S.F. Pub Crawl 98

The pub crawl, originally postponed in February, was finally set to go in April. We had a good turnout and hit most of the new places in San Francisco. Bryan and I had to duck out early, but here’s a sampling of what we tried.

Magnolia
on upper Haight Street

This is a very nice little pub, with a nice bar, some cozy booths, and tables by the windows to watch the characters on Haight. They had about ten beers on tap, which included three guest beers, and they had three cask-conditioned beers. We got a tour of the brewery in the basement, which included the "cellar" where the cask beers are kept. The room is kept about 50F, and the beers are served from firkins. No finings are used, but the firkins are tapped with a porous spile, so air gets in as the beer is pulled from a hand pump. The beer only lasts three or four days, so the air doesn’t have a chance to really harm the beer.

Prescription Pale Ale. Good beer, but a bit cloudy. A medium amber color, and fairly bitter. Light carbonation, medium body. Pretty dry.

Ruby Mild. Deep brown color, with a malty aroma and alcohol. It was light bodied and dry as well, but it had a grainy edge and a slight alcohol flavor that didn’t quite work.

Coast Range Strong Ale. (cask conditioned). One of the guest beers, this was an amber ale that was on the sweet side. It had a malty and alcoholic nose, and definitely had a kick. Some hop flavor and bitterness was evident as well—an enjoyable beer.

Bitter. Reminiscent of the style 20 years ago—bitter side of style. Served off the cask, this amber beer had decent carbonation, a med-light body, and was easy to drink.

Porter (cask). The head on this beer had very large bubbles that quickly faded. At first I thought it was a Coke. Dark malt aroma was evident. The body was medium light, and the flavor was dry, roasty and bitter. The manager recommended this, but I wouldn’t.

Stout (on nitrogen). The bartender recommended this beer and gave us a taste. Nice roasty aroma with assertive roast flavor and bitterness. A med-full body, though, supports the flavors nicely.

Golden Gate Park Brewery
on 9^th and Irving.

Recently opened brewery near the east end of the park and UCSF. Kind of industrial look, this place is deep and skinny. The brewery is on the second floor behind a glass wall for all to see. They only had three beers available at the time.

Frambrosia. Kim had this raspberry ale, and it was a pale beer, cloudy, with just a hint of a pink hue. Kim thought the raspberry flavor was some kind of extract, although not the worst raspberry flavor she’d tried. A light beer all around.

Cream Ale. Pale, slightly cloudy beer. Light bodied, lightly hopped, but with a bitter edge. Won’t get this again.

Red Ale. A pretty decent representative of these "red ales" that brewpubs seem to love so much. The presentation was a nice clear amber beer with a good white head. Balance was on the bitter side. We had a bowl of olives, and this beer went well with them.

After the club left the Golden Gate Brewery, we split up and some took off to go to work, others wanted to detour to Thirsty Bear directly. Cory and I decided to take the N to the beach and see if the Beach Chalet had improved since the last time I was there.

Beach Chalet
by M. Wood

The Beach Chalet is located at the end of Golden Gate Park near the Windmill (the working one). We used our transfer from the bus ride to the Haight to take the N street car to the end of the line. The walk from there to the Chalet took about 10 minutes or so.

The weather out in this area of SF makes you remember that old phrase by Mark Twain... "The coldest winter I ever spent is the summer I spent in San Francisco" or something like that. Most of the tourist are expecting bikini clad woman like on bay watch and you can instantly tell who they are since they are not dressed for the occasion.

The first floor of the Beach Chalet is a mini museum dedicated to the park and the tourist attraction around. They have a scale model of the park as well as old flyers and posters of some of the attractions that have visited there. Included in the collection is some old 49'er stuff from when they played in Kezar Stadium and pictures of the Cliff House up the street.

On the second floor is the main restaraunt and brewery. The place is split in half with the restaraunt on one half and the bar on the other. Atmosphere is mostly made up of tourist and was relatively busy with a 40 minute wait at 4:30pm.

My overall impressions where that the food was ok but a little pricy with pretty small portions for what it was. The beers were clean but uninspiring. Worth a visit but not necesaarily worth the return.

Click to see the slideshow--->