Tuesday October 13th A Night With St. Feuillien

Since 1873, the Friart family has been brewing various beers, among others, the St-Feuillien. But the history of this beer goes back even further.

In the 7th century, an Irish monk by the name of Feuillien came to the Continent to preach the Gospel. Unfortunately, in 655, while travelling through the charcoal forest, across the territory of what is now the town of Le Roeulx, Feuillien was martyred and beheaded. On the site of his martyrdom, Feuillien’s disciples erected a chapel which, in 1125 became the Abbey of Prémontrés, but later became known as the Abbaye St-Feuillien du Roeulx.
The Abbey prospered until the upheavals of the French Revolution. During these troubled times, it was condemned by the revolutionaries. For centuries, monks have brewed beer and this tradition has been preserved until this very day.

Come down and join 4th generation owner Dominique Friart for a night of her family’s classic Belgian ales. We will have Wit, Saison, Tripel, & Noel on draught along with a full line-up of Bottles. At 8pm Dominique will be opening a 9 liter bottle of St. Feuillien to share with all.

Van Twee Release Tonight!

Van Twee –
Brewmasters Collaboration with John Mallet

The 2009 collaboration brew was created with John Mallet of Bell’s Brewing in Michigan. Van Twee is a “mash-up” of the porter and dubbel styles blended with sour cherry juice from Michigan and brettanomyces in the secondary fermentation. It is a rich, dark beer capped by tan foam. Malty layers of chocolate and coffee trade on the palate with sour brett and dark fruit notes. Reminiscent of the famous fruit-filled chocolates of Belgium. July 2009 selection – Michael Jackson’s Rare Beer Club

Brouwer’s Cafe and SBS Imports founder Alan Shapiro, will be tapping Seattle’s first keg this evening. We will also be featuring a full line up of De Preof bottles.

A Night With Speakeasy Brewing


On Draft this Evening

Big Daddy
Prohibition
Double Daddy
Untouchable Pale Ale
Mickey Finn (one-off Imperial Red Ale, being brewed now for the first time)
Fresh-hopped Big Daddy (just for the event)
Tallulah Blonde (our version of a session beer here in San Francisco draft only)
Hunter’s Point Porter (draft only in home market).

Wednesday October 7th @ 7pm

There will be T-shirts and Glassware giveaways as well.


Fremont Oktoberfest Starts Tonight!

The Fremont Oktoberfest is your fall kick-off celebration in the “Center of the Universe” Fremont, Washington. Voted by USA Today and Orbitz.com as one of the top places to toast Oktoberfest, the three-day event has an activity for kids and adults of all ages!

And it’s all for a good cause! The Fremont Chamber of Commerce is the beneficiary of the Fremont Oktoberfest. A portion of the proceeds goes toward funding local schools, art groups, community events and promoting Fremont as the “Center of the Universe.”

Come Run, Drink and Play at the Fremont Oktoberfest!

Fremont Oktoberfest starts tonight and runs through Sunday. Come down and enjoy one of Fremonts best parties right outside our front door.

A Night with The Bruery


The founding of The Bruery was rather meager. It started as the first homebrew batch brewed by Patrick Rue, his brother Chris, and his wife Rachel who was wondering if they were actually going to clean the kitchen stove once the batch was finished. This first batch was an amberish ale with Cascade hops, consumed after four days of fermentation, one day of crash cooling, and a few seconds after force carbonating. These were proud moments. Patrick started homebrewing as a diversion in the first year of law school. As the years went by, his skill and passion for brewing came to a point where the only thing he wanted to do with the rest of his life is make beer. Thus, money was raised, grey hairs were formed, and the rest is history (at least to us).

Join Patrick this Tuesday, September 8th, at 7pm.
We will have Autumn Maple, Berlinner Weisse, and Orchard White on draft, and Autumn Maple, Orchard White, and Saison Rue in the bottle.

HopFest Finals


The HopFest audience award ballots have been counted, and to very little surprise the winner is Russian River’s Pliny the Younger.

