Beer Viking » Brewery

West Coast Raid – day 2: Anchor Brewery Tour, photos/intro

Doc D — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:35:20 +0000

So, day two and I managed get a couple of places on a tour of Anchor Brewering Co. My buddy Joe who is a retired naval officer was happy to join me. Trust me this was an awesome tour, its free, the leder was very good and the beer tasting room amazing!

They are best know for the flagship Anchor Steam beer and Fritz Maytag who saved the brewery in the 1960's and is arguably the 'godfather' of craft brewing in Northern California. He still is the brewmaster and comes in 4-5 days a week!

This is a beautiful brewery. With views of the San Francisco. The brewing mash tun and coppers came from Germany. The building is an old coffee roasting factory. The tour was great. They brew a lot of beer with a pretty small scale operation. Don't miss this if you get the chance… I will be back to update this post when I have some more time.

For now here are some photos and map below! Enjoy.

View Larger Map

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Triple Rock Brewery & Ale House, Berkeley – west coast raid cont…

Doc D — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:25:54 +0000

Triple Rock Brewery & Ale House, Berkeley
Note: draft post…

Beer List

Pinnacle Pale Ale – english style pale ale, very light, pretty average. 12
Kolsch .45 – sharp, true to style. 14
Millstone Wheat – fresh, citrus, also true to style. Very drinkable. 14
Bug Juice West Coast Pale Ale – hoppy, long finish. Nice. 15
Red Rock Red Ale – wow, very stornly hopped, tight finish. Classic! 16
Black Rock Stout – very nice stout, smooth. 15

Guest Ale
Sacramento BrewCo IPA – very solid ‘west coast’ IPA. 15.5

Dark Star Brews American Pale Ale All the Time

thetank — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:29:40 +0000

I’m taking a tasting publishing hiatus at the moment but still had post about this.

Amazing news to report.

One of BeerViking’s firm favourite brewers, Dark Star Brewing Co., have confirmed they are brewing their award winning American Pale Ale all the time now and not just seasonally.

Here’s what Dark Star says about the American Pale Ale:

4.7% American Pale Ale
(March – May)
The yeast strain used for the brewing of the pale, dry, American Ales was specially imported from the USA, along with some Chinook and Centennial hops, to produce this pale ale. The low colour Maris Otter malt provides a perfect light colour and dryness to balance the crisp taste and full aroma of the hops.

At writing:

Beeradvocate, there’s been 6 reviews with a rating of an A and an ave. of 4.38.

ratebeer, 44 reviews, ave. rating is 3.65/5, 97 percentile in it’s glass and 91 overall.

For us hop heads in the UK, this is certainly a great start to 09 and I would say lays down the challenge to the other UK brewers to come up something competitive.

Now if only Dark Star will bottle this then we’re really onto something.