Golden Pints

2013

I have modified the categories and added and replaced as necessary

Best Limited Draft Beer. Easy Peasy: Sante Adairius’ Deaf Stewart. This was a one off for the Trappist Provisions and a Beer Dinner at Haven. A 4.8% Wild Ale which was just incredible.

Best Regular Draft Beer. I order it whenever I see it so it has to be Firestone Walker Double Jack. Just the best double IPA in the US and maybe the second best in the world. Honourable mention to the unfiltered DBA they have at the brewery.

Best Limited Bottled Beer. I drank far more of Boulevard Saison Brett than I should have done. Why I didn’t buy more is beyond me but take the Tank 7 Saison and add a slap of Brett character. Uncredible.

Best Regular Bottled Beer. My goto six pack for a while was Unita — Baba. Black Lager, low ABV, almost no hop character, a splash of roast malt. Lovely

Best Overseas Draft Beer. My new favourite beer in the world: Freigeist Abraxxxas. A smoked Berlinner Weisse. It’s like a beer built for my palate.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer. Normally I’d say Orval, which comes pretty close. But thank god they import it and I can say Thornbridge Halcyon. Still the best Imperial IPA in the world. Honourable mention to Abraxxxas in bottles.

Best Collaboration Brew. To be honest I don’t really pay attention to this kind of thing. But the only one that springs to mind is Cellarmaker/Tired Hands — Taco Hands. An IPA with taco shells in the mash, lime and chilli in the beer. On any other day this would have been foul but magically it was incredible. The lime and chilli were muted but present, the hops were prominent but not overpowering. Awesome.

Best Overall Beer. Freigeist — Abraxxxas.

Best Non Local Brewery. Firestone Walker. Not really had anything suspect from them and they’re one of the few breweries that can make a barrel aged beer without it being a mess. The Anniversary Beers are a master class in how good blended beer is.

Best Local Brewery. Using a wider net of “local” has to be Cellarmaker. The recent batch of hoppy beers have been approaching too much for me but for Midnight Society alone they’d get this one.

Best Overseas Brewery. Tie between Thornbridge, who even from afar are still the face of modern british brewing for me and Freigeist who, like Thornbridge, seem to understand how to encapsulate beer styles and perfect them.

Best New Brewery. Tricky one. Cellarmaker I’ve enjoyed a great deal and I think I will enjoy The Rare Barrel when they open later this week. But pretty much everything is new to me.

Bar of the Year. Easy again: City Beer Store. My regular haunt, and one of the places that does everything right: small beer list, sours, range of styles. Runner up is Trappist Provisions. This is a lovely place to while away an afternoon — small tap list, lovely space.

Beer Festival/Event of the Year. The Trappist puts on some great one of festivals and it’s toss up for me for the Sour Beer day at Provisions and the Saison day at Trappist. I think the Saison day just edges it.

Worst Festival/Event of the Year. Zwanze Day at the Mikkeller bar in SF. Everywhere else got Zwanze as well as Iris and the other Cantillon kegs. I ended up with a pour of Zwanze, the same taplist at the bar as the previous night and the message that the promised pour of Iris was unavailable as the keg had emptied by the time I could get an order in.

Supermarket of the Year. Whole Foods Oakland. I probably bought 80% of my beer here. I also bought all the Orval they had one time.

Bottle Shop of the Year. Healthy Spirits in the Castro — good stock of British stuff, and vintages of Vintage Ale. Say no more.

Best Beer Book/Magazine. Beer Advocate magazine is surprisingly good — the Ron Pattinson column is worth the price of entry alone. Bookwise, The Northern California Craft Beer Guide has been a reference guide for us this year.

Best Beer Blog. Overall I really like Boak and Bailey this year, the right balance of history, insight and irreverence. The best blog post was Easy Bay Beer’s take on wineification of beer. Basically spot on.

Best Beer App. I found the barcode scanner on the RateBeer app to be handy on a few occasions. But Untappd basically wins this. If they did good recommendations and put a bit more social in it would be pretty perfect.

Homebrew of the Year. I made an incredible smoked Imperial Stout in the middle of the year, then it over carbonated and went bad. Homebrewing has been trying this year but I think I’m on top of things now.

Simon H. Johnson Twitterer of the Year. Though he’s not as present as he was, for sure pun-to-tweet ratio @broadfordbrewer wins this. @D_I_N_G comes close second for sheer stickfastwardtoitudness

Viner of the Year. @totalcurtis walked this one. I particularly enjoyed the Mauve and Party Bus ones.

Festivus Grievances:

1. Less crazy strong beer in super sized bottles. I’m looking mainly at the Bruery here. Black Tuesday is a 20% beer in a 750ml bottle. 15 units in a handy bottle. Great for sharing, terrible for one. Double Jack in a 355ml 4-pack on the other hand is incredible.
2. Less terrible messy barrel aged beers. The slew of barrel beers that taste of acridity and port. Not as in stop making them but I’m going to stop buying them.
3. Sort out Growler problems. Please figure out a way for me to fill a generic container universally.

Festivus Awesomes for 2014:

1. 32oz Growlers. God be praised that these are becoming the norm for they are truly a thing of wonder. 2L of Evil Cousin seems like an ordeal, 1L seems like a win.
2. With Cellarmaker in full swing and the opening of the Torpedo Room and the Rare Barrel, I’m going to pretty much cut out buying bottled beer next year and stick to draft and growler fills. I also have a plan to use a autosyphon to decant 64oz into 32oz, thus avoiding the problem above
3. I was reading a back issue of Zymurgy where they were talking about the link between fermentation characteristics and yeast evolution — basically that yeast moulds itself to the temperature changes in the local environment. So this year I’m going to try and evolve a Perkins Pale Ale. Every two weeks (sorry Amy), I’ll brew the same recipe of a Cascade Pale Ale, but I’ll recycle the yeast each time. So by the end of the year I’ll have the 26th Evolution of a Northern Californian Yeast strain. Or, more likely, I’ll give up or end up with a lot of infected beer.

Non-Beery Awards:

Best Record Label. I renewed my Numero subscription this year and they never disappoint: Unwound, Codeine, Eccentric Soul are all stunning releases. I’ve also enjoyed the brief run of Dual Planet and buy Death Waltz stuff when I see it.

Favourite Record Bought. I listened to the first (or is the second) Jimmy Campbell LP a lot this year — the one with Michelangelo on it at least.

Favourite Record Store. Stranded in Oakland is the model of a good record store — good new stuff / rares / good old stuff.

Most surprising purchase. Two Neil Young LPs — stupid iTunes radio introducing me to music I’d previously dismissed.

Best TV Show. I’m 3/5 through Breaking Bad which is fun but I find it less engaging as it goes on. The second season of Girls is better than the first which is saying a lot. But, The Returned, was a perfect 8 part horror show — genuinely creepy and weird.

Revelation of the Year. Pets are fantastic. I’ve never lived with animals before and now we have two cats (one new to us this year) and a tiny dog. This morning one of the cats climbed into the foetal nook and lay there for ten minutes. Then batted my face until I fed him. Awesome.