The Thirsty Hopster

The blogs and newstreams are buzzing with yesterday’s announcement that Magic Hat will buy Pyramid. 

I’m not going to post the full press release here, and oddly enough it is not posted on the Pyramid site yet, even under the ‘Investor Info’ or ‘Company News: hot off the presses!” sections.  Hmmm…If this isn’t investor info or news hot off the presses, what is?

This means linking to Magic Hat’s regrettable website (see link above, it won’t even let me link to the press release itself, just go to ‘about us’, ‘in the press’, and ‘press releases’ once there).  Much as I like their beer and their kooky creepy aesthetic, their website annoys me like none other.  If I were in charge, first order of business in their now bi-coastal company would be hiring a new web-designer.

For those unfamiliar with these brands, this is a big deal for the craft beer world, considering that Pyramid is the 5^th largest American craft brewery, a Northwest brewery whose signature is wheat beers.  Magic Hat is the 12^th largest craft brewery in the country, with a decidedly experimental streak.  Why then, you ask, is Magic Hat buying Pyramid and not the other way around? Well, Pyramid has been losing money for the last five years and Magic Hat has been growing. 

It’s also worth noting that Martin Kelly, the CEO of Magic Hat, used to be the CEO of Pyramid.  So, he clearly understands the company and what he’s buying. 

So, enough with the facts, the real question is what does this mean? The short answer: I don’t know yet. 

Availability: No news yet on which beers will be available in which geographies, but the rumor, or at least the proposed deal rationale, is both beers on both coasts.  Yay!  If so, I get my Magic Hat back and now people will know what my favorite t-shirt is all about. 

Recipes:Will they change them?  I’d guess not, but they might add to them.  How cool would it be to see the Magic Hat twist on wheat beers?  Imagine if every box of 12 Pyramid beers came with three beers from a mystery batch!  Huckleberry vanilla weizen?  Honey wit beer? Nutmeg dunkel weiss?  They might not all be great, but it would be awesome to try them. 

My gut reaction: I was anxious at first, but believe it will work out positively for beer drinkers.  I was anxious because Pyramid has always struck me as a very safe, corporate beer company and I wondered what would happen to Magic Hat’s creativity and flair.  It might not be fair to paint this impression since Magic Hat’s Martin Kelly used to work at Coca-Cola and Miller and the whole concept of growth by acquisition smacks of corporatism.  But hey, times are tough, ingredient prices are up, the market’s crowded, I can see why people are starting to feel like it is an eat or be eaten world out there right now.  Given that it is Magic Hat doing the buying, and I’ve always liked what they’ve done with their beers, I’m choosing to hope for the best: (A) Magic Hat gets distributed on the west coast and (B) Magic Hat lends a little pizazz to Pyramid’s brews.

Normally I’d bemoan the fact that this new site has no coverage of SF, but BeerMenus already has so much hype going for it that I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before they make it out here.

It’s a Google Maps mash-up that allows you to search within NYC for:

• A listing of bars that carry a particular beer
• A list of beers currently being carried by a particular bar
• A list of bars in a particular neighborhood
• A list of upcoming beer events

I was a bit skeptical about this new tool at first because wouldn’t it just be better as an application within the BeerAdvocate site?  Then it could be linked in to their established network, and all of their ratings.  The best example of the redundancy this creates is the Beer Events portion of the Beer Menus site, which is completely redundant to BeerAdvocate’s beer calendar, which has the added functionality of allowing you to RSVP to an event to let your BeerAdvocate friends know you’re coming.

However, I was quickly won over by a few features:

• The mapping functionality is key.  While BeerAdvocate lets you narrow your search by zip code or city, etc., there is no map mash-up, which means that when I’m traveling and want to find a good beer bar I can look up likely candidates on Beer Advocate but have to switch back and forth between their site and Google Maps to figure out which will be easiest for me to get to.
• They have price information.  I’m not sure you can get this information anywhere else, including at many of bars home pages.  While I’m sure a lot of bar owners (especially those in higher end places who charge extra to cover their fixed costs of high-rent locations and a snazzily designed sites) are cringing, this is obviously a great benefit to consumers.  Now we’re armed with information about what beers cost at different places and can decide for ourselves whether a higher priced bar is worth the premium.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this also helps out the brewers and/or distributors.  If they can see what retailers are charging and that the market might bear a higher price than they expected, they might be able to charge a little bit more themselves.  So, all around bad news for bar owners, I guess, unless all this extra information in the hands of consumers means more patrons.
• I prefer the Beer Menus style and layout to Beer Advocate.  This may change as BeerMenus grows and necessarily becomes more complex, but right now it has a very clean user-friendly layout.  BeerAdvocate seems a more cluttered to me, probably due to the side bars, ads, and black background for all but the center pane. 

So, I’ll definitely still use BeerAdvocate for its massive database of beer reviews and probably for beer events as well.  I don’t think Beer Menu’s maps offers much of an advantage over BA’s beer calendar. 

However, this might spell the beginning of the end of BA’s Beer Fly and Beer Menus for me.  I’ll use both for now since each provides something the other doesn’t (BA has reviews, BM has maps, prices, and lists of beers on tap now).  But, if either one can integrate the features of the other, I’ll commit to that one. 

