The Brookston Family Blog
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Alice and I took a road trip yesterday to Half Moon Bay Brewing Co. for a beer tasting event I was covering. Alice had a blast, but kept trying to steal my beer.

“Hey, what is that? It looks tasty.”

“I think I’ll just have a sip while no one’s looking.”

“Busted.”

“I guess I’ll go in search of the source.”

“I smell barley and hops! I must be getting closer.”

“Hey, what’s this? Is there beer here?”

“Oh, Daddy. Can I have some? Please!”

Here’s a Quicktime movie of Alice in the brewery, which will give you an idea of how much she was enjoying herself. You can either download the movie to your desktop or just click on the link to play it in your web browser (assuming your web browser has the quicktime plug-in installed).

Pat is one of the founders of the Real Beer Page, the first big beer portal on the internet. He was also kind enough to host this blog. (thanks Pat). Pat also has a son, Jack, who’s a little older than Porter so we’ve seen him at birthday parties from time to time, though it’s been a little while. These days, I usually run into Pat at beer events. Happy birthday Pat.

Pat (at right) with Tom Dalldorf in New Orleans for the Craft Brewers Conference in 2003.

A self-portrait of me and Pat at Falling Rock in Denver at last year’s Great American Beer Festival.

Nancy is the Events Director for the Brewers Association, which includes being the director of the Great American Beer Festival. She’s been doing that thankless job for several years now and always manages to keep a smile on her face.

Bob Pease with Nancy in New Orleans for the Craft Brewers Conference.

At the CBC banquet with Tom McCormick.

At Falling Rock after a session of GABF. From left: Brian Dunn of Great Divide Brewing in Denver, an unknown brewer (from Tabernash perhaps?), Nancy and Tara Dunn, also from Great Divide.

Nancy with Chris Black, the owner of Falling Rock, at last year’s GABF.

Rich Norgrove is the owner and head brewer at Bear Republic Brewing Co. in Healdsburg, California. In addition to brewing great hoppy beers including some of my favorites — Red Rocket Ale and Racer 5 — Rich is also a fireman and races stock cars.

At a beer festival several years ago with his daughter.

In his fireman persona. We ran this picture for an article in the Celebrator last year.

Stopping to smell the beer with fellow brewer Shaun O’Sullivan in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle, where several more photos were taken.

I spent the afternoon at the Celebrator offices in Hayward tasting Double IPAs and Stouts for the next issue. It’s hard to imagine a more pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Form left: Tom, Pete, Angie, me and our copy editor Pamela, who made a rare appearance from her cubby hole.

Our intrepid tasting steward Mike with his gal Amy, who was kinf enough to help out with the tasting.

Rodger has been brewing around the Bay Area for a few years, but I got to know him best through a good friend when he started working at Drake’s Brewing in San Leandro. And he was one of my roomies at the last two GABFs.

Rodger manning the booth at the Boonville Beer Festival in 2003.

Getting frisky with a co-worker.

Wide-eyed and bushy-tailed at this year’s Great American Beer Festival.

Late one night at Falling Rock showing his phone to Brendan Dobbel, brewer at Thirsty Bear. I’m pretty sure this is the night he was drunkenly telling everyone about his “secret” plan to marry his girlfriend, and at this moment she was probably on the other end of the line.

I could tell you what Fal’s real name is, but then you’d find flowers for me on my grave so best not. I first met Fal when he was brewing at Pike Place in Seattle several years ago but got to know him better when he moved to California to be the GM at Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Boonville. He recently moved to Singapore to build a craft brewery for Archipelago Brewery, a division of Asia Pacific Breweries. It sounded like the chance of a lifetime and Fal jumped at it. He’s blogging the experience in his blog, Brewing in Singapore, which of course is in my blogroll if you want to follow along.

I’m not sure whose hat this is, but I have pictures of over a dozen people wearing it at the Elysian party at the Oregon Brewers Festival in 2003.

At the brewer’s dinner the night before OBF began, also in 2003. From left: Daniel Bradford, Fal and Dave Buehler from Elysian Brewing in Seattle.

At the Celebrator Swimsuit Contest at CBC in San Diego in 2004.

At a beer release party for Brother Dave’s Triple at the Toronado in San Francisco. From left: Fal, Mark Cabrera, Dave Gatlin (head brewer at AVBC) , Me and Toronado owner Dave Keene.