The top-five are as follows:
1. Russian River Pliny the Younger
2. Hopworks Ace of Spades
3. Diamond Knot Zeus Hop
4. Silver City Indianola Pale/Whoopass aged in french oak
5. Amnesia Goldihops

Honorable mention needs to be given to the people that voted for “Tomme Arthur fathered my love child,” and “Sloth hearts Chunk.” Definitely the two most creative joke votes.

Hop-Fest!

Our 5th annual Hop-Fest Starts this Friday at 11am and goes until the Beer runs out. Here’s the line-up.

7 Seas Ballz Deep Double, Allagash Hughe Malone, Amnesia Copacetic, Anacortes, Avery Maharaja June Batch, Avery Maharaja March Batch, Big Al, Big Time Dry-Hopped Ave Rat, Black Raven Trickster, Boundary Bay Imperial, Breakaway Dry Hopped, Bridgeport Hopczar, Diamond Knot, Dicks Bottleworks, Dogfish Head 120min, Dogfish Head 60min, Dogfish Head 90min, Dogfish Head India Brown Ale Brewed w/Maple Syrup, Elliot Bay, Elysian Hubris, Firestone Doublejack, Fish 10 squared, Flyers Mach 4, Fremont, Full Sail Wet Hop Lupulin, Gilligan Dry Hopped, Grand Teton Double, Great Divide 15th Anniversary, Hair of the Dog Blue Dot, Hales
Aftermath, Hales Dry Hopped Supergoose CASK, Hopworks Ace of Spades Imperial, Iron Horse Super Dry Hopped, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, Laughing Dog Alpha Dog, Lazyboy Dry Hopped, Mad River Double, Maritime Tripple Dry Hoppd Lager, Ninkasi
Dry Hopped Tricerahops CASK, Pike Seattle Beer Week Double, Port Brewing Hop 15, Port Brewing Panzer Imperial Pils, Port Brewing Wipeout, Port Townsend Imperial Hop Diggity, Ram ZZ Hop, Russian River IPA 100, Russian River Pliny the elder, Schneider Hopfenweiss, Schooner Exact Dry Hopped 3-grid CASK, Scuttlebut Dry Hopped, Sierra Nevada Chico Estate, Silver City, Indianola/Whoopass Dry hopped on oak, Skagit River Doubler Hopped, Snoqualmie Dry Hopped Wildcat, Southern tier
Oak Aged Unearthly, Speakeasy Rum Runner Rye, Speakeasy Midnight Run IBA, Stone 13th Anniversary Ale, Stone Double Dry Hopped CASK, Three Skulls Dry Hopped IPA, Urthel Hop it, Victory Hop Wallop, Walkingman Homo Erectus

Friday August 21st – Russian River Brewing Night


In 1997, Russian River Brewing Company (RRBC) was founded by Korbel Champagne Cellars in Guerneville , California . Vinnie Cilurzo was hired as the Brewmaster. At the Great American Beer Festival in 1999, RRBC and Vinnie were awarded “Small Brewing Company of the Year” and “Small Brewing Company Brewmaster of the Year”. In 2002, Korbel decided to leave the beer business and sold the brewery to Vinnie and his wife, Natalie. Now located in Santa Rosa , California

In 2009, on Friday August 21st, Vinnie will take the long trek up to Seattle, where he will host a brewers night at Brouwer’s Cafe. He will be on hand to discuss, and drink his award winning brews.

Russian River beers on tap for the night will be: Blind Pig, Consecration, Damnation, Deviation,Pliny the Elder, Publication, and Temptation.

The fun starts around 6pm.

Russian River Temptation Tapped!

Temptation: “Aged in French oak wine barrels for twelve months with distinct characteristics of fruit and subtle oak” sounds more like a description of wine than beer. However, Temptation is indeed beer. Temptation is a Blonde Ale aged in French oak chardonnay barrels with Brettanomyces. Flavors of wine and oak absorb into the brew throughout its aging. Temptation is re-fermented in the bottle to create its carbonation–a process commonly used to make fine champagne and sparkling wine. Spent yeast forms a thin layer of sediment to remain in the bottle.

7.25%ABV / 1.062 O.G

Russian River Publication is here!

