CoffeeBeer >> Pint Pleasures >> Alameda and Oakland 5
|
The Rake at Admiral Maltings, 651A West Tower Avenue, Alameda, California |
|
|
Faction Brewing, 2501 Monarch Street, Alameda, California |
|
|
Wondrous Brewing Company, 1306 65th Street, Emeryville, California |
|
|
Ghost Town Brewing, 1960 Adeline Street, Oakland, California |
|
|
Original Pattern Brewing, 292 4th Street, Oakland, California |
As I still have quite a few California breweries and brewpubs left to review, I’ve decided to combine all of my East Bay experiences in one column.
When Rick drove us into Alameda, I immediately fell in love. Originally a peninsula which has become an island, this unusual city possesses the same post-industrial appeal to me as does the neighbourhood of Attercliffe in Sheffield, where vast behemoths of long buildings which line the boulevards once housed steel works. The difference with Alameda is that its vast behemoths of long buildings, which line the boulevards once housing shipping and industrial facilities, are now home to breweries, wineries, and distilleries. What a surrealistic dream of a place this is.
Back in 1868 the first fully transcontinental railroad travelled coast to coast across the US, reaching the San Francisco Bay at Alameda. By the 1950s, Alameda had become industrialised and boasted a thriving shipbuilding industry.
Our first stop of the afternoon was to be Admiral Maltings. Founded by Ron Silberstein, formerly of San Francisco’s Thirsty Bear Brewing Company, and Dave McLean, of the Magnolia Brewing Company, and also organic farmer Curtis Davenport, Admiral specialises in small-batch malting, and it sources its grain from California farmers in order to produce hand-crafted malt perfect for use in brewing. Holding the distinction of being California’s only CCOF certified malting operation, it’s located in a 20,000 square-foot building which started life in WWII as a naval dry goods facility.
We pulled up on West Tower Avenue and parked by a very long, seemingly endless row of adjacent beer gardens. Spotting the large Admiral sign on one of the fronts, we walked inside the Rake Pub, which is the malting company’s brew tap, and perused the beer menu. We decided to start off with a couple of half pints of Pocket Taco (4.2% ABV, Dunloe Brewing, Davis, California), a sour mixed fermentation Berliner Weisse brewed with salt, grilled limes, and jalapeno chili. This beer also contains two locally made malts: Feldblume, a light golden malt with the aroma of clover and hay, and Yolo Gold Wheat, which has the smell of freshly rising dough. The other half we opted for was Ridgey Ramps (6.0% ABV, The New Museum Brewery, Point Arena, California). This was an unfiltered IPA with Gallaghers Best and Feldblume malts. Naturally the malts used in each of the Rake’s beers are listed on the menu, because Admiral produces all of the malts.
We took our half pints outside and sat ourselves at one of the brightly-coloured painted picnic tables. The table I chose for us was a South American-feeling yellow-orange, red, and green. Or perhaps it was more Jamaican rasta. From where we were sitting, we had a magnificent view of miles of tall industrial plants lining each wall of the boulevard.
I loved the Pocket Taco. It wasn’t just the name, which made me wonder if The Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler knows of this term. But it was also because this was a nonfruity sour quencher that refreshed my palate which had been recently bombarded with hazy fruity beers. This was a pure sour with no fruity pretensions. I mean, isn’t lime just the most honest of fruits? The half of Ridgey Ramps was just a good, slightly dank IPA, also with no illusion of being fruity.
After a little while Rick went back inside and returned with a couple of tasters. The first was Oyster Stout (4.9% ABV, Hen House Brewing, Santa Rosa, California) which was really pleasant and nice for a dark beer. It wasn’t too anything, as stouts can often be, and it emitted a slightly oyster-shell aura. I could smell the ocean, which wasn’t surprising, as this beer is brewed with whole oysters from the Hog Island Oyster Company of San Francisco. I mean, we were sitting very near the San Francisco Bay. So was it the stout or the bay that I was smelling? The other taster was a whiskey, Eau de Oyster, which had been distilled by Hen House from the oyster stout. It had a very aromatic liqueur character to the aroma. And, you know, it was really nice, like a gentle rock massage of a whiskey. In fact, this was a truly gorgeous whiskey.
