Beer of the Month : Golden Gate Gose from Almanac Beer

Almanac's Golden Gate Gose at Liquid Bread.

Beer of the Month for this May comes from Almanac Beer, known mainly for strong barrel-aged ales with unusual organic heirloom ingredients like strawberries and even fennel.  While I've enjoyed many of these Almanac creations, the latest that caught my fancy was something enjoyed while whiling away a warm spring afternoon reading a book at Campbell's Liquid Bread.

It's Golden Gate Gose, a soft, lovely example of a style rarely brewed in the United States.  The Gose style originates from the Northern Germany town of Goslar.  It's a top fermented sour beer traditionally brewed with at least 50% wheat malt, coriander, salt.

Golden Gate Gose is a little soapy, salty, and lightly sour and as you can see, has a fluffy, pillowy head.   It's the uncluttered, balanced, and restrained composition of just a few flavor notes that really makes "triple G" really work.  Perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise from Almanac, since for all their wild ingredients and barrel aging, the solid and technically well executed beer underlying all the unique flavors is what makes their beers work so well..

If you ask me, beers embracing simplicity and balance which quietly attract your attention are rare and under appreciated.  So let's raise a glass to Almanac for celebrating old, nearly forgotten style with quiet fan fare.

Is the South Bay Beer Scene Shedding its Inferiority Complex?

Maybe the South Bay is no longer the beer desert it once was

One event I made sure to attend during SF Beer Week was the Hermitage Brewing Beer Dinner at Scott's Seafood in Mountain View. When I finished the dinner, pushing aside my dessert plate I sat there struggling to figure out just what I should write about it.  Writing about beer dinners seems like an almost pointless task to me.  I just sort of wing it when it comes to food criticism and since few, if any of my readers attended, and the dinner was over, never to be repeated.  The food was good, the Hermitage Beer was definitely good, and my wife and I enjoyed it.  What more is there to say?



Hermitage's Ale of the 2 Tun Imperial Stout and
Scott's Seafood's Molten Lava Cake 

That didn't stop me from thinking.  Clearly San Jose's Hermitage Brewing, the featured brewery of the night is putting out plenty of strong beers on the strong side of the ale spectrum after only three years in existence.  The smooth, malty complexity of their Maltopia, the bright tropical flavors of their single hop  Galaxy IPA, and their dry, bitter chocolate bomb of 2 Tun Imperial Stout are as good as any beers you'll find from the Bay Area.

And Hermitage isn't the only notable brewery to emerge from the South Bay recently.  While Hermitage strives to make the big beers, Strike Brewing, barely over a year old has gone in the opposite direction with their excellent Session Series.   And of course, in recent years, Steve Donohue won no less than four GABF medals at Sunnyvale's Firehouse Brewing before leaving late last year to start his own brewery, Santa Clara Valley Brewing which hopefully will come on line before the end of the year. 

With these South Bay breweries come a number of great new venues to enjoy craft beer.  There are gastropubs Liquid Bread in Campbell and Original Gravity in Downtown San Jose, both less than a year old.  In the last three years, California Cafe at both its Palo Alto and Los Gatos locations has established their brewmaster's dinner series, featuring inspired pairings of food with beer from some of of the finest breweries in California.  Harry's Hofbrau in San Jose, an old school German buffet restaurant is an unlikely place to find a great tap selection and it has been hosting a number special events devoted to craft breweries, a development that's started there about a year ago.  The Yardhouse the opened a couple years ago in San Jose's swanky Santana Row Mall, and yes, it's slick and corporate, but you can get some mighty fine beer there.  And we even have an honest to goodness independent bottle shop now with Jane's Beer Store in Downtown Mountain that opened last summer.  There's probably some new place I'm forgetting.

The South Bay has long been consider a weak sister to the nearby craft brewing epicenters of San Francisco, Santa Rosa, and the East Bay, but has anyone noticed this recent acceleration of craft beer culture in the South Bay? 

Well maybe. Five years ago, the  general buzz amidst beer geekdom was "The South Bay Beer Scene sucks".  None other than the late Bay Area beer writer Bill Brand regretfully declared the South Bay "a beer desert" shortly before he passed away.    Then a couple years ago, you could find grudging admissions that a couple of good beers could be found down here. 

And today?  Maybe it's just me but you hardly hear anyone complaining about the beer scene in the South Bay anymore. Instead, people are just enjoying it.  Isn't that the way it should be?

This is not a review of Campbell's Liquid Bread...but you're damn right I'll be back!

I shamelessly stole this photo of Liquid Bread from
their Facebook page.  Hope they don't mind.

As I've said many times, when it comes to culinary insight and criticism, I basically just wing it.  So if you've come looking for a insightful review of Liquid Bread, Campbell's new gastropub, you're going to have to look elsewhere.  But I know what I like, and can demonstrably write about things I like, and Friday night my wife and I checked out Liquid Bread for the first time.  And we really, really liked it.

So exactly what did we like about it?  Well, a smokey grilled kale salad with goat cheese and jicama was a unique, lively way to start a meal.  My wife had their monkfish entree, and while everything about it was good, she could have eaten luscious black bean puree on her plate from a bucket like ice cream if they'd let her.  I enjoyed something called "38 Chicken" or whatever, which was a playful riff on chicken and waffles comfort food enjoying a minor resurgence.  I was too busy enjoying all the different tastes on my plate to take any notes. 

Did I mention they serve beer at Liquid Bread?  For a newcomer to the Bay Area Beer Scene, they had a pretty impressive tap list, as well as an extensive assortment of bottled brews.  I thoroughly enjoyed a Sierra Nevada Scotch on the Rocks, a Scotch Ale brewed with caraway seeds, a project of Sierra Nevada's prestigious Beer Camp.   For "dessert", we split a smooth sipping Anniversary Barlywine from Uinta Brewing, one of my favorite breweries from the underrated brewing state of Utah.

I suppose part of me really wants a gastropub within walking distance of my home to succeed big time, so maybe I'm guilty of being a rather biased in their favor.  But you know what?  I don't care.  I'll be back at Liquid Bread, and hope to see you there.