Perry's Liquors

When it comes to beer stores in the Bay Area, there seems to be two choices. You can go to a warehouse-type store like Beverages and More, which has a decent selection of craft and imported beers but very little in the way of customer service beyond small cards with minimal descriptions. Then there are boutique stores like City Beer and Healthy Spirits, which make up for their lack of shelf and refrigerator space with thoughtful beer selections and helpful advice.

Perry’s Liquors in Livermore strives to combine the best of both worlds. Perry’s beer selection is the handiwork of the store’s manager, Harpreet Singh, who introduced the family liquor store to the world of craft and imported beers about a year ago. Singh, who fell in love with Belgian sours at first sip, understood that he needed more refrigerated space to keep the beer fresh, and a lot of it. His expanded refrigerator now covers about half the store, with a small amount of space devoted to unrefrigerated shelves. Boxes of wine and spirits cover most of the available floor space.

Singh and his family are passionate about beer, and early on they would drive down to Port Brewing Company in San Marcos, Calif. If distributors didn’t have enough beer for Singh or if he wanted special bottles, he’d go directly to the brewery. It took some six months of wooing for Singh to convince Vinnie Cilurzo that Perry’s was worthy of carrying Russian River Brewing’s signature Pliny the Elder. Now, Singh says, he has the freshest Pliny around and goes through about 10 cases of the 500 ml bottles per week. Not satisfied with the typically available selection of European and California beer, along with select East Coast microbrews like Dogfish Head that are typically found at craft beer stores, Singh is also bringing in beers that are seldom seen on the West Coast, such as Three Floyds Dreadnaught and Jinx Proof and Founders Backwoods Bastard.

Perry’s is already quite impressive and has become a destination for beer pilgrims from all over Northern California and beyond, but Singh is just getting started. He’s in the process of getting a tasting license for pouring beer in the back room of the store and as a lover of Belgian and American beer, he acknowledges that developing food pairings is likely in his future, perhaps in conjunction with an uncle’s nearby Indian restaurant.

Perry’s Liquors is an ambitious undertaking and Livermore is a long drive from much of the Bay Area. And the uninitiated might be taken aback at the sight of some of the prices. 

But for microbrew lovers, Perry’s is an oasis of beer and Singh is determined to spread the word and educate and serve new beer connoisseurs as well as those of us who already appreciate well-made brews.

With more beer drinkers taking craft brews seriously both on their own and as a complement to fine dining, it’s refreshing to see a beer store that is dedicated to providing the best and freshest craft and imported beer around.

Thirsty Bear: Firkin Tuesday

The Campaign for Real Ale, or CAMRA, was begun in England in 1971 in response to large brewers modernizing their beer by using filtered, artificially carbonated kegs in pubs. CAMRA describes real ale as “a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation.” Examples of cask-conditioned beer, served at around room temperature, are relatively rare in the Bay Area, but Thirsty Bear in San Francisco offers $3 imperial pints of cask-conditioned real beer every Tuesday. It’s worth a visit if you’re in downtown San Francisco. Thirsty Bear is currently pouring a dry-hopped cask-conditioned Golden Ale. I stopped in at the Howard Street brewpub/tapas restaurant before checking out the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Now, The Provoke Era, of photos from Japan, China and Korea. One of the photos was titled "British Food," though I'm not sure whether any of the pictured items would pair particularly well with a cask-conditioned ale. Entrance to the museum is free on the first Tuesday of the month.

Thirsty Bear Brewing Company

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Half Moon Bay Brewing Company

Half Moon Bay Brewing Company at Princeton-by-the-Sea on the San Mateo County Coast

overlooks Maverick’s, the site of an annual big wave surfing contest. The window for the contest was officially opened on Nov. 1.

Maverick’s was named after a surfing white-haired German shepherd in 1961, and dogs are still held in high regard at the brewpub. After romping in the surf of one of the canine-friendly San Mateo coast beaches, Half Moon Bay Brewing customers and their dogs can relax with an Angus beef burger ($11.50) and brew on the spacious patio, often listening to live music on the weekends.

In addition to its regular beers – Bootlegger’s Brown Ale, Harbor Lights Ale, Princeton by the Sea IPA, Maverick’s Amber Ale, Sandy Beach Blonde Hefeweizen, Pillar Point Pale Ale and porters and stouts – Half Moon Bay Brewing recently announced its Pumpkin Harvest Ale IV, an Oktoberfest and its Green Gold IPA brewed with unprocessed Warrior and Chinook hops from Washington. Although we missed the window for the Pumpkin Ale and the Oktoberfest, our disappointment was short-lived once we tasted the floral, fresh-hopped Green Gold IPA, which was a cut above Half Moon Bay Brewing’s relatively underwhelming regular beers. The hops in the 6.2 abv Green Gold ale were pronounced but well balanced by the malt, making for a delicious complement to a perfectly cooked Angus beef burger topped with bleu cheese.

The Maverick’s surfing contest has been hit or miss for the past few years, but the Green Gold IPA is a sure-fire winner.

For more on fresh-hopped beers, check out this recent article from the New York Times.

