San Diego Beer Week – O’Briens Pub Events
San Diego Beer Week Rolls on With O’Brien’s Pub in San Diego. Here is a bunch of good beer news from pub owner Tom Nickel. OBrien’s pub is located at 4646 Convoy St San Diego, CA 92111-2315.
Hello Happy Beer Week Fans!
Friday the 6th kicks off the biggest 10 day beer bash this town has ever seen. From the 6th to the 15th, pubs, breweries, restaurants and bottles shops all over the county will be celebrating San Diego’s amazing beer culture. There are more than 200 scheduled events on the Beer Week website at www.sdbw.org.
It kicks off with the Brewers Guild Festival on the 6th and the 7th. You can buy tickets at the Beer Week website or the Guild site at www.sandiegobrewersgiuld.org. The Friday night session is a special VIP session from 7-11 pm ($35). Saturday there are two sessions ($25 each) – 1-4 pm and 5-9 pm. This event has sold out every year, so make sure to buy your tickets now. Tickets at the door will be $5 more for each session.
We will be starting the fun tonight, Thursday the 5th, with a cask of the very popular Port Brewing High Tide Fresh Hop IPA at 5 pm. We are the number one account for this beer and with good reason – it is super tasty! I am really looking forward to the cask. We will also have the draft version on tap. New on tap you can try the Alaskan Baltic Porter, St. Bernardus Christmas (yes it is apparently Christmas beer time already) and the Pizza Port San Clemente Doheny Double IPA. We also have a bunch of new bottles including Nogne O Pale and Saison from Norway, De Ranke XX Bitter, La Trappe (aka Konigshoeven) Isid’or, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Ise Kadoya Genmai (Japanese brown rice ale), Jolly Pumpkin La Roja and Nils Oscar Kalasol Fest Lager. And the St. Bernardus Abt 12 six liter bottles are back for the holidays. We cracked one open at the halloween party just to make sure they were as good as last year. It comes in a nice wooden box. The bottles are available to go and will be part of our 10% off bottles all weekend.
Beer Week
We are going to start Beer Week off with Alpine Beer Company weekend November 6th, 7th and 8th. On the 6th we will have a 5 batch vertical tasting of Exponential Hoppiness going back to spring of 2007, along with at least 5 other Alpine beers on tap including a cask of Bad Boy double IPA at 5 pm. Friday you can check out the Bad Boy Beer Cheese Plates and Burgers – it will also be available to go. The kitchen will have White Bean Chicken Chili made with Habenero Tequila Chicken Sausage and the new double bacon patty melt with two 1/4 pound burger patties. Lindsey will be making specialty beer cheese all week long for our different events.
We will continue to tap around 10 Alpine beers including Duet IPA, Tuatara, Mandarin Nectar, Willy, Pure Hoppiness and Captain Stout all weekend long. If all goes well, we will have more Alpine beer on tap than Alpine will. The 6th and 7th are also the nights for the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival so whichever night you don’t go to that fest, stop by the pub for some great Alpine beer. Look for Monica to be at the Guild fest Saturday night serving up Lindsey’s beer cheese. We will have the Chargers v. Giants game on Sunday at 1:15 pm.
Sunday the 8th we are doing an all local Beer and Cheese tasting with Taste Artisan Cheese Shop at the pub at 6:30 pm. We have put together 8 fantastic pairings featuring some of the area’s best beers – Alpine Nelson IPA, Ballast Point Sculpin, Lost Abbey 10 Commandments, Pizza Port Carlsbad Twerp, Green Flash Coffee Stout and more! The cost is $40 and you can sign up at the bar (cash only please) or you can contact Taste at 619-683-2306 to use a credit card.
Monday the 9th is Green Flash night with a cask of Palate Wreck for Monday Night Football (Steelers at Broncos) along with some amazing kegs of specialty beer from head brewer Chuck Silva – Superfreak, Little Freak, Grand Mantis (barrel aged Grand Cru), Coffee Double Stout, Belgian Brown, Belgian Stout and Hopless. Chuck will stopping by as well to share some beers with and answer questions. I will also be on the 91X Beer for Breakfast Monday morning as the station will be doing its Beer for Breakfast bit every day of the week. I will be with Shawn from Alpine Beer drinking Duet, Nelson and the new Great barleywine at 16% alcohol!
Tuesday the 10th is AleSmith Night with the very rare Kopi Luwak Speedway Stout at 6 pm. We will have a very limited amount of this beer, so we will only be serving it in 5 oz samples. Owner-brewer Peter Zien will be there to tell us about this beer and the very rare coffee it uses and the rather unique production method that makes the coffee so rare. All I will say is that it involves civets (an Asian weasel-like creature) and their by products. We will also have some other great AleSmith beers on tap and in the bottle including Little Devil, Decadence and Summer YuleSmith. We will have regular Speedway Stout on tap for a side by side comparison.
