Wit Rabbit + Eric's Ale = Best DMV Trip Ever!

Best DMV trip ever?! Have such words ever been uttered by man or womankind?

Well, now it has. One Woman, a lover of bicycles and beer, approaching her third decade of existence, has finally come to realize that life in America is just sometimes easier with a car. Especially when a place called Los Angeles is in the future. After a night of reading the DMV handbook, and learning on youtube (yes, it's now possible) and a morning of hanging out at the DMV, the application and paper test were a success! Temporary driver's license in hand after passing the 36-question paper test the first round (with flying colors), One Woman hopped across the Panhandle to her favorite pub in the Bay Area. Magnolia Brewery lies a mere 6 blocks from the San Francisco DMV. Perfect.

And wait... $3 Tuesdays at Magnolia?? Yes please.

The special beers de jour: Magnolia's house-brewed Wit Rabbit was served in a fluted pint glass. Barely carbonated, it was flaxen in color and pleasantly chilled (click link to hear "The girl with the flaxen hair"). The suspended yeast characteristic of witbier gave it a little bit of a cloud. Instead of the floral yeast and spices like coriander and citrus zest that often overpower witbier, it's much more subtle, like spring desert flowers on the coast. Wit Rabbit gives all the yummy variations of wheat -- crisp in flavor, but still moist like freshly harvested wheat after a night in the dew. There's other starchy goodness too -- fingerling potatoes freshly dug out of the earth, and maybe some crimini mushroom whiff.

Being a festive occasion (how happy were you when you got your driver's permit?), I let Jenny the waitress coax me into this second beer. Eric's Ale is another sour, which has been a kind of beer that One Woman has been particularly fascinated by in the last couple of months. The folks at New Belgium who make it call it an American Wild Ale. It's made with the addition of peach juice during the brewing process. Fruity but neither explosively sour, nor too sweet. Apple-juice colored, it's pleasantly refreshing, and very mildly carbonated. Like the Flemish sours, it's also made by combining a sour, aged beer with a another younger, stronger alcohol ale. It's tasty on its own but it really comes through paired with some good stinkin' cheese. And what a cheese: Red Hawk from Cowgirl Creamery. Talk about funk! Triple cream, washed bright orange rind, gooey, irresistible. Paired with pickled grapes (wow? yum!), this was really the power trio of beer and cheese matching. The battle of sour vs. stink becomes entangled in passionate flavor joy. Suddenly, you don't taste the sour any more, and the ale becomes some kind of heightened version of a really delicate apple cider.

Musical Pairing: Bob Dylan was playing at Magnolia, but One Woman (not a girl, not yet a fully licensed driver) was feeling more of the vibe of something like Chameleon by Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters (the ending of this youtube version is cute). It's a time for change. Get your groove on after a trip to the DMV. I'm going to dedicate this song to another girl who was also at the DMV, and theb showed up at Magnolia about 20 minutes after One Woman did. Brava. You go, girl.

Bonus Public Service Announcement Quiz, or, knowledge gained from the California DMV Driver Handbook:
It's illegal to drink, much less drink and drive if you're younger than 21, but if you're 21 years of age or older, it is illegal to drive with a blood alcohol concentration of _______ or higher:
     a) 1%
     b) 0.5%
     c) 0.08%
     d) 0.01%

Answer to be announced in the forthcoming post. 

Finally, some extra pics from the trek post-DMV. Personally, I like these signs much more than the signs I learned about in the Driver Handbook:

From the Hayes Valley Farm in San Francisco. That's one happy bee.