Russian River’s Publication has finally landed! Here is what brewer Vinnie Cilurzo had to say about it.

PUBLICATION

OG: 1.066 (16.5 Plato)
8% ABV
BU’s: 48
Style: Saison finished with Brettanomyces
Tasting Notes: Golden in color, strong yeast aroma with mild aromas of barnyard and leather from the Brettanomyces. Flavor’s of malt and spice dominate the palate with a dry nutty (malt) character mixed with a funky Brettanomyces finish. The hops are dominate but well placed with-in the brew.

Publication started out as a test beer we called Empirical 7 which was a blonde ale fermented with a Saison yeast I wanted to test out for the PNC beer. The Empirical 7 was extremely hoppy and very very dry and the use of Brett for keg conditioning was very heavy handed. The Empirical 7 was meant to be a test batch for the members of the PNC to taste and based on their feedback I would build the recipe for the first ever PNC beer. At about midnight the night before the brew, over a game of Washoe’s and 10 beers into the night we finally got around to talking about the beer. A higher ABV was requested with more characteristics from the yeast and fermentation were also wanted in the PNC beer. With that in mind I set out to tweak the test batch and brew the next day. In the end I did bump up the malt bill so we could reach an ABV of 8%. I also switched out some of the base 2-row malt for some pilsner malt which would add another dimension with the malt characteristic in the beer. We used the same hop bill as the test batch so with a higher ABV and more malt on the palate the hops would be a little less aggressive. In fermentation we fermented about 6 degrees warmer to get more yeast characteristic in the final beer. Once the beer was ready to keg we used a smaller amount of Brett so there would be more flavor from the fermentation coming through. At a young age, this beer drinks very well, but, there are still some rough edges which will round out nicely as the beer ages.

Vinnie Cilurzo
Brewer / Owner
Russian River Brewing Company

Beer in a Box

Today we just tapped our first “Beer in a Box.” It’s the new “Key Keg” system that allows us to get import beer without having to pay a keg deposit. Instead of shipping the empty keg overseas we just crush the box and put it out on the curb for recycling. This is what the manufacturer had to say:

“KeyKeg® The “sell and forget” keg

The revolutionary one-way KeyKeg®, suitable for any liquid and especially carbonated drinks, is developed according to the bag-in-ball concept. This lightweight disposable keg has been developed specially for beers and offers you extra protection, longer preservation, more sales and a clear reduction of costs.

The KeyKeg® is available in a 20 and 30 litre version and weighs only 1.0 and 1.4 kg respectively. The extreme low weight results in up to 25% more beer, wine or cider per transport and voluminous transport of empty kegs back is no longer necessary.

In export markets, KeyKeg® solves all the logistic problems connected to steel kegs, which disappear because of theft and losses. At low-volume outlets KeyKeg® provides easy use and long preserved quality after broaching.”

If these kegs work as well as they say you can expect to see more imports arriving in these. This particular keg is of the Tilburg Dutch Brown Ale, brewed by Koningshoeven.

Firestone Walker Parabola

So after the tapping of the Firestone Walker Double Jack over at Bottleworks @5pm,

we’ll be tapping the Firestone Walker Parabola here at Brouwer’s Cafe @7pm


Here’s the details

An extension of Quercus Alba  —the Firestone Walker Barrel aged program. 

Russian Imperial Stout 

Aged in Bourbon Barrels 

ABV=13% 

IBU=50 

COLOR= BLACK 

15% OATS / HOPPED WITH 100% US GROWN FUGGLES 

100% Stainless steel w/2 year maturation in Heavens Hill bourbon barrels 

Just Tapped New Belgiums La Folie

“La Folie Wood-Aged Biere, is our original wood-conditioned beer, resting in French Oak barrels between one and three years before being hand bottled, numbered and corked for your enjoyment. Brewmaster, Peter Bouckaert, came to us from Rodenbach – home of the fabled sour red. Our La Folie emulates the spontaneous fermentation beers of Peter’s beloved Flanders with sour apple notes, a dry effervescence, and earthy undertones.” – From New Belgium’s Web Site