See Jane Sell Beer: Jane's Beer Store in Mountain View

At the outer edge of downtown Mountain View, a small bottle shop quietly sprung up a few months ago .  It's Jane's Beer Store, a place that somehow exudes a friendly vibe despite its utilitarian decor.  Inside, you'll find every inch of shelf and cooler space is crammed with beers of every possible description.   The dimly lit room gives the place a sense of reverence to the beers set before you.  Jane's expansive selection cannot possibly be summed up in a few sentences, or even paragraphs, but it does seem more  heavily weighted towards California breweries and European imports.   Other domestic breweries like Boulevard, Clown Shoes, and Dogfish Head make prominent appearances.

As the South Bay continues to awaken to the greater possibilities of beer, places like Jane's Beer Store arise to meet this new awareness.  It's  further proof that when it comes to beer, the good guys are winning.

The Session #76 : Beer Autism

For this month's Session, Glen Humphries at Beer is Your Friend asks to write about beer compulsion.

Lance Rice knows a lot about beer.  He's collected hundreds of beer cans over the last 40 years, and can tell you all about each one of them.   He knows the history of most breweries in the United States, and figures out the malts and hops in a beer after just a few sips.

Remind you of anyone?

Lance has autism.  While estimates suggest as many as 1 in 110 people are currently born with autism, we don't know much about the condition.  We know they have trouble with communication and are uncomfortable in social situations.   Like many with autism, Lance has battled several phobias in his life.  Scientists think autism makes it difficult to control and organize sensory input.   A quiet, well lit room with a few people chatting away is transformed into a raging mosh pit full of strobe lights within the mind of an autistic.  It's thought that to maintain control of their turbulent surroundings, people with autism focus intensely on familiar and comfortable things to find order in their chaotic life.  For Lance, when it's about beer, he's in his comfort zone.  Know someone like that?

Lance is the subject of a movie and book project called "Lance's Brewery Tour" currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.  Many breweries have thrown open their doors to allow Lance the opportunity to see the breweries he could only talk about.   This support seems to come because the project celebrates Lance's autism rather than pities him for it .  As the father of an autistic child, it's a story I support and contributed to on Kickstarter.  And yes, I am writing this to encourage others to back this project if they feel Lance's story deserves a wide audience.

All of us beer geeks have a compulsion at some level with beer.  Perhaps there is a little autism in all of us.

Update:  Yay!  Today, Lance's Brewery Tour was fully funded!

Aaron and Lance Rice discussing their project
at Great Lakes Brewing Company

 

Beer of the Month: Electric Tower IPA from Santa Clara Valley Brewing

When I finally got a chance to try Electric Tower IPA from Santa Clara Valley Brewing, I was actually afraid to drink it.  Sure, Brew Master Steve Donohue won four Great American Beer Festival medals at Sunnyvale's Firehouse Grill before leaving to start Santa Clara Valley Brewing with Tom Clark so you figured it was going to be good.  Plenty of people got pretty excited when they announced in March their licensing was complete and they were going to commence brewing, including myself.  I even kept bugging Steve a few times on his Twitter account about when his first beer would come out.  With all that build up, my biggest fear was that no beer could really live up to all these expectations and by the time  I'd finally try it, it would be a let down.

Since you know Electric Tower IPA is Beer of the Month, you can figure out the rest.




Drawing of the Historical San Jose Electric Tower
(Wikipedia Common Image) 

Yes, Santa Clara Valley Brewing delivers the goods and then some, meeting all the high expectations with their initial release.  I could tell this was going to be a good just by opening the bottle.  Wonderful aromas of pine and mango greeted my noise.  Sipping the beer delivered more of the same, with its smooth and flavorful tropical mango, pineapple and resin-like pine flavors.  There's a solid, lightly toasty malt foundation to this fairly dry beer as well, but as with any good West Coast IPA, the hops are doing all the talking.  

So what's this Electric Tower all about anyway?  Back in 1881, a large electric tower was erected in San Jose, used for lighting up the city.  These were common in America cities in the late 1800's, often called Moonlight Towers, as electrification began to sweep the country. San Jose's tower was one of the largest ones of this era.  You might say it was the earliest example of Silicon's Valley technical prowess.

Electric Tower IPA:  Another reason it's good to live in the South Bay.

Win A Reebok Spartan Race Race Entry

If you held a distance running race at a military boot camp during the filming of an episode of  Wipe Out, you'd have the Reebok Spartan Race.  The Spartan Race is a series of races held all over the country that Outdoor Magazine calls "the #1 obstacle race" series in the country.  If you need to get pumped up to run, jump over barriers, climb through rope thingys and get really muddy, check out all their high adrenaline videos. 

There are three levels of Spartan races held at various locations throughout the country..  There's the Spartan Sprint, a 3+ mile race with at least 15 obstacles, the Super Spartan consisting of 8+ miles through at least 20 obstacles, and the Spartan Beast race consisting of 12+ miles through no less than 25 obstacles. 

And if that isn't enough, there's also the Spartan Death Race being held this June 21st in Pittsfield, VA, which they cheerfully claim as making "giving birth look like a walk in the park."  I don't even want to know what's involved in that one.

The Spartan Race Series comes to Northern California this August 10th with a Spartan Beast race in Monterey.

And now you can join in the madness!   The Spartan Race organizers have provided a free entry coupon to a lucky reader.  Just be the first person to e-mail me at "photon.dpetermangmail{dot}com" and declare "I'm ready for anything the Spartan Race throws at me!" and that coupon is yours!

For those too late to get the free entry, you can still get 15% off on your entry by following this link.

