Last night was a Toronado night, as usual. When we got there at 7:15, I immediately noticed that the Aventinus Doppel-Weisen-Bock was finally on tap. Two Aventinus (would that be Aventinii?) were immediately poured by Steve, who was filling in for Jennifer’s Saturday 4-9 shift.

It’s good that we ordered these Aventinii quickly, because about 15 minutes after we got them, the Crown Royal shroud was placed over the tap handle, marking that they were out of Aventinus. So, I started to look at the tap list to see what else was new. The Lagunitas Maximus, an extremely hoppy Pale Ale was on tap, as was the Nick Wit from the 20 Tank Brewpub in San Francisco. In addition, the bar has started putting the winter beers on tap. Currently, they have the Full Sail Wassail, the Anderson Valley Winter Solstice, the Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale, the

Deschutes Jubelale and the Fuller’s Olde Winter Ale from England. This would be great, if I happened to like winter beers. However, since I don’t like winter beers, all this represented was 5 taps that will be filled with beers that I don’t want to drink. Ever.

Anyway, we were still working on our first Aventinii (Aventinuses?) when Ian came in a few minutes before 9pm. Ian asked how we liked the beer, and we emphatically announced our love of this beer, but also exclaimed our sadness that they had just blown the keg and Steve said that they were all out. Ian then informed us that there were two more kegs in the back and that he would put another one up as soon as he could. The keg came on just as we finished our first half liters. Before the night was over, I would drink a liter and a half of Aventinus, and Janet would finish a liter.

Saturday nights at the Toronado have been unbearable the last few weeks, and last night was no exception. Every idiot yuppie came out of the woodwork and decided to come out to the Toronado for a beer. There were a ton of annoying incidences that I could regale you with, but I will focus on the two most annoying moments of the night.

10:15pm… A jock walks into the bar and asks Johnny for a “Sierra Nevada.” For those of you who aren’t beer drinkers, Sierra Nevada is a brewery that produces a relatively famous, yet extremely bland, Pale Ale. Tons of people come in and ask for a “Sierra Nevada” really meaning that they want the “Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.” We all know that’s what they are looking for, and usually the bartenders will be nice about it and advise them that they don’t carry Sierra Nevada Pale ale, but that they should try one of the other pale ales.

But this unfortunate schlub was the fifth person to ask for a “Sierra Nevada” and he got the Pauly answer: “We have the Celebration, and the Harvest Sierra Nevada. Which one?” This usually is followed by the retort “The one I always get in the bottle” which gets Pauly to say “We don’t have that” as he turns to serve another person. Tonight, Johnny gave the schlub the Pauly Sierra Speech. In commemoration of Johnny coming over to the dark side, I wrote a sign in black ink on a napkin: Sierra Nevada is a BRAND not a BEER.

11:45pm… Todd, the daytime bouncer and occasional bartender was sitting in seat #1, and Janet and I were in seats 2 and 3. He got up to get a smoke, and this little stoner yuppie skater duuuuuuuuude comes in to his slot to place his order. Duuuuude then flags down Ian and asks “What do you recommend in a beer?” Now, I was working on my third Aventinus and was feeling no pain… and this guy just touched a raw nerve. I immediately sprang to life, bellowing “There are 46 fucking taps representing a myriad of different styles. If you can’t give him a name, a style or a brand, he can’t help you.” Scared little Mister Duuuuude then asks Ian in a timid, almost cracking voice “What goes well with a sausage?”

So, Ian pours him an Aventinus (which goes very well with sausage), Duuuuude pays and moves out of Todd’s spot, Todd sits down again, and then Duuuuude walks out… beer in hand. Ian then gives me this did he just leave look, and I turn to Todd and say “Hey, that asshole just walked out with an open container.”

You see, a bar can be fined if a patron brings an open container out of the bar. That’s why in a big sign at Rosamunde (the sausage shop) says that you can bring unopened bottled beer in from the Toronado. That’s also why a big sign at the door of the Toronado says NO GLASSWARE ALLOWED OUTSIDE.

Fast forward 1 minute. Todd is dragging Duuuuude in, explaining the laws about open containers in California, and telling him that he could bring the sausage in to the bar. Duuuuude then asks Todd to watch his beer, and then goes out, gets his sausage, grabs his beer and sits somewhere else.

Janet and I are now considering that we just get to the Toronado at midnight when the crowd starts to thin and then stay till they kick us out. We’ll probably be much happier if we do that.

But, in better news, we got tickets to the Belgian Beer Festival on December 13. Over an eight hour guided tasting, we’ll be going through 30+ Belgian beers and a full 5 course meal. Only three weeks away… I can hardly wait!

