Belgian Fest, Beer and Cheese and New Hours!

Greetings Beer Lovers!

The big news this week is the return of the Belgian Beer Party at Pizza Port Carlsbad on Saturday, March 29th. This year’s festival is split into 2 six hour sessions – one from 10 am to 4 pm and the second from 5 pm to 11 pm. Pre-sale tickets are sold out, but TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR. Pizza Port only sold about half of the tickets for each session in the pre-sale, so there will be plenty of tickets available.

The beer lists will be the same at both sessions and there is plenty of beer (more than they can even fit in the cold box right now). I am expecting more than 80 different beers to be served. Admission is $45 and includes a Belgian beer glass and 10 taster tickets, additional taster tickets are just $1. The festival is expected to sell out, so if you would like to go, be sure to show up near the start time for whichever session you wish to attend. Pizza Port Carlsbad is just west of I-5 off the Carlsbad Village Drive exit. For more information, check out Port’s website at www.pizzaport.com. Look for a bunch of the O’Brien’s staff to be at the second session!

Back on the home front at the pub, there is plenty of great beer on tap. If all goes well, we will have Russian River IPA back on Thursday night, March 27th. In the meantime, Port’s Wipeout IPA is back and we have a keg of Pizza Port San Clemente El Camino IPA along with the Firestone Union Jack IPA and Lagunitas IPA. Sierra Nevada Harvest is back on too – and here is some good news for Harvest fans: Sierra Nevada is going to make a southern hemisphere Harvest ale when the hops are picked down there next month. Hopefully we will have it on tap by May. Sierra Nevada Torpedo and the new Chico IPA will also be on tap early next month. And for dark beer fans, there is still a little bit left of our Belgian-style stouts, Allagash Black from Maine and the Buffalo Stout from Belgium.

Friday the 28th we will feature a few Belgian ales to help get in the mood for Saturday’s festival. We will tap our first keg from De Glazen Toren – Ondineke Tripel and a keg of Van Hounsebrouck’s Flanders Red Ale Bachus. I will also have a few new bottle treats including Gulden Draak and Nogne O Saison from Norway. We also have some new bottles from Eisenbahn in Brazil – the Lust Champagne-style beer and a smoked Lager that is really good. We’ll also be showing the NCAA basketball games on Thursday and Friday on channel 8.

Over the weekend we will feature our usual 10% off all bottles on Saturday and Sunday with our Saturday daytime happy hour with local and craft pints just $3.25. Saturday night on the 29th for those not enjoying the Belgian festival we will have a huge dose of hops in the form of Avery Maharaja double IPA. We will have it on tap all day Saturday – and maybe even Sunday if you don’t drink it all in one day. We’ll also have a keg of the Green Flash West Coast IPA on tap for those that want hops in a less than 10% alcohol beer. And on Monday the 31st we will feature our regular pitcher special – $9 pitchers of local and craft beers and $13 pitchers of strong ales from 4:30 pm until close. The basketball final four will be Friday, April 4th and Sunday, April 6th.

There is now more time to enjoy your favorite beers at night. Lindsey and I have expanded our nighttime hours at O’Brien’s. The pub will now be open until Midnight on Friday and Saturday and 11:30 pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Monday is unchanged at 10:30 pm and Sunday is unchanged at Noon to 6 pm. This will give you more time to sit back in the big comfy chairs and enjoy your beer. Happy hour is almost always our busiest time, so that after 9 pm the pub is much more relaxed and less crowded. As a courtesy to the bartenders, last call may be up to 45 minutes before closing time.

It is time for another round of great Beer and Cheese pairings with our friends from Taste Artisan Cheese and Gourmet Shop in Hillcrest. This time we are featuring some of our favorite pairings from past classes along with some great new pairings. We did the hard work of making the new pairings this past Monday and we only needed two. However, we ended up with three great pairs and decided to use them all. So this will be our biggest tasting class yet. Mary from Taste broke down the class like this:

• 8 different beers…7 different brewers…from 4 different countries
• 8 different cheeses…8 different producers…from 6 different countries
• 10 pairings overall, including 3 brand new favorites (seriously, we would have had a tough time omitting these had they been in the previous four classes)

And here are the details on the classes…

BEER AND CHEESE CLASSES WITH TASTE!

• Wednesday, April 23rd – 7pm at TASTE
• Sunday, April 27th – 6pm at O’BRIEN’S PUB

This marks the fifth round of Beer & Cheese pairings we’ve hosted with Taste. The previous four rounds have yielded more than 25 unique pairings making it a fine time to revisit a few of our all-time (so far) favorites. Just so you don’t think we’re getting lazy, we’ll also introduce a couple brand new pairings sure to contend for the next favorites round. Join Tom Nickel from O’Brien’s Pub & our favorite cheese monger George Palmer, as they wax nostalgic about the amazing pairings they’ve discovered over the past couple years and discuss the characteristics that make these beer and cheese pairings work so well. As always, we’re offering the class twice, first at Taste on Wednesday April 23rd, and again on Sunday April 27th at O’Briens.

You can sign up for either class at the pub (cash only please) or you can use a credit card and call Taste at (619) 683-2306 or email Taste at [email protected] with the class name in the subject line.

If you are thinking about traveling around the country and want to know where to find good beer, check out this new site brought to you by the folks at the Brewing News papers: www.goodbeermaps.com. It has state by state maps of everywhere the papers cover with listings for breweries, brewpubs, beer bars and good liquor stores.

There are a lot of big events coming up in April. April 7th is the anniversary of the repeal of the prohibition on Beer. And the one week later, we start our week long celebration of the Craft Brewers Conference being in town. The events are still in the planning stages, but it looks like we will be featuring beers from Ballast Point, all 3 Pizza Port brewpubs, Lost Abbey, Urthel, Koningshoeven, New Belgium, Maui Brewing, Russian River, Alpine, Green Flash, Unibroue, Allagash and many more. We will be staying open late all during the week as well with expanded kitchen hours. Next week I should have some of the dates and times set up to pass along to you.

That is it for now. We’ll see you soon over a great (Belgian) beer! Cheers, Tom

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