O’Brien’s Pub Celebrates Their 16th Anniversary!
From Tom Nickel of O’Brien’s Pub in San Diego.
Hoppy 2010 Beer Fans!
This month marks the 16th Anniversary of O’Brien’s Pub. It is a lot of years and a lot of great beers. I have fond memories of O’Brien’s as a patron, a brewer bringing down kegs and casks of Torrey Pines IPA and now as an owner for the last 7 years. One thing is for certain – there are many more great years and great beers to come!
Sweet 16
We start the celebration off this week on Thursday the 7th with a surprise cask (to me anyway) of Brew Dog Paradox, which is a whiskey barrel aged Imperial Stout. This particular batch was aged in Smokehead Islay Whiskey barrels. We have had several Brew Dog beers on tap before but this will be our first cask from them. We’ll tap it at 5 pm to coincide with the start of the BCS National Championship game between Alabama and Texas.
Friday the 8th we will feature some great beers from Northern California. We’ll have Drake’s 1500 Pale and Denogginizer double IPA, Triple Rock Dragon’s Milk Scottish Ale and IPAX, Sierra Nevada Pale and Bigfoot – and that mean’s we’ll have the Big P which is half Pale and half Bigfoot, Bear Republic Racer 5, Blind Pig IPA and Russian River Pliny the Elder among others. Nearly all of the beers are in full kegs so I expect them to be around most of the weekend.
Saturday the 9th the NFL playoffs start with the Jets v. Bengals at 1:30 pm followed by Cowboys v. Eagles at 5 pm. Saturday night we will have a Lost Abbey and Jolly Pumpkin Bottle Night with at least 6 different Lost Abbey bottles including Angel’s Share, Cuvee de Tomme, Carnevale, Red Barn, Brother Levonian and the very rare Duck Duck Gooze. We’ll have Oro de Calabaza, Bam Biere and La Roja from Jolly Pumpkin in limited quantities. All of our great bottles will be 10% off all weekend. The playoffs continue on Sunday with Ravens v. Patriots in the early game (we’ll open at Noon) and Green Bay v. Arizona in the afternoon.
Next Week
Next week we continue with our fantastic anniversary events. Tuesday the 12th we will have a special promotion with our friend Matt Pushinsky from Belukus Imports. We’ll have Blanche de Bruxelles wit beer and De Koninck on tap and all of our Malheur bottles will be 10% off including the Brut and Dark Brut Champagne-style beers. We’ll also have a special glass promotion with the Blanche de Bruxelles. Thursday the 14th we tap a cask of the beer that was not, but could have been, named for any member of Congress or the state legislature – Idiot IPA from Coronado Brewing.
Friday the 15th is our massive 15 beer Alpine Beer Company Extravaganza. We’ll have 15 different beers from Alpine including Pure Hoppiness, Nelson, Duet, Exponential Hoppiness, O’Brien’s IPA, Captain Stout, Good, Great and the new Imperial Porter. The Good will be on cask along with either the Imperial Porter or Duet (which will both be on tap as well) for 15 different beers on the 15th and 16 total Alpine handles for our 16th Anniversary! All of the beers will be on tap by 5 pm, most much earlier. Some will have back up kegs so that they will be on tap all weekend. Pat, Val and Shawn will all be joining us in enjoying a few of their fine wares. This will be a great night to celebrate the pub’s anniversary with incredible local beer.
The weekend of the 16th and 17th the NFL playoffs continue and the San Diego Super Chargers will be playing on Sunday at 1:40 pm against the Jets, Bengals or Patriots. I wouldn’t normally tap a cask of 11% alcohol beer on a Sunday, but Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea seems too appropriate not to tap. So we will have a 5 gallon cask of this delicious coffee-vanilla Imperial Porter on tap for the game. If our opponent is the Patriots, our in house collection of rag tag Patriots fans will have to watch the game elsewhere unless they agree to lose in advance. If all goes well, the AFC Championship game will be on at Noon on Sunday the 24th.
Looking Ahead
The following week we continue the festivities with a double shot of cask IPAs from Ballast Point on Thursday the 21st – Sculpin IPA and Big Eye IPA both on tap at 5 pm. Friday the 22nd we will have a random collection of kegs that I have been saving including Sierra Nevada Empire Strikes Black, N’ice Chouffe 2008 and Avery 16th Anniversary among others. I have not yet assembled a final list, but I trust that there will be plenty of great beer. When I have more details, I will pass them along. I will be tapping random beers all week leading up to the event, so if you can’t stop by on Friday, any night will be a night of great beer.
The USA will play Honduras in a (un)friendly match on Saturday, January 23rd at 6 pm. We have a sold out bus load of folks going to the game in LA at the Home Depot Center. We will still have the game on at the pub though – and maybe you can see us and our San Diego American Outlaws banner on Fox Soccer Channel. Both the NFC and the AFC Championships will be on Sunday the 24th – AFC at Noon and NFC game after that – we will stay open until the end of the second game on Sunday.
There will be no Pliny the Younger this month from Russian River – it is not getting kegged up until early February. However, I am working on a Russian River event for the end of the month. I will keep you posted with the details once I have everything worked out. You can look forward to the Younger be on tap by the middle of next month. Look for a cask from Green Flash Brewing on the 28th.
I am printing up some US Soccer shirts. The front will read – Don’t Tread on Me, I Support US Soccer – with the O’Brien’s Logo on the back with “San Diego’s Only Official US Soccer Bar” underneath it. I am printing the shirts in three colors – Red, White and Blue and I can print them in any size from Small to XXXL. If you are interested, just let me know what size, what color and what quantity you want. You can pay for the shirt when you pick it up. I figure they will be about $10 each. We’ll also have a few new O’Brien’s shirts coming in soon including some tie dyes.
Off to Europe
It is hard to believe that our annual pub crawl to Europe is coming up next month. The Great Belgian Beer Tour will start at the end of February and visit Holland, Belgium and Germany before it is all over. This is the 6th year that we have partnered with Ciao! Travel to bring you this trip. Ciao! Travel is owned by our friend and pub ambassador Bill Snider, who has been in the travel business for more than 20 years doing jazz tours to Europe including Montruex. I myself, can not wait to see the new tasting room at La Trappe (aka Konigshoeven) and visit Malheur for the first time. Info can be found at the pub – where there are discount coupons for the website prices – or at Ciao!’s website – www.ciaotravel.com.
That is your anniversary good beer news for now. This email has been brought to you by two bottles of Sierra Nevada Celebration (with a third on the way this Tuesday night). If you are in to Gypsy Jazz guitar, I highly recommend John Jorgenson who will be playing at Anthology on January 14th. Here’s hoping we get out of the mess we got into in 2009 and that we all have a great 2010. We’ll see you soon for a great beer. Cheers, Tom
Tom Nickel
O’Brien’s Pub
20 Taps – Tons of Hops
Official US Soccer Bar
4646 Convoy Street
www.obrienspub.net