Okay, this is fairly hilarious. I subscribe to Sitemeter, which monitors the traffic on this blog. I can get all sorts of cool information such as how may people per day are visiting us, how long a person has been on, where they come from, what search they used, what operating system they’re using and even what browser they’re using, among much else. So lately, I’ve been looking at the searches that people use that lead them to us, and some are pretty interesting and odd. Today, someone came to us from a liquor store website in the Midwest, called Surdyks. They have a section devoted to beer news, which is essentially a feed from a company called Topix.Net. Topix.Net is a service that delivers news from, according to them, “thousands of sources around the net.” You can filter your news to concentrate on specific companies, industries or people. Well, this liquor store has a beer news feed from Topix.Net. You can either view it at Surdyks or follow the link to Topix.Net directly. Here’s a screen grab of the top of Topix.net’s website:

Okay, so far, so good. Looks like a pretty useful idea. I knew of other similar ones that I use, so it’s nice to find another one. But here’s the weird part. How did that lead them to my family blog, you might be asking yourself? Apparently, my post with photos from the annual Anchor Xmas Party on Thursday evening qualified as news to Topix.Net. And not just news, but we even got a score of “3″ for newsworthiness, which was higher than many other “stories” listed there. And I don’t see how this could be an automated process, because they assigned it to three different categories (besides beer): Christmas, Life, and Holidays.

Here’s a screen grab of the news link as it appeared on Topix.Net. Notice they also used a thumbnail of one of my pictures, in this case it’s a photo of two friends of mine, Jen and Melissa. Jen works at Magnolia Brewery and Melissa is a brewer at Drakes Brewing. And also notice that the text there is all about Sarah not being able to come to the party after all. Riveting stuff, especially if you don’t know who Sarah is.

Pretty funny, I thought. Since this morning, at least two other people have drifted over from the post at Topix.Net. It will be interesting to see how many visitors we get because of this.

The annual Anchor Christmas Party was last night, and although Sarah never did make it to the party, I still managed to have a good time. There were lots of people there who I haven’t seen much lately so it was great fun catching up with them. Plus the beer is wonderful and the food was terrific.

A neon Anchor Christmas sign at the brewery.

That’s my first drink of the 2005 Anchor Christmas Ale being poured.

Friends Jen and Melissa.

The traditional Anchor Christmas Ale box tree.

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but this is Kendra, who works for Anchor (and also sings in their band), and who knows how to make an entrance. Her hair is done up in a fifties’ beehive with Christmas lights (that are lit up, of course) and ornaments and other decorations in the beehive.

Lucy, Ken and Kathy’s daughter. Ken is the Art Director at the Celebrator.

Anchor owner Fritz Maytag holding court. (It’s actually his birthday today so wish him a happy one).

Friends Mark, Colleen and Roxanne.

Last night at the Celebrator offices, we did several flights of holiday beers and imperial stouts for the next issue. Yum!

Clockwise from bottom left; me, Angie, Vic, Tom and Paul.

This afternoon after we dropped off Porter at Montessori, Alice and I had to stop at a couple of local breweries to pick up samples for a holiday beer tasting I’m involved in next Monday.

Discovering the salt and pepper shakers at Moylan’s.

Where do you think you’re going, young lady? Alice attempts the stairs back to the bar and the saddle at Lagunitas.

Yes again. After the session, if you haven’t figured this out by now, the place to be is Falling Rock.

Teri Fahrendorf, of Steelhead brewing Co., braided Don Younger’s hair and turned him into Willie Nelson’s younger (ouch) brother.

Lars Larson, brewer at Berkeley’s Trumer Brauerei, and Brenden Dobel, brewer at Thirsty Bear Brewing in San Francisco.

Don Younger of the Horse Brass and Shaun O’Sullivan of 21st Amendment.

The Saturday evening is the worst session of all, unless you like huge crowds of swilling frat boys and their clueless girlfriends roving the hall in loud, obnoxious packs. I know it pays the bills, but boy is it ugly. Many brewers and beer people understandably avoid this session. I, on the other hand, never miss a session. Although it’s getting increasingly difficult to make it to the end.

Vinnie from Russian River Brewing gives a talk on his beer since the chef that was supposed to be there to do a cooking demonstration with him never showed up. I’d tell you to boycott that restaurant if I could remember it’s name.

Event coordinator Jessica behind her booth. This is her last event as she’s leaving to become a teacher. Good luck, Jessica.

After the awards there are still afew hours left in the afternoon session so it’s a great opportunity to try many of the medal winners.

Brewing legend Pierre Celis, who single-handedly revived the style Hefeweizen in the 1960s at Hoegaarden.

Fellow beer writer Fred Eckhardt and me.

Larry Bell, owner of Kalamazoo Brewing Co., and Dave Alexander, owner of the Brickskeller.

The Drake’s Brewing pirate ship and her crew.

Outside the hall is a very large statue of a blue bear looking in to the Convention Center. Why? Who knows. Personally, I think he’s a scalper.

Saturday afternoon the awards are given out at the Connoisseur Tasting. It’s the best session of them all for two key reasons: 1) they give you a glass rather than plastic to taste with and 2) because it’s more expensive there are far fewer people. There were 69 categories of beer judged and three medals given for almost all of them. So this is essentially our Oscars. Check out the 2005 winners.

The jumbotron slides.

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and owner of Wynkoop Brewing Co., was the keynote speaker for the second year in a row.

Tomme Arthur from Pizza Port Solana Beach won a Gold and two Silvers.

Russian River picked up a Gold and a Silver.