For some people Beer Week is a constant string of drinking rare beers. With so many options, I don’t blame them, especially those who live close to the bars where most of the big events were held. Living a little further from the action, I limited myself a bit more but I still managed to have some fantastic beers.
This year during beer week there were quite a few events where breweries brought out special sour beers. There were so many sour events that some people could have had nothing but sours for most of the week. Prime among these was Green Flash’s 12th Anniversary beer release, a lemon drop sour pale ale, which was debuted along with a number of versions of Little Freak and Super Freak, sour versions of the popular beers. Thankfully along with all these sours Green Flash had a delicious barrel aged barley wine so that those who aren’t as into sours could enjoy something special.
Another big thing that comes out each year along with the sours is the barrel aged beers and the multiple flavors of big name stouts and porters. Alesmith has released multiple flavors of Speedway Stout for a number of years and this year they split it into 3 different days with 12 varieties to taste in three separate flights of 4 2oz tasters. Alesmith also brought out a few bottles of barrel aged Speedway Stout to sell and tapped a bourbon barrel aged Vietnamese Coffee Speedway Stout at the tasting room. Ballast Point released a similar set of flavored versions of their Victory at Sea Imperial Porter at a few different bars around town. O’Brien’s pub hosted a barrel aged beer day as well, bringing out a number of delicious beers to taste.
Many of the big bars around town hosted tap take-overs, where breweries from around town were featured on tap including beers you don’t regularly see from Alpine Brewing. Some of these take-overs focused on beers from breweries in other parts of California such as the much sought-after beers from Russian River. Another way to try some rare beers is a bottle share and there was a big bottle share event called The World’s Biggest Bottle Share held in North Park on Sunday November 9th. Plenty of rare beers were shared along the route with shuttles taking people between the different bars.
Other breweries released some new bottles of beer for the first time. Council Brewing released their second bottle, an oak-aged Belgian Tripel, with the opportunity to taste the beer on tap at the brewery on the first day it was out. I am a fan of their Tripel generally and liked what I tasted on tap. I am looking forward to trying my bottle in a few weeks.
There were so many events going on that I wasn’t able to try them all. If you had a favorite beer week experience that I left out, let me know in the comments.
Paul McGuire
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
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