Last night had a really weird and annoying vibe — even the bartenders made more than a few comments about just how pissed the majority of the crowd at the Toronado was making them. There were hordes of yuppies there last night, a lot more so than usual. They were doing those typical Things Which Drive Me Up A Wall, like the guy who squeezed himself into the nonexistent space at the bar between me and the person next to me, then leaned all over me while nauseatingly rubbing his shiny-blonde-haired girlfriend’s back. It wasn’t a massage-type backrub, either, but that up-and-down-then-circular nonstop I Want To Get Laid Tonight kind of backrub, but seeing that he had some weird, three-inch wide growths of facial hair that couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be a beard or a pair of sideburns, I don’t think that it looked too promising. Then there was that guy who ordered a beer and conducted the whole ordering, paying and reaching transaction right in between Avery and me, who were seated fairly close to one another and who just so happened to be engaged in conversation at that point. If searching out the smallest, most crowded, non-space at the bar to order from wasn’t bad enough, I guess that he decided he no longer needed his coaster, because he then reached in between us (again) and tossed it right on top of all of our money and assorted other stuff that we had sitting there.

Even though the bartenders don’t have too much time to chat when the bar is really busy, you learn to recognize when they’re just getting fed up with crowds of people asking the same, often stupid questions over and over and over again. When Johnny came over to take an order from one girl who happened to be standing next to me, she pointed to a liter stein full of beer that was sitting at the end of the bar (the owner had gone to the restroom) and said that she wanted “that.” Johnny replied <insert mild annoyance pause here> “How do you know just by looking at that beer, that that’s the one you want?” “I just know.” said the girl, snottily. Johnny pauses <insert pissed as hell pause here>, gets her a beer, brings it over and says, “I just made an assumption of which beer was in that glass, since I didn’t serve it to him.” That girl was probably related to the one who wanted a certain beer because it had a cool picture of a chicken on the tap handle. Let’s go over this one more time: Right reason to Order a Certain Beer: Because it tastes good. Wrong reason: Because it’s lovely shade of yellow matches your new blouse.

This afternoon, we were invited to visit Speakeasy Brewery by Forest Gray, the president of Speakeasy. So Janet, Carlos and I decided to avail ourselves of the opportunity.

Carlos and I made it to the Potrero Hill location at 4:15pm, and were greeted by Forest himself. Forest showed us around the brewery, giving us the grand tour, and after the tour, he decided to let us wet our whistles with some fresh Speakeasy beer. Carlos decided to grab a Satchmo Stout, one of the great California Stout Beers. I had my first of many Untouchable Marzens, and Forest poured himself a Prohibition Ale. We drank and talked and drank some more. In the process, I ended up having a second taste of the White Lightning.

If you don’t remember, I really panned the White Lightning in a previous post. I found it to be undrinkable. However, after my second tasting tonight, I found it to be a much more interesting beer than before. Granted, I still don’t love the beer… it is too sour to support the light fruity tones that the beer provides, but I would certainly drink it in place of a Hoegaarden White. Even if I don’t rank it in my top 10 beers, after talking to Forest, I certainly respect what they were trying to do with it: create an American lactic-fermented beer. In this case, they did a better job than Elysian Brewing and Celis ever did. For me, it’s a beer to contemplate, but not to fully enjoy. Carlos disagreed, finding it a pleasantly sour change from the normal Belgian White beer.

At 5:30, Janet arrived at the brewery and had a White Lightning. Unlike me, she really enjoyed the beer, finding it a nice change from the typical witbeer. She then moved onto a Untouchable Lager. By that time, I was onto the Prohibition Ale.

We stayed at the brewery until 6:30ish, talking about geeky stuff (computers) and brewing stuff. Forest then offered us a ride back to my place… the only condition was that we would have to pick up his wife on his way back to the city. Though I don’t remember her name, we all had an enjoyable time talking about beer, politics and life in San Francisco.

When the three of us got back to our place, we noted how Forest has the best job in the world… he gets to brew sell and drink great beer… certainly the best beer being brewed in San Francisco, if not the whole Bay Area. Now if they’ll only produce a tequila or rye whiskey, I’ll never have to pander to the ego that resides at Anchor Brewing Company.

[Avery] 11/15/98

In all of the time that we’ve been writing about the Toronado, I don’t think that I have ever described the actual layout of the bar. Here it is:

The most prized seat is the stool on the right-hand side of the short leg of the bar. That’s seat #1. If you count clockwise, seats 1-4 are usually where the locals (and Janet and I) sit. The tables on the side seat 4 people each, and the back room seats about 14 people. In total, the bar can hold about 65 people comfortably.

