The bragging rights of being named best home brewer in Sonoma County is an incentive, but the grand prize can be considered a home brewer’s dream come true. The winner of the competition will have an opportunity to brew his or her recipe at 101 North Brewing Company, alongside 101 North’s brewing team.

The deadline to enter as a home brewer is April 18th. Early registration is highly encouraged since each home brewer will only be allowed one entry and the number of contestants will be limited to sixty. For more information about the Sonoma County Home Brewers Competition, to register, or to purchase tickets click HERE.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

Locals will tell you that your best bet for a shorter wait is to show up late in the evening or to swing by on Super Bowl Sunday, while the masses gather around their televisions for Super Bowl parties. Keep in mind that there is a daily allocation set, so while getting in line late in the day makes for a shorter wait it may also mean that you risk the day’s allocation being completely depleted.

There are a handful of local establishments that receive a keg of ‘The Younger’ and figuring out who those locations are and when they will be tapping their keg is another way to avoid the long lines. Best advice I can give you on figuring that out is to check in with the Sonoma County locations that received a keg last year. Ask the geekiest of beer geek friends you may have. Chances are that he or she will have the answer or be able to get it for you. For more information and some helpful tips regarding the Pliny the Younger release, click here.

Peter Lopez Jr.

There will be over 700 events happening during SF Beer Week. BeerCraft in Rohnert Park, Taps in Petaluma, The Whole Foods Taproom at Coddingtown in Santa Rosa and a number of other local taprooms and breweries will be hosting events. Click here for a schedule of events to keep up with all the options.

Those of you looking to travel into San Francisco for events may want to consider the following:
Thirsty Bear Organic Brewery at 661 Howard St. will host ‘Cask & Queso, Triple Fermented’ on Friday, January 29th between 6pm and 9pm.The $50 price of admission includes unlimited beer, cheese and bread tastings plus you get to take home a Thirsty Bear glass. Cowgirl creamery, Thirsty Bear and the SF Baking Institute team up to provide the cask conditioned ales, bread and artisan cheese. Attendees will have the option to taste from 17 special release ales brewed by 16 Bay Area brewers. To purchase tickets for this event click here.

Almanac & Friends Sourfest will take place at MaSo at the Park Central Hotel on Thursday, January 28th between 7pm and 11pm. Over 3o American wild ales from Almanac, The Rare Barrel, Sante Adairius, Jester King, Shady Oak Barrelhouse and Cascade, amongst others will be on tap. Shmaltz Brewing Company’s Funky Jewbelation will debut at the Opening Gala and will be poured at this event as well. Tickets will be available at the door, while supplies last, for $30 and include a tasting glass and 6 drink tickets. Additional drink tickets will be available for purchase.

The RateBeer Best Awards & Beer Festival will take place on the last two days of SF Beer Week in Santa Rosa. The awards banquet will be on Saturday, January 30th and will take place at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel and Spa in downtown Santa Rosa. Over forty of the most prestigious breweries in the world will make their way to Santa Rosa to find out if they are winners of the RateBeer Best awards. The following day the beer festival will take place at a private hangar at the Sonoma County Airport. For more details or to purchase tickets click here.

It’s going to be a busy nine days. Make sure to designate a driver or use public transportation.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

The Awards banquet will be held at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel and Spa in Downtown Santa Rosa, on the 30th. Owners and brewers from over forty of the most prestigious breweries will be traveling from places as far as China to attend. This will be a VIP event limited to five hundred attendees.

The following day the RateBeer Best festivities move to a private hangar, at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport. Tucker is expecting 2,000 attendees at this beer festival, which will welcome many of the award winning breweries to pour their beer in California, for the first time. Click on the image below for a video blog interview with Joseph Tucker. For more details about the event or to purchase tickets click here.

Click on the image above for interview with Joseph Tucker, RateBeer Executive Director.

The other debut 101 North Brewing Company is excited about is the opening of a taproom at the current brewery located at 1304 Scott St. in Petaluma. John Lilienthal, Regional Sales Manager, told me he expects the taproom to be open in early February. “It’s all happening! Taproom progress in motion. 2016 is going to be a good year,” was posted on 101 North’s official Facebook page on January 4th.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

The story has been passed down that Jesus attended a wedding that took place at Cana in Galilee with his mother and disciples. It is said that Jesus converted six stone jars full of water into wine after all the wine was gone.
Many people debate that the water was turned into non-alcoholic wine, or grape juice. There are some that will debate another theory. Some say that beer was more commonly drunk by commoners in those times while wine was reserved for the elite. Two things should be noted. First, Jesus was known to associate among those considered commoners on a daily basis. Secondly, the bible has been translated and rewritten a number of times and one translation of the beverage transformed from water is “strong drink”.

