Barfly’s Pale

As usual, Saturday Night was spent at the Toronado. Upon our 11pm arrival, were immediately faced with the typical crowd of people. So we decided to forgo pushing through the crowd so we could place our order and decided to just talk to Tad for a while.

A few minute later, Carmen (a long time regular) stopped in and immediately obtained two choice seats at the bar. About 15 minutes later, our typical seats opened up and we pounced on them.

Ian immediately greeted me with a barleywine called “GWB 1987″… I have no idea what it really was, but it tasted exactly like a tawny port. I then ordered a Hop Ottin IPA. Janet had a Framboise.

Five minutes later… Steve from Speakeasy Brewery comes in for a beer… and he asks if I had the IPA yet. My response: I’ve only had Prohibition (the IPA like beer that they brew) a couple hundred times… of course I have, Steve. He then informs me that this wasn’t the Prohibition on tap… it was their hundredth batch commemorative IPA. I immediately downed the Hop Ottin and started on this yet unnamed IPA.

The IPA, which I will call Barfly’s Pale, was the beer that could really win mainstream support from the Sierra Nevada / Anderson Valley IPA crowd. It was a extremely crisp, pale beer… so hoppy that you could practically chew the beer. I easily rate this to be as good of an IPA as my current favorite Pale Ale (Hop Ottin from Anderson Valley). Unfortunately, only 2.5 BBL (5 kegs) were produced… but at least all of the publicly available kegs are at the Toronado. Sometime while I was drinking the Barfly’s Pale, Janet ordered a Weinstephaner Lager (from one of the oldest breweries in Germany).

Though we only had two beers each (I don’t count the taste of the barleywine), we ended up not getting home until after 4am, about three hours later than we initially intended.

Still, it was worth staying late… not only did we get a chance to finally talk to Ian, we got the grand tour of the new shelves that he and Johnny built in the keg-storage closet.