Half Moon Bay Brewing Company

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Burger Bar

The newly opened Burger Bar on the sixth floor of Macy's in Union Square, San Francisco, has one of the best selections of taps downtown. In keeping with the growing emphasis of pairing beer with food, Burger Bar's drinks book devotes 24 of its 28 pages to beers on tap or in bottles, including a Burger Blonde from Speakeasy in San Francisco made specifically for the restaurant. Acclaimed chef Hubert Keller's third Burger Bar (the others are in St. Louis and Las Vegas) is open until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and until 11 p.m. the rest of the week. Emphasis is on burgers, as the name implies, so I tried the sliders: a mini-buffalo burger with carmelized onions, an Angus beef burger with bacon, and a country natural beef mini-burger with cheese. They were all decent -- my favorite being the buffalo burger -- and paired well with my Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA. However, they weren't cheap at $12.75. Also, the ale was served in a very chilled glass, which didn't help bring out the flavor and aroma of the hops. Still, if you find yourself thirsty for a beer and hungry for a nosh in Union Square Macy's, it's not a bad stop.
Burger Bar San Francisco

The Monk's Kettle

A shrimp pot pie at Monk's Kettle with an IPA from Moonlight Brewing: Bombay by Boat.

It's a lot of fun matching good beer with interesting food at Monk's Kettle -- or is it the other way around?
Monk's Kettle makes a valiant attempt at escaping the pub fare that characterizes most beer bars. The Mission District gastropub does serve burgers/sandwiches, but they're made with lamb, salmon, turkey, pulled pork and chicken breast. Crispy, skinny fries come with chipotle ketchup, herbed aioli and curry aioli. All dishes are accompanied by a beer pairing suggestion.

Menu entrees are limited to an angus skirt steak, bone-in chicken breast and a beer and cider brined pork chop. I would like to see more dishes like the shrimp pot pie special I had. The floral bitterness of the Bombay by boat IPA from Moonlight Brewing nicely undercut the sweet creaminess of the pot pie, refreshing my palate with each bite of the perfectly cooked shrimp and vegetables and crispy crust. More offerings along this line would raise Monk's Kettle well past the ordinary.
How about some moules to go with those nice frites, or a cassoulet. Monk's Kettle's saisons, altbiers, tripels, lambics and biere de garde deserve more hearty dishes to sink their teeth into.

Monk's Kettle

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My Travels with Bake, Part Deux

Chris Baker and I met at Jupiter Brewing Company, a brewpub in downtown Berkeley that serves beers from several brewing companies. Jupiter also makes small batches of its own beer in the tank pictured here. From Jupiter, we visited several pubs and restaurants that serve good local beer. As I mentioned in my earlier post, beer is a natural with pizza and barbecue. But some restaurants, like Blakes, are taking pairings a little further. During the week, Blakes on Telegraph has “recession” specials like $1 tostadas all day on Mondays, $1 tacos on Tuesdays, and $1 sliders on Wednesdays from 9 p.m. to midnight, and happy hour from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Blakes also has music upstairs and in the basement.

Also on Telegraph, Manny’s Taproom offers a wide selection of craft beer from its 43 taps, along with food that matches well with the beer. Along with burgers, fries, onion rings, several salads, sandwiches and nachos, Manny’s offers the sort of spicy international food that is anathema to wine but sublime with craft beer. Andouille Cajun sliders, fiesta taco salad, mandarin chicken salad, Thai tofu on flatbread, fajitas and Yucatan burrito cry out for a refreshing pilsner or a robust ale. The beer garden in back is open until 9:30 Sunday through Thursday and until 10 on Fridays and Saturdays.

Two pubs in the Rockridge District in Oakland, also have a decent selection of good beer. Barclays Restaurant and Pub has 30 beers on tap every day. On tap this week were Sierra Nevada’s Triple, a Belgian tripel ale, and the Bear Republic 2009 Wet Hop Ale. As you can see from the sign, Barclays celebrated its 18th anniversary on Monday: Buy the first pint at the regular price and get the second one for 20 cents.

The selection at Ben ‘n Nick’s Bar isn’t as extensive as Barclays, but you can still find some good beers, including the inimitable Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company and Deschutes Black Butte Porter. Proprietor Chris Friend (pictured) would just as soon kick back with a PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon).








Lucky 13 is a veritable beer oasis in mostly sleepy Alameda. In addition to Pliny and several other craft beers, Lucky 13 has a good selection of Belgians on tap and in bottles. No food, though.








Things not to do at the cheese store in the parking structure on Durant in Berkeley.

Manny's Taproom

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My Travels with Bake: Berkeley/Oakland edition

On October 12, I joined beer distributor Chris Baker on his weekly rounds in Berkeley and Oakland. It was a unique opportunity to check out several nice establishments that serve good beer and meet some of the proprietors behind them.Thanks in part to savvy marketers/educators like Baker, a former brewer at Drake's Brewery in San Leandro, good craft beer has become ubiquitous in Oakland and Berkeley and is available at unlikely places, such as The Bear's Lair on the U.C. Berkeley campus, where Jeremy Lauzier, pictured here (top), helps steer new beer drinkers in a craft beer direction. Hefeweizens are by far the most popular choice in Bear's Lair, Lauzier said.
The Shattuck Hotel, across the street from the Jupiter Brewing company, also had a surprisingly good selection of craft beers, pictured with manager Gerald Murphy.

BBQ is among the many classic beer/food pairings, and lovers of beer and Q could do a lot worse than sipping a Drake's IPA with their ribs or pulled pork sandwich at Looney's Smokehouse Barbecue. Another classic pairing with beer is pizza, and one of the best is Zachary's on Telegraph, which also boasts a pretty decent selection of craft beer.

Need to work off some of that ale? Step over to the Thalassa Bar and Billiards on Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley, where Pixie is pictured explaining to Baker that cue balls that work on the tables that are rented by the hour won't work the same way on the coin-operated tables. Also pictured: Thalassa's beer board and some of their many pool tables.
Tomorrow: my beer odyssey with Chris Baker continues in Oakland and Berkeley