San Francisco’s Anchor Steam Week is going virtual
Before all this, summer was a time of merriment, with one or more beer festivals scheduled every weekend — and an entire week of festivities devoted to Anchor Steam, the iconic San Francisco beer. Those festivals are gone now, of course, but we can still celebrate Anchor Steam Week — Aug. 16-23 — virtually. Stock up now, so you’re ready.
Anchor is hosting a variety of special events that week including a live virtual concert by singer-songwriter Toro y Moi at 6 p.m. Aug. 18 and a culinary demo with beer pairings by “Top Chef All-stars” winner Melissa King at 6 p.m. Aug. 20. Find the full schedule at instagram.com/anchorbrewing.
More virtuality: Another interesting virtual event, this one from the Pacific Northwest, will give beer lovers a unique view into the world of hops. There’s nothing quite like walking through a hopyard at harvest time, but this is the next best thing, especially since you don’t have to leave your home to do it.
Yakima Chief Hops, which is a consortium of 15 family hop growers, is offering a “Virtual Harvest” series of events on weekdays in September, with several different sessions per day, including farm tours, interviews and hop and brewing education sessions. It’s sponsored by the Hop and Brew School. Enrollment is free, although some of the more advanced classes have a fee for materials they will ship you. Find details at www.yakimachief.com/events/.
New sips: Despite the continuing stay-at-home orders, breweries are still trying to meet the demand for new beers and many are releasing seasonal and one-off releases. Here are a few new ones to keep an eye out for.
You’d have to be living under a rock — or quarantined inside your house without Wi-Fi — to not have noticed the rise of hard seltzers, such as White Claw. A number of breweries have introduced versions, including 21st Amendment Brewery, whose SOMA Hard Seltzer is named for the South of Market location of its original San Francisco brewpub. The SOMA seltzers are available in four flavors, including watermelon (of course), guava and passion fruit, mango and black cherry. Light and refreshing, they should be perfect for warm weather.
Last fall, Napa and San Diego’s Stone Brewing released Stone Buenaveza Salt & Lime Lager, their version of a Mexican lager. It was available for only a limited time, but proved popular enough that they’re making it a permanent year-round offering in both cans and bottles. And they’ve created a Stone Michelada Mix ($10, shop.stonebrewing.com) to go with it.
Stone is also launching an IPA guest artist series, with new artwork for their Stone IPA cans. I don’t usually care much about new packaging, but they’ve hired some amazing artists and at least six new designs have been randomly put into their six-, 12- and 24-packs, with more coming later this year.
This may be high summer, but pumpkin beer season is just around the corner. Anderson Valley Brewing’s Fall Hornin’ Pumpkin Ale will be off the vine and into a can by mid-August, probably by the time you’re reading this. Fall Hornin’ has aromas and flavors of cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin and sweet caramel. It’s certainly a great way to usher in autumn.
And speaking of unusual flavors … turns out there’s a National Mustard Day. (It’s Aug. 1, if you want to mark your calendar for next year.) So Oskar Blues Brewery partnered with French’s Mustard to create French’s Mustard Beer.
It’s a wheat beer that’s brewed with mustard (probably not too much) and also, we’re told, hints of key lime, lemon, tangerine and passion fruit designed to match the zesty flavors of the ballpark stuff.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.