying in the sink. Not ready to do the same with the second keg. To make matters worse, it was a batch of our Daddy’s Chocolate Milk – a real crowd favorite – so I’ll have to get back to brewing another batch of it sooner rather than later.
We’ve been focusing a lot on the behind-the-scenes aspects of the ESB for a few weeks now. Saturday’s brew was, in all honesty, the first batch brewed on site since we welcomed in 2010. With the exception of brewing Imperial Jack at 21st Amendment it was the only beer I’ve made this year. That is all about to change. I need to play with recipes, tweak and challenge ideas of existing beers we’ve been making. We have a whole new group of “customers” coming to the pub and I don’t want their first impressions to be of sub-par ale.
So… look for more brew-day updates in the future – and a lot of them too. Which is good news for you. After all, someone has to drink it.
For now, I say cheers! Can’t wait to welcome you into the Elizabeth Street Brewery in the near future.
Admittedly, this post has absolutely nothing to do with beer but I had to share with folks anyway. Allie’s birthday is later this month but we enjoyed her birthday present a little early this year as we both went up over Napa in a hot-air balloon. Considering my intense fear of heights, I thought I handled it rather well. I must confess for the better part of thirty minutes when we were at our highest (2,500 feet up), my legs were truly jelly. Apart from that though, it was great!
All,
As most of you know by now, yesterday the ESB was featured on NBC Bay Area as “Best Secret Spot” in the Bay Area. It was pretty funny to have TV cameras in the pub for a second time in the past 5 years… as I’ve been telling my wife since the spot aired on local TV yesterday morning, in the immortal (but paraphrased) words of Roy Scheider… “We’re going to need a bigger pub.”
So now, yet another reason for me to A) play with my MacBook Pro editing tools and B) get back to work on finalizing that business plan, I give you my crude but fun highlight reel of yesterday’s appearance on NBC.
