Craft Beer Festival A Hit Once Again

Saturday’s Bay Area Craft Beer Festival was everything the organizers promised: a fun-filled gathering of more than 30 craft brewers offering a wide variety of brews to a crowd well in excess of 1,000. The event kicked off with VIP ticket entry at noon, and by 1 p.m. the parking lot behind the Zocchi building at 330 Ferry St. was near capacity, with a long line of self-proclaimed beer geeks lining up under a warm sun for tickets. The first of three bands scheduled for the day, Mostly Sonny, set the tone with its cover of  The Doors’ Roadhouse Blues: “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer.” Indeed, and what beer it was.

Inside the warehouse-size building, four rows of booths beckoned with offerings ranging from the larger and more well known pioneers of the craft such as San Francisco’s Anchor Steam or Chico’s Sierra Nevada, to the home-brewed styles on tap at the Diablo Order of Zymiracle Enthusiasts (DOZE) home brewing tent. In between was a wide range of blends from Santa Cruz to Mendocino, Concord to San Leandro. 

At the DOZE tent, 10 homebrews were available for sampling. First on the list was the Double Chocolate, which seemed to me a fine starting point. The dark brown mix is a creation of DOZE member Patrick Baxley, who plans to take his blends from home-brewing to commercially available under the banner Pirate Brewing Co. “I’m putting together a business plan now,” he said, and explained the rich heady mixture that includes one-half pound of chocolate added to the 10-gallon brew. The taste was smooth and creamy, like a malt or a shake, and a satisfying first sample.

Across the way, at Ale Industries of Concord, a recently established brewer that’s found wide distribution throughout the Bay Area, the company’s signature blend, Orange Kush, was poured. Valerie of AI explained it as “a wheat beer brewed with orange peel, chamomile and coriander.” The Belgian-style ale was refreshing, slightly sweet and low in alcohol (only 4.4 percent); it’s a lighter beer yet strong and flavorful. 

Pacific Coast Brewery also was on hand, with Emerald Ale, Gray Whale and Imperial Stout on tap. Co-owner Steve Wolff talked as pulled on the tap, explaining how he and partner Don Gortemiller (the brewmaster) turned their passion for homebrewing into a successful brewpub on Washington Street in Oakland that’s been in operation since 1988. “We’ve won 11 medals at the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado, though we haven’t competed in years. We’re thinking about going back, though.” The Emerald Ale is an Irish red beer, a St. Patrick’s Day brew that’s intense but not bitter.

The Bay Area Craft Beer Festival is a celebration of a growing trend toward smaller, community-based breweries, almost a back to the earth movement driven in part by a desire for quality products made from local ingredients in small batches. The brewers seem to come from all walks of life, discovering a passion that pulls them away from traditional career paths to make their way as artisans, creating unique blends of barley, hops, yeast, water and other ingredients. There’s also a camaraderie and fellowship in the industry, a sense of community that extends from brewmaster to customer — a feeling that everyone’s in it together. 

“It’s remarkably jerk-free,” says Jim Blair, festival committee chairman. The former lawyer is in the almost-ready-to-go stage of opening his own brewpub in Martinez, called Creek Monkey, at the former site of Bertola’s restaurant on Escobar Street. He introduced me to Alec Stefansky of Uncommon Brewers from Santa Cruz. Stefansky had worked in the arms control field. While in college, he found a loophole in UC laws that allowed him to brew beer and enjoy the homebrews in the safety of the dorms, though couldn’t drink legally outside the school.

He fills my glass with Siamese Twin, a Belgian style ale with a unique blend of spices. “I like the flavor of Thai food, and since Belgian ales have a long tradition of using unusual flavors, I thought why not?” The beer’s flavored with coriander, lemongrass and kaffir lime, and is perhaps the most exotic I’ve sampled today. The unexpected flavor is a shock, but it’s remarkably good, delicious even. I can easily imagine it with satay chicken or pad thai.

As with most everything else nowadays, craft beer has its own Internet based network, The Brewing Network. Host and founder Justin Crossley told his story: “I started making beer when my girlfriend gave me a kit from a store in Concord, Beer, Beer and More Beer. Six months later I was hooked.” Crossley mixed his broadcast school training with his discovery of craft beer, and the Brewing Network was born.

Outside, Garageland Rodeo pounded out classic rock on the stage while members of the Billy Martini Show unloaded gear in preparation for their performance. Cigar smoke drifted over from CigaRV, a “mobile man cave,” and mixed with the aromas from local restaurants: Pacifica Pizza, Haute Stuff, Roxx on Main, Taqueria Los Tacos and Luigi’s Deli. On the other side of the entrance, two ladies from Sacramento played electronic baseball at the Games2U van, one “pitching,” while the other “batted.” Shuttle buses from the North Concord BART station discharged passengers, who joined a small line that remained at the ticket booth.

A second Bay Area Craft Beer Festival is planned for the fall, and as word gets around about how good Saturday’s event was, it is likely to be equally successful.