Coronado, Belgian Fest II and Much More!

Hello Beer Fans!

There is a too much good beer this week to fit into this email. This weekend, April 5th and 6th we will have a very special Belgian Bottle Festival that will feature more than 85 different bottles from last weekend’s Belgian Beer Party at Pizza Port Carlsbad!

There are too many beers and breweries to name here, but it will include beers from Achilles, Allagash, Alvinne, Baladin, Cantillon, De Glazen Toren, De Graal, De Ranke, Drie Fonteinen, Dupont, Ellezelloise, Fantome, Jenlain, Jolly Pumpkin, Malheur, Rodenbach, Struise, ‘t Smisje, Thiriez, Urthel, Vapuer and many more! Every bottle will also be 10% off all weekend. This will be the biggest list of bottled beer we have ever offered. So if you missed the festival, do not miss this weekend at the pub!

I have at least half of a case of every single brand, so I expect the bottles to last through the weekend. Also, we will have the final four basketball games on tv on Saturday afternoon. And if you can’t make it by this weekend, look for the bottles to make their way onto our special release bottle list – and if you are in Carlsbad, look for them at the Pizza Port bottle shop!

There is a lot of great beer on tap right now. We just tapped into the Ballast Point Fathom India Pale Lager. It is like an IPA, but brewed with a lager yeast for a more crisp finish. We also have the new Port Brewing Shark Attack, which is a double red ale and we have the Lost Abbey Carnevale, which is a dry-hopped saison. Also new on tap is the Van Honsebrouck Bachus Flanders Red Ale and the Lost Coast Scotch Ale. And we just restocked the very popular Danish Meads from Dansk including the Viking Blod and the Caraway Mead. Both are very strong and have port/sherry-like flavors.

Coming up for the rest of this week, we will tap a cask of Ballast Point Sextant Stout on Thursday, April 3rd at 5 pm. This was probably my favorite stout that we had on tap over St. Patrick’s Day and I think it will be great on cask. Friday night, April 4th we will feature the beers of Coronado Brewing Company. Coronado has started to brew a series of excellent Belgian inspired beers and we will have two of them on tap – Hoppy Daze, a Belgian-style IPA and Stoopid Stout, a Belgian-style Stout. We will also have the brewery’s Island IPA on tap. All 3 beers will be on special all night long.

Next week, Monday, April 7th is the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition of beer. We will have a few special beers on tap and have our regular pitcher special – $9 pitcher of crafts and locals and $13 pitchers of strong ales – from 4:30 pm until Closing time. The prohibition of liquor was enacted later in the year, but President Roosevelt made sure that the ban on beer was lifted immediately. Upon signing the legislation he was quoted as saying “I think that this is a good time for a beer.”

And coming up the following week we will be hosting a number of great events during the Craft Brewers Conference. The conference is an industry-only event, but there will be tons of great beer on tap all over town the entire week starting April 14th. O’Brien’s will be hosting a different event each night. Right now the line up looks like this – Ballast Point night on Monday the 14th, Pizza Port/Lost Abbey on Tuesday the 15th featuring beers from all 3 brewpubs, Artisenal Imports night on Wednesday that will include Koningshoeven, Urthel, Meantime and Bosteels along with brewers from each of those coming by later at night, Thursday the 17th will be a big night with 4 casks from Alpine Beer Company including Exponential Hoppiness and Nelson IPA along with a vintage bottle night from Unibroue (with the brewers) and a triple dose of triple IPAs – Pliny the Younger, Exponential and Maharaja, and to top it all off we will feature 2 fantastic east coast breweries on Friday the 18th with Allagash and the return of Dogfish Head with 3 beers on tap including Midas Touch and 90 Minute IPA. I will post up more specific details next week once everything is settled.

All during the week we will be featuring different beers including Bling Pig, O’Brien’s IPA, Sierra Nevada’s new Chico IPA, the official Syposium beer brewed by Green Flash, Maui, Firestone barrel aged beers, New Belgium and the return of O’Brien’s IPA from Alpine. As you can tell, it will be a very crazy week. To help fit in all of the madness, we will be open late each night including until 1 am Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And don’t forget our new regular hours – we are now open until 11:30 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and Midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Right after the conference we will be doing another round of our beer and cheese pairings with Taste Artisan Cheese and Gourmet Shop in Hillcrest. The tastings will feature 4 of our favorite pairings from previous classes along with 3 new pairings that are incredible. Some of the beers that we will use are Unibroue La Fin du Monde, Alpine Mandarin Nectar, Gouden Carloous Grand Cru and Schneider Aventinus. In all there will be 8 beers and 8 cheeses. The first tasting is in Hillcrest at Taste at 7 pm on Wedensday, April 23rd. The second tasting will be held at O’Brien’s at 6 pm on Sunday the 27th. The classes are filling up fast, so if you are interested, I would sign up within the next 10 days. Cost is $40 per person and you can sign up at the pub (cash only please) or you can sign up at Taste in Hillcrest – you can find them through the link on our website.

In my last email I mentioned a beer mapping site at www.goodbeermaps.com and I was sent the following link: http://www.pubquest.com. It is a great site that I had not been to before and I would recommend it highly as well.

That does it for this week’s news. We’ll see you soon for a great beer. Cheers, Tom

Tom Nickel
O’Brien’s Pub
20 Taps – Tons of Hops