Wednesday the 11th is Belgian Night and we will have Rodenbach Grand Cru and regular Rodenbach on tap along with Het Anker Lucifer (new from the brewers of Gouden Carolous), De Halve Maan Tripel (brand new in San Diego) and Scaldis Noel. We will also be featuring 10% off any Belgian bottle for Wednesday night. Lindsey will have a Flemish Stew made with a sour brown (likely to be Rodenbach) for this night.
Thursday the 12th is a double cask night with Alpine O’Brien’s IPA and Ballast Point Sculpin. It will also be Ballast Point night with at least 5 specialty beers on tap. We have an amazing line up of Ballast Point beers on draft including Sculpin IPA, 2008 Victory at Sea, Schooner Wet Hop Ale, Sour Wench, Reef Rye and Barrel Aged Sea Monster Stout. We will also have Chimay on tap and specials on Chimay cheese plates. Be sure to check out Lindsey’s insane Mac n’ Cheese.
Friday the 13th will be a Best of Beer Week night. We will be tapping more good beer than we can possibly consume in the first 7 days of Beer Week, so on Friday we will be highlighting great beers from throughout the week in one gigantic night of San Diego specialty beer. Expect beers from Green Flash, AleSmith, Pizza Port, Ballast Point, Alpine, Port Brewing, Russian River, Bear Republic and many more great breweries.
Saturday the 14th will be Bear Republic night with several specialty beers including a special O’Brien’s Blend from the brewery and the new Ken and John’s IPA and there are even rumors of some cask IPA coming our way. We’ll have brewer/owner Rich Norgrove down to share a few beers with us and tell us stories about his race cars.
Sunday the 15th is our annual Lost Abbey Rare Bottle tasting which is now sold out. The pub will be open normal hours Noon to 6 pm and the Chargers will host the Eagles at 1:15 pm. If you are looking for something Beer Week related to do, I will be at the official Beer Week closing event – Chefs Celebration of Beer, which will be a beer and food event at Irwin Jacobs Hall at Qualcomm in Mira Mesa from 1 to 4 pm. The event will feature local breweries teamed with chefs to create sublime beer and food pairings. The event will also feature several short educational talks, one by yours truly. I missed the Cooks Confab beer dinner, so I am really looking forward to this event. Tickets can be bought at either the Beer Week or Brewers Guild websites, which were previously listed.
San Diego World Cup Bid
The USA is hoping to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. San Diego is one of 27 cities being considered to host games. The USA bid committee has started electronic petitions to help garner support for each city. Even if you are not a soccer fan, having games here with 60,000+ fans over several weeks will be good for our city. Please show your support by visiting: http://www.gousabid.com/city/local/san-diego-ca/. All you need to do is type in an email address and a zip code. If you have multiple emails, you can enter them all. Please get your friends and family to help support this effort to bring one of the world’s greatest sporting events to our home town.
Euro Pub Crawl
And as if all of this was not enough for you, our good friend Bill Snider of Ciao! Travel has released the amazing itinerary for the 2010 Great Belgian Beer Trip. There are four incredible options that include Amsterdam, Ghent, Bamberg and Munich. This is the 6th year that we have partnered with Ciao Travel for a European Pub crawl and every year the trip has been a ton of fun. I am really looking forward to going in 2010. There are flyers at the pub with discount offers valid through November 15th, 2009. You can also check it out online at www.ciaotravel.com. And you can almost always find Bill around the pub willing to talk about trip and its many wonderful destinations.
Other News
After Beer Week we will tap a cask of Craftsman Edgar’s Ale with fresh hops. We might also have a cask of Firestone on the way. Friday the 20th will be Firestone and Nectar Ales night at the pub. We will be CLOSED November 26th and 27th for Thanksgiving. Tickets for the San Diego Strong Ale Fest VIP session are on sale now through the Pizza Port website – find the tickets in the merchandise section. The fest is December 4th and 5th and the VIP session will be from 1-4 pm on Friday the 4th. We will of course, host the pre-party on Thursday, December 3rd with casks of Pizza Port Carlsbad Poor Man’s IPA and AleSmith YuleSmith along with a host of great strong beers. Avery night happens on Friday, December 11th with a very impressive draft list and Adam Avery himself.
That is your good Beer Week news for now. We’ll see you soon for a great San Diego beer. Cheers, Tom