During those times, in that part of the world, water was drawn from a well. It was thought of as unsafe to drink due to bacteria and was usually mixed with alcoholic beverages, which would serve to sterilize the water. If drinking watered down beer and wine was common, one might say that a non-watered down beer would be considered a “strong drink”. This thought may be a stretch on my part, but I would like to think that Jesus would enjoy a beer with a commoner like me just as likely as he would have wine with the elite.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

Attendees of this private tasting will receive a flight of all five barrelworks beers on tap and a souvenir Firestone Walker snifter. Tickets may be purchased for $33 in advance by clicking here or for $44 if available the day of the event. The five beers being poured are Sucaba, Helldorado, Sour Opal, Firestone’s Anniversary Ale and Unfiltered DBA. For more information, directions to the event or questions see the Rincon Valley Taproom website by clicking here.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

 As stated in The Lagunitas Brewing Company website, “Lagunitas Brewing Company takes pride in its support of the Community and is glad to donate beer to help with fundraising efforts of nonprofit organizations and schools both locally and across the country.” The amount of fundraisers and non-profit organizations Lagunitas Brewing Company donates to is enormous. They donate more beer in a year than some breweries produce in that same amount of time. 

Russian River Brewing Company is another brewery that prides themselves on giving back to the local community. Their month long fundraising effort for the fight against breast cancer in October resulted in a check for the amount of $141,305.04 being presented to Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation.

The Valley Fire Fundraiser, currently underway, is Bear Republic’s way of raising money for victims of the Valley Fire disaster. Bear Republic Brewing Company will be donating all restaurant/pub profits every Tuesday from November 3rd-December 8th. The Norgrove family, who owns Bear Republic, will then match those funds raised. Healdsburg Rotary Noontime Club will also match the funds, and customers are encouraged to add contributions.

Many of the smaller breweries give away their time and beer to non-profit organizations on a regular basis, and these contributions go a long way. Thank you all and Happy Thanksgiving.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

Many Sonoma County breweries will be in attendance. Faction Brewing Company will be releasing the NorCal Beer Geeks IPA at the event for a second straight year and Founders Brewing Company, recently featured in a Press Democrat article, will be pouring. I believe this to be the first time they pour at a festival in Sonoma County.

General admission tickets are available on-line and include entry into the event, a souvenir tasting glass, unlimited beer samples, one raffle ticket entry, and two bite size food samples provided by Remy’s Bar & Grill. Additional food will be provided for a fee. The cost of that ticket is $45 plus Eventbrite fees.

VIP tickets will give attendees entry one hour earlier, at 12:30pm and a tasting glass lanyard. On-line VIP tickets are sold out, but all three Oliver’s Market locations still have some available as of this morning. The VIP ticket is being offered for $48 at Oliver’s Market. Event proceeds will be donated to Sonoma County Vet Connect, a Veterans helping Veterans organization. Vet Connect will be selling additional raffle tickets at the event. The grand prize being raffled off will be a pair of VIP tickets to the upcoming RateBeer Best Awards & Festival.

The cold and rainy season is around the corner and homeless and at-risk Veterans will benefit from the coat drive currently underway. Anyone that purchases a ticket and donates a lightly used coat or a tarp by Veterans Day (November 11th) will receive a free beer festival t-shirt in exchange. The official coat drive drop-off location is Remy’s Bar & Grill, located at 130 Stony Point Rd. in Santa Rosa. Provide your name, contact information and shirt size when dropping off at Remy’s and you can pick up your beer festival t-shirt at a booth the day of the festival. You will need a ticket to get in and receive your shirt. See website for more details by clicking here.

-Peter Lopez Jr.

Those that celebrate Dia de los Muertos would tell you that the dead would want us to replace mourning and sadness, with festivals and celebrations. Families typically will celebrate the memory of a deceased loved one with food, drink, parties and activities that he or she enjoyed in life.

Every year, for Dia de los Muertos, the dead are thought to be awakened from their eternal sleep to share in the celebrations. As I celebrate my loved ones that are no longer with us, I sometimes wonder what other deceased may think when their spirit is awakened to see that their name and stamp on the craft beer industry, is celebrated every day.

I wonder what Gaius Plinius Secundus, also known as Pliny the Elder, would think about the craze created by the beer named after him. People travel from near and afar to taste the beer that Russian River Brewing Company brews in Santa Rosa. Almost 2,000 years after his death, the name Pliny lives on stronger than ever.

Gaius’s nephew/adopted son, named Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus is better known as Pliny the Younger. What would the younger Gaius think when being told that people wait the better part of a day, sometimes in the cold and rain, just to be able to taste the beer named in his honor?

Happy Dia de los Muertos to you and your loved ones. Let’s never forget and honor those that have passed before us.

-Peter Lopez Jr.