And yes, your entry includes a coupon for beer at the finish.

Scenes from a Mountain View Beer Walk

Yesterday's Mountain View Beer Walk is in the books.  For those who don't know what a "Beer Walk" is, it involves getting a taster glass and walking around a downtown to different stores and sampling beer from different breweries at each stop.   Part of the fun is discovering what beer is pouring at each store and its fun to stand around sipping beer in a place like a bookstore, boutique or hair salon.

The Mountain View Beer Walk was a 25th Anniversary Celebration of Mountain View's Tied House Brewpub of sorts.  It also served as an introduction to the general public of Santa Clara Valley Brewing initial release of Electric Tower IPA.  Of course, plenty of other great breweries like Strike, Hermitage, New Belgium, Goose Island, Santa Cruz Ale Works, Fault Line, Anchor, Heretic, Almanac, Lagunitas, Firestone-Walker, Gordon-Biersch, Ninkasi, Hanger 24, Speakeasy, and Sierra Nevada participated.

Another great job by The Beer Walk folks.  All the Beer Walk staff in their bright orange shirts were all friendly and helpful and the event was well organized.  I'll leave you with a few pictures of yesterday's event.

 

The Cask and Flask #1: We've Both Come a Long Way

The humble exterior of the Cask and Flask

From the outside, it looks like one of a zillion unassuming liquor stores found all over the South Bay in tired strip malls.  Venture inside the Cask and Flask #1 and you'll quickly realize you've stumbled upon one of the finest beer bottle shops in all of the Bay Area.  Their selection ranges from a wide mix from Northern California's breweries, far away notable domestic craft beers from places like Massachusetts's Clown Shoes and Oklahoma's Prairie Artisan Ales, and plenty of fantastic European imports.  Somehow these examples of the world's finest brewing coalesced at the Cask and Flask which, from the looks of it, has little more to offer than a 40 ouncer of cheap malt liquor.



Hmmmm....take a closer look and the place looks promising

Located at the corner of Leigh and Camden Avenues in San Jose's Cambrian neighborhood,  I actually lived a block away from the Cask & Flask eight years ago.   I was going through my divorce and desperately needed a place to stay.   Any place where my ex-wife wasn't around to fight would do.  I saw an ad for a room specifying among other things, "No Republicans".  Since politics was one of numerous things my ex-wife and I either argued about or avoided talking about altogether, it seemed like a promising place to escape.  The room turned about to be in a house owned by a quiet, slightly unkempt man in his fifties named Eric.  Eric was into New Age music and wrote books on astrology.   He requested my birth date, down to the exact minute, to make an astrological forecast to see if I would be a compatible tenant in his house.  I suspect the two month's rent I paid him without hesitation during our first meeting helped the planets align in my favor, and I quickly passed his celestial background check.

Eric's place was a bit weather beaten and smelled a little funky, but served as a good refuge during those turbulent times.  Calming New Age music constantly emanated at all hours from the closed door of his room.   Eric let me keep few things in his fridge, but initially prohibited any alcohol.  Over time, he began to relent on this restriction after polite requests to store a few beers in his fridge, most likely because I paid my rent on time. Eric told me "I don't want to tell people how to live their lives, but I don't want any drunks in my house".   Figuring this meant I could keep a few beers in his fridge, some nights I'd walk down to the Cask and Flask and pick up a six-pack of something.  I wasn't into craft beer back then, so it was usually Miller Genuine Draft, Rolling Rock, or Gordon-Biersch when I got bit wild and crazy.  I certainly don't remember many imports or odd bottles from breweries I never heard of at the Cask & Flask back in those days.  They just had the standard brews you could find anywhere.

After a living there for a little more than a year, I finally informed Eric I was moving out.  Telling him his home was  "a place of healing" during a difficult time in my life as handed him my last rent check, deep down I was dying to find my own place.  A place where I could blast The Ramones from my stereo and stock up my own fridge with as much beer as I wanted.  And besides, some of my best friends are Republicans.  So I moved into a small studio apartment, and among other things, began to discover the endless variety and possibilities of craft beer.  I stopped settling for the unsatisfactory and life has gotten a lot better since.

Seems like the Cask and Flask #1 has gone through a similar metamorphosis, transforming itself from an anonymous liquor store to a go-to craft beer destination.   Obviously someone there wants this place to be a lot more than a typical liquor store.  I just hope the Cask and Flask #1 keeps on being extraordinary.

A great selection awaits those who venture inside

Beer of the Month: Campbell Brewing's Porter

A Pint of Campbell Brewing's Porter at the upstairs
patio of the Sonoma Chicken Coop, where more light for this
photo would have really been helpful

For the first time in my life since I moved last fall, there's a brewery within short walk from my home.  It's Campbell Brewing, which brews up beers for the Sonoma Chicken Coop restaurant, a major fixture in Campbell's lively downtown scene.  While I've enjoyed many solid Campbell Brewing beers such as their Bitter, Scottish Ale and IPA, none of them caused the "slap-me-upside-the-head-and-make-me-say-Wow!" reaction required for Beer of the Month status.

That all changed last week when I tried Campbell Brewing's Porter, a beer not usually found in their regular rotation.  The humble Porter is one of my favorite styles, and this one ranks up there with the best I've had.  It was smooth, flavorful, smokey with bitter chocolate flavors that all really popped.   It was a little on the thin side for the style, with no noticeable hop presence to speak of.  But if you ask me, these attributes actually worked to the advantage of this brew, which was all easy drinking roasty goodness. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, South Bay breweries are underrated.  And thankfully, one of those South Bay breweries making some great beer is a short walk from my new home.