Destinations: Oakland Beer Tour (Trappist - Bockor Cuvee des Jacobins des Rouge and Beer Revolution - Moonlight Twist of Fate)

Two pretty recent additions to downtown Oakland have suddenly made Oakland a hugely desirable beer destination!

Destination #1 – The Trappist
Very classy, downtown Oakland spot specializing in Belgian beers with Americans and others mixed in. One Woman visited this place with KALX DJ, The Native Disinformant (she rocks--tune in to KALX 90.7 FM!). Super nice and knowledgeable bar staff, this place is a great establishment. See you there everyday. Ever on a mission to explore more Flemish Red Ales, One Woman encountered the lovely Bockor Cuveé des Jacobins des Rouge. It's by Bockor Brewery in Belgium, and the word cuveé, which comes from wine language, refers both to the process and formula of blending (of different kinds of beers), and to the container vats (from the French, cuve). A pretty, red mahogany, fizzy, fresh, and tart, it's the perfect lovely beer for cherry season. Think, Sunday afternoon in the park (like George Seurat) if you were part of the nineteenth century Parisian bourgeois scene.

Destination #2 – Beer Revolution
With its blotchy concrete floor, biker / punk aesthetic, and Ramones on the sound system, Beer Revolution has a totally different vibe from The Trappist. The Revolution specializes in local and American beers with Belgians and mixed in. Beer Revolution has a lot of love, and a lot to love, including the friendly biker dude bouncer, and the awesome patio/deck facing West for full, glorious afternoon sun.  Twist of Fate by Moonlight Brewery in Santa Rosa was the beer of this Sunday afternoon. It's a brick colored ESB, which is the British way of saying extra special (bitter) ale. Not all ESBs are that bitter, but this had a good hoppy bite to it, but not so much that it overwhelmed the nice challah bread smell. Hey! Ho! Let's go!

Alright class! The answer to the question on drinking and driving that was on an earlier post, based on 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%

The answer is c) 0.08%

As you may know, One Woman is learning to drive a car. Cars and American culture seems like an obvious point, but where else has a national infrastructure been built on the premise of the availability of car ownership, and at the same time, mobility both the meaning of freedom (why are highways in California called freeways anyway??) and a huge pain in the ass? Driving might get me on the freeway to the ancient hot springs in the distant mountains, but it doesn't really make getting to and from the beer bar easier. Thank god for local beer institutions. Walk, ride the bus, take BART, bike but don't operate heavy machinery (and your bike may count as that).

Oakland has ended up being One Woman's number one post driving lesson destination.

(Los Angeles, CA – Gorgeous sunsets, beautiful geometric arrays of automobiles, or, traffic jam hell)

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Musical Pairings:
Listen to the sound of freedom and feel better that the good ol' days weren't always better. Fahrenheit 104 with the "Highway to Freedom."

Hmm. Since that was kind of disturbing, here's a bonus pairing, probably more in tune with the punk rock rockabilly vibe of Beer Revolution. "Hot Rod Gang" by the 1980s rockabilly group, the Stray Cats.

Destinations: Healthy Spirits (Monk's Cafe - Flemish Sour Ale)

Destination: Healthy Spirits. I'm not lying when I say there was a bit of a flutter in my heart as I left the Women's Community Clinic to head to Healthy Spirits this evening after finishing a weekly volunteer shift. Riding MUNI (with all its recent travails) has never felt this awesome, even with the transfer.

Healthy Spirits in San Francisco, located on the corner of Castro and 15th, is your local corner store. Owned by Rami Barqawi, Healthy Spirits sells plastic-wrapped pastries, sandwiches, coffee, cookies, Middle Eastern foods made by "Rami's Mommy"... and the most amazing selection of beers One Woman has seen in the Bay Area. Indeed, they claim to have the largest beer selection in San Francisco. The most amazing thing is that this large beer selection is a selection made mostly of beers you don't encounter at you average grocery store! Dave Hauslein, the beer manager at Healthy Spirits, told me that the store itself has been around as a corner store / deli for eleven years. It has been a specialty beer store for three. What I love about this family owned neighborhood store is that it totally has the feel and openness of a bodega or corner store (as they call them out here), but with the selection and quality of beer that's unparalleled by most beer stores. So, while Dave was responding to my barrage of questions about aged and sour beer, he also nuked and wrapped up a falafel sandwich for another customer who got dinner and a beer to go.

Aged and sour beer?! - Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale

One Woman learned today that there is a whole art and science to aged ales -- they can "peak" at up to 15 years! -- but let's leave this story for another time. The theme of the day is sour ale, actually, many of which are aged longer (a year is not uncommon) than many other beers. One Woman has tried "sour beers" before, with not too much success. I echo Jay of the Hedonist Beer Jive, who found that it took a few tries to come across a sour ale that made him a believer. On Dave's recommendation, I took home a 11.2 oz bottle of Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale. To my delight, I found a tart, invigorating, yet satiny brew, perfect for a warm California evening!

This beer is brewed and bottled by the historic family-owned Belgian brewery, Van Steenberge especially for the Monk's Cafe in Philadelphia. Aged in Oak barrels with cherry juices, this beer comes close to being a wine, both in process and in flavor. The big difference, of course, is the malt, yeast and lactic acid (!) present in this beer.

Opening the bottle, I caught some whiffs of the mouth-watering sourness, coupled with a tart cherry smell. The pour was pretty, with a mellow burgundy/brown color like a red velvet cake, topped with a creamy cinnamon froth. With very mild carbonation, and only 5.5 ABV, this sour ale goes down very easy. One Woman tasted dark brandied cherries, oak, and a hint of vanilla, with sourness, sweetness, and maltiness blended to blissful harmony. The sour was actually not even the most noticeable aspect of this beer, but I'm beginning to suspect that the particular batch that One Woman enjoyed was on the sweet, rather than sour side of the spectrum for this Flemish Sour Ale.

One Woman found that this beer makes an excellent accompaniment to a juicy salad of beets, fennel, citrus with mixed baby lettuces and a hard boiled egg. A big squeeze of California lemon on the salad brightened everything up one notch and brought out a sparkly zing in the beer.

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The musical pairing of this evening is Ornette Coleman's Shape of Jazz to Come. Released 51 years ago, Coleman's avant-garde is the kind that redefines not only the future of music, but once in the future, his music provides its interpreters with a language that encourages listeners to hear the past differently. Oddball (like a sour beer), perhaps, and certainly not in tune with the mainstream or with contemporaneous avant-gardes, Coleman possesses a profound knowledge of the range of human emotion -- especially the different flavors of joy: tangy, malty, and a bit sour with a whole lot of pizzazz.