I’m always looking for new restaurants to add to my list of ‘places with great beer in San Francisco’.  And though I’m a lapsed vegetarian, I never thought I’d be adding a vegan place to the list.  Vegan food is half the reason for my lapse: I wasn’t ready to make that commitment yet, but in college a lot of the food for us herbivores was vegan food that they figured the vegetarians could also eat.  I missed my eggs and cheese in this dining hall-provided food and found myself subsisting on self-made grilled cheeses several nights a week.  It was only halfway through freshman year when I decided enough was enough.  

So… though I knew I wanted to try Millennium after hearing about it from Erica & Eric at the Five Guys and a Barrel dinner, I was also approaching it with a bit of trepidation. 

First sign I had no reason to worry: the awesome drinks list.  I’ll skip a discussion of the wine since I didn’t even look at it and don’t know much about it, but both the beer and cocktails were some of the best lists I’ve seen. 

Though there are no beers on draft, but they have 15 - 20 bottles, all craft-brews, including some real stand-outs.  A couple points about the beer list:

• They have 4 or 5 larger size bottles for sharing, which is nice because some of these beers aren’t available in 12 oz sizes and a restaurant is the perfect place to try these, since bars can be too hectic for sharing sometimes. 
• They definitely seem to feature local beers as much as possible since 11 of the 17 beers when I was there were Northern California beers from North Coast, Butte Creek, Mad River, Russian River, Bear Republic, Bison, and Eel River Brewing Companies.
• They also seem to make an effort to feature organic beers.  There aren’t a whole mess of these out there yet, but they had the Pinkus Hefeweizen, the North Coast Cru D’or Belgian, and the Eel River Porter.
• They had some really unique and hard to find beers.  I’m sure it won’t last long because it will get drunk up, but while I was there they had Russian River Supplication and a buckwheat ale from Brasserie Silenrieux in Belgium. I haven’t even heard of a buckwheat ale before, aside from Rogue’s soba beers.  And then, you can’t go wrong with an Ommegang Three Philosophers.

I got the Pranqster, a Belgian-style strong pale ale from North Coast.  I’ve had this beer before and knew I wanted something Belgian-style (what can I say, I’m on a kick, this happens sometimes), and not too alcoholic or malty (this wasn’t a quadrupel night, I had beer work left to do that evening…ah, when administering your hobby starts getting in the way of participating in your hobby, that’s when you know you hobby needs to be your job).  I love the spices and esters on this one and haven’t had it in a while. 

I didn’t order a cocktail, but this was one place where I wouldn’t even have been disappointed if there had been no beer list.  They had some really cool drinks, such as:

• Prosecco with elderflower syrup, garnished with an edible flowers
• House-infused kumquat-star anise gin, lemon and lime juices, and agave, served up
• Maker’s Mark bourbon with sweet vermouth, chai spiced tea, ginger-chamomile syrup, and bitters, served up

Ok, but I know you’re all thinking, “Yeah, yeah, but I could have these drinks at a non-vegan restaurant…what did you eat?” Well, I’m not really sure, but I know I liked it.

We were lucky in that we got to try a lot of stuff because Erica sent out a couple extra plates (thank you!).   I think the best part for us non-vegans was that many of the plates seemed to just happen to be vegan, and could hold their own on other upscale restaurants’ menus.

I’ve only just come around to liking olives relatively recently, so I picked most of the green olives out of the marinated olives plate, leaving the darker ones behind.  I guess this makes me an olive racist.  Then there was also a black bean torte (”whole wheat tortilla, caramelized plantains, smoky black bean puree, pumpkin-habanero salsa verde, cashew sour cream, strawberry-jicama salsa”) that was sweet and not too spicy.  I thought it was going to be my favorite until we got a trio of things that included who knows what all, but my favorite on that plate was the pickled radishes.  It was much simpler than black bean tortes, but I am a sucker for pickled vegetables, and they hold a special place in my heart for being a traditional German beer accompaniment.

The one problem with my write-up here is that not all the dishes we ate are available online for me to reference and so many of the ingredients were new or exotic to me that I’m not even sure I knew what they were I was eating then, much less able to remember it correctly now.  We joked as we sat down we probably understood maybe every other word on the entrees page.  I picked edamame cakes that came with a couple of sauces (tangy and creamy?).  It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, comparable to a crab cake. Most of all, everything was filling in addition to tasty and interesting.  This was something I had worried about quite a bit, but by the end I couldn’t even finish my entrée, much less fit dessert.  

I will definitely come back.  I hope one time I have a vegetarian or vegan friend with me because they’ll be in paradise.  But even if you’re a committed omnivore, as I am and my two friends that night are, the food is exciting, fresh, filling, and a great complement to the impressive beer list.

My one question for the restaurant: have they looked into how the beers they serve are clarified?  I’m not sure all vegans diners know that gelatin (made from animal bones) or isinglass (made from fish bladders) are often added to beers in small amounts to reduce haze.  I’ve done a little poking around and it seems like most beers from most commercial craft brewers are vegan friendly, including that North Coast Pranqster I sipped.  I guess their initial note on the website homepage stating that all of their dishes are completely animal free should cover it, but if I were a vegan I’d have a little more reassurance if there were a note on the beverage menu as well.