When we got to the Toronado last night at 9:30pm, we were able to grab seats 3 and 4. A regular was in seat 2, and there was someone new in seat 1. As the night went on, the woman in seat 1 left, but kept her jacket on her seat. We all assumed that she was just heading out for a smoke. She didn’t come back for over an hour. I mean, come on… she was just hogging the most valuable seat in the bar. Every few seconds someone would come by the seat and try to sit down there, just to see the jacket there. The three of us (the person on seat 2, Janet and I) would just shrug.

This was rude, but not the rudest thing we observed last night.

At 10pm, a group of obnoxious beer geeks came into the bar after a tasting at Stern Grove. They crammed their seven portly bodies into table number two (table #1 is closest to the door), making it impossible to get by them in order to go to the bathrooms. Anyway, the geeks would talk to the bartenders Ian and Johnny for 5 minutes about the complexities of all of the beers on the menu before ordering anything, buy $9.75 worth of beer with 7 glasses, and then only tip $0.25 for the order. Pardon me, but that is worth at least a dollar or two in my book. Throughout the night, I noticed one of the geeks was pulling out a glass flask of whisky and taking a pull off of the bottle. That’s a really bad move. You see, in San Francisco, if a bar without a hard liquor license is caught with hard liquor on the premises, their license can be revoked. They were warned, and left a few minutes later.

However, these rude individuals didn’t keep us from enjoying the night. After looking on the board as I tried to select my first beer, I stumbled across the Lagunitas Solstice Beer. So, I ordered one up from Ian. Ian informed me that it was the same beer as the Lagunator, which also on tap. So, he poured me a pint of Lagunator, and a taster of the Solstice Beer… and I couldn’t tell the difference. So, I took a big sip of the Lagunator, and poured the rest of the Solstice Beer into the pint of the

Lagunator. It still tasted the same.

I went through about five beers last night, including an Anchor Small Beer, which I hadn’t had for ages, an Untouchable Lager, the Lagunator/Lagunitas Solstice Beer, and a few other pints of beer. Aside from the Small Beer, I didn’t have anything that I hadn’t had in the last few weeks.

Janet started off with a Brains Dylan Thomas, which was better than the first time we had it. For her second beer, she asked for a Roggen (Thurn and Taxis’ rye beer)… but unfortunately, they were out. Then, she asked for a bottle of Aventinus, and they were out as well. Actually, they have two kegs of Aventinus, but they aren’t putting it on tap until they run out of Celebrator. So, she had another Dylan Thomas… and then finished the night off with a Hoegaarden.

All in all, it was a fun night, and I really think that the bartenders appreciated that we were there. We were there until 2:15, before dragging ourselves home.

There aren’t any beer nights scheduled for this week, so expect an update next Sunday.

[Janet] 11/15/98

Last night I noticed that Tad (the bouncer) interestingly ties his stool to the wall with red rock-climbing webbing to assure that he will have a seat from which to bounce people. At one point three bridge-and-tunnel-looking people walked in and left the door wide open behind them. “Raised in a barn.” Avery said to Tad. “Moo.” Tad responded.

[Avery] 11/12/98

NO Brains Night!

Tonight was the Brains Dylan Thomas Smooth Ale release night at the Toronado, so Janet and I decided to stop in for a pint of beer. The Dylan Thomas is not one of my favorite beers, but I attend these nights for the free glass and to talk to the other regulars who always come out for these things.

The night started for me at 5pm. The bar was relatively empty, so I sat down in front of the glowing head of Dylan Thomas (a tacky promotion piece) and ordered up a

Lagunator. Jeff, from Rosamunde, came in and sat down next to me. We talked for a while about the shop, and he let me know that he is going to start making and selling soup for the cold winter months.

Janet got in at 5:45 and ordered up a Guinness.

At six, the people from the Brains distributorship showed up… sans the Dylan Thomas glasses. So, I nursed my Lagunator, hoping that the correct glasses would come in. At 6:15, the friend of the distributor came in with some generic Brains glasses (which we already have two of). So, I ordered up a Dylan Thomas figuring that the proper glasses were coming, and that Pauly would exchange the Brains glass for a Dylan glass.

6:30, I ask Pauly what’s up with the glasses. He tells me that these idiots were sending out the friend to get the right glasses. You see, these idiots were the same asses who held the Full Sail night 4 months ago… the infamous night where they ran up a 300 dollar tab and then left without paying. Yeah… those assholes.

6:45, I was nursing the Dylan Thomas when the distributors came in with more glasses… Brains glasses. I ask the distributor dude when the right glasses are going to arrive. Dude informs me that he forgot to order them, but he’ll leave extra Brains glasses for the bar.

6:46, Beer finished.

6:47, We leave.