The Two SF Beer Week Events I Could Actually Attend

Hey all!

Another 20 days, another set of beer and brewing experiences.

SF Beer Week was at the end of January this year (thanks to the "Big Game"), and again I spent the week in lovely South Dakota enjoying as much of the local craft beer scene as I could. I didn't want to miss SF Beer Week, but I couldn't help it. I missed most of the events, but there was one on the last day of the "Week" on Sunday January 31, and as I was flying home January 29, I knew I could make it. Hopyard Alehouse in Pleasanton hosted Beer Judging 101, two hour-and-a-half sessions intended to introduce beer drinking and homebrewers to the basics of beer judging.

I saw this event listing before I traveled for work at the end of January and bought a ticket. I then invited a handful of friends and four of them bought tickets to join me. Unfortunately, one of them fell sick Saturday evening so he had to bow out, but four of us drove down to Pleasanton, CA late Sunday morning. The address and name of the Alehouse is a reference to that area once being home the largest hop farm on the west coast from 1880 to 1913. Wow! What a great piece of history. Learning that added to the enjoyment of the day.

There were about 20 participants sitting at tables in rows in a side room at the Alehouse. Leading the afternoon was Grand Master Beer Judge David Teckam, assisted by a staff member of the Alehouse and a member of the Mad Zymurgists, the homebrew club in that area. Teckam described what we were going to do and led us through each sample set, asking us our impressions of the aroma, look, taste, and texture of the beers the two assistants distributed in small plastic cups one or two at a time.

The first three beers were a control and two doped samples of the same beer. I knew the beer right away as the American adjunct lager that likes to espouse color-changing packaging. The two doped samples mimicked the effects of diacetyl and acetaldehyde, two chemicals that are produced in the brewing process but are usually cleaned up by the yeast after primary fermentation. If and when these are noticed in finished beer is often a sign of a mistake. Diacetyl tastes like butterscotch or buttered popcorn, and acetaldehyde tastes like green apples. These flavors are desired in very small amounts in certain beer styles, but in general are unwanted. After this first round to calibrate our palates for off flavors we went through several rounds of two to three beers each.

The afternoon was really informative, and I enjoyed spending time with my friends over beer education. We sampled German pilsners, Belgian Abbey ales, English bitters, barrel-aged IPAs, and American Barleywines. Teckam asked us our perceptions which we shouted out and he wrote down on a white board. The environment was casual and fun. The sample set I found most interesting was the barleywines: malty, full-bodied, heavy, boozy ales meant for long storage. One sample was much hoppier than the other, which was intriguing. It turns out it was two versions of Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Barleywine: 2010 and 2016. Sierra Nevada does not alter its recipe from year to year, so what we tasted from the older bottle was the hops fading away, which is expected, and the newer bottle still having strong hoppy character shows this to be true. A beer like this is designed to be cellared, and we were urged to test this ourselves. One participant described a series from The Bruery where every winter they release a new themed beer along the lines of The Twelve Days of Christmas; the goal is to eventually have a beer from every year for twelve years. Talk about long term aging! 

I am putting what I learned into practice with the wide variety of beer I drink, and hope it will help in my own homebrewing quality assurance.


The other SF Beer Week event I attended was actually the day before the Beer Judging seminar. I learned about it when delayed in Denver Int'l Airport Friday January 29 while flying home from my two-week work trip in South Dakota. I was flipping through my Twitter feed and discovered that The Rare Barrel, a West Berkeley barrel-aged sour beer brewery, was hosting Lauren Salazar for three Q&A sessions Saturday afternoon, January 31. Who is Lauren Salazar, you ask? She is a member of the New Belgium Brewery team and is Imbibe Magazine's 2016 Beer Person of the Year. She started at NB as an "assistant" in the late '90s and founded their sensory laboratory, establishing a scientific, repeatable tasting, smelling, and texture testing plan as part of their beer quality assurance procedures. She now heads New Belgium's wood-aging program. I first learned of her in reading Beer Craft, my second homebrewing book and one of my favorites. I was fascinated then with her foresight and vision in creating the New Belgium sensory lab, and had to meet her if possible.

I told my beer friend Bruce that morning and we met there that afternoon. We grabbed some quality sour beer; me, one of Rare Barrel's newest offerings No Salt, which was aged in tequila barrels; and Bruce had a New Belgium guest tap that was an 80% stout, 20% quad blend. My beer was good, but my palate isn't refined enough yet to recognize everything going on in a sour, wood-waged beer. Bruce greatly enjoyed his blended beer and I'll try to keep an eye out for it. Bruce couldn't actually stay for a Q&A session, so I signed up for the 3:30 slot and when our beers were done he took his leave and I walked to the back of the brewery for the Q&A. 

There were about 20 of us back there by the brewhouse. Jay Goodwin, co-founder and master blender for Rare Barrel, joined the Q&A and he and Lauren fielded questions for 20 minutes. At this point I couldn't tell you the Qs or the As, but I was keen to meet her after and get her autograph. Yes, I asked Lauren Salazar to sign the page on which she was featured in Beer Craft. We spoke for a few minutes and she was friendly. When I asked for her autograph in my copy of that book she squealed with delight and gladly did so, which you can see below.

Lauren Salazar in all her wood-aging and beer taste testing glory.

As a physicist I have delighted in listing the Nobel Laureates I've met or heard lecture over the years. And as I incorporate beer more and more into my life (and career…) I will delight in listing the brewers and members of the brewing community I've met. So far I have Shaun O'Sullivan and Lauren Salazar, so I say I'm off to a good start.

That's it for now. I've brewed and bottled a few more batches and will have a post on those soon.

Who have you met in brewing that has blown your mind? (Sean Lewis, you don't get to answer since you've already written a book about meeting the bigwigs in brewing.)

Have you taken any courses or attended workshops or seminars on beer judging? Are you pursuing BJCP certification?

Until next time friends, happy brewing!