Before we left, Rick and I went back inside to find the toilets. And we had the chance to peek into the vast malting room with its floor covered in golden grain. And what a lovely smell!
Not far from Admiral Maltings, and directly on the bay, is Faction Brewing. Located at the end of a JC-heavenly stretch of even more giant industrial plants that are now breweries and distilleries, this brewery offers a wide range of beers including lagers, stouts, Belgian styles, barrel aged beers, and sours, but they specialise in hoppy beers. Owner and Head Brewer Rodger Davis opened Faction in 2013 along with former 21st Amendment manager Claudia Pamparana. They both grew up in Southern California, just like me and Rick. Proof that great minds come from the southern parts...
We parked almost directly on the water with a view of a container port and, way across the water, the skyline of Oakland, the Oakland Bay Bridge, Treasure Island, and San Francisco, which was currently engulfed in fog. It was absolutely breathtaking. Faction Brewing, on the other hand, was still being pretty anal about covid restrictions, considering it was May 2022. After being told to wait outside the outdoor premises, we were escorted through the entrance of the massive beer garden and forcibly seated at a counter with the sun directly in our eyes. Oh, well.
We ordered two pints: one of LaLa IPA (7.2% ABV), which is a West Coast IPA with New Zealand Nelson, Strata, and Columbus Cryo hops, and the other a pint of Deny Everything! (6.3% ABV), a strong West Coast Pale with New Zealand Nelson, Australian Enigma, and HBC 586 Cryo, cold fermented with ale yeast. Fortunately, when our pints were brought to us, we were then told we could sit anywhere we liked.
So we moved as far as possible away from the actual building of the brewery to the far reaches of the vast beer garden, over by the chainlink fence where nobody else was sitting. From there we had a breathtakingly impressive and completely quiet view of the scene we had witnessed from the car park. We looked back at all of those foolish customers, all clustered so close to this Covid-restricted brewery, and we relished our lovely pints along with the freedom of life that we were now experiencing.
The next afternoon, after a great lunch at Saul’s Deli followed by a long walk in the Berkeley Hills, we stopped for our first pint of the day at Wondrous Brewing Company in Emeryville. This brewery was opened in 2021 by Wynn Whisenhun, who grew up in the East Bay Area. After earning a diploma in brewing technology from the World Brewing Academy in Munich, he worked at various breweries in Northern California for ten years. The emphasis of Wondrous Brewing is on German lagers, barrel-aged beers, and of course hoppy brews.
On the way in we passed a colourful mural in the front beer garden and entered a rather basic, modern taproom. We took a seat at the bar and chatted with the barman about the beers. Both of us went for pints of Creek Park (6.9% ABV), a West Coast IPA with Citra and Nelson hops that had just been put on. It was a great palate cleanser for washing away any possible remaining traces of the hazy fruit of the previous day. Also on the beer menu that day was an English style porter called Drab, and an English style barleywine called Old Hobnoblydoblin. Hmm, I wondered: could this be named by somebody who’s actually tasted Hobgoblin, the legendary Oxfordshire IPA?
When we finished our pints, we headed back to Oakland for my final evening in California, stopping first at Ghost Town Brewing. As we walk into this huge warehouse of a brewery, we were instantly greeted by two large dogs who were obviously completely different breeds but completely in love with each other, and the furry one definitely wanted to have sex with the short-haired one. At the bar we had a taste of Lurid Lupulin Double IPA (8.3% ABV). Brewed with Mosaic, Exp 586, Eclipse, and Strata hops, this was a collaboration with Slice Beer of Lincoln, California, and it was what I would call an oohooh! beer. But as we didn’t feel like going overboard so early, we decided to split a bottle of Scaredy Cat Brett Pale (5.0% ABV) with Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin hops and some Belgian malts.This beer was reddish in colour, naturally sour, and hoppy, so we were both quite happy with it.
We took a seat at a table near the randy dogs and sipped this most proper beer. From this vantage point we could survey the decor of the vast room, featuring skeletons both straddling the rafters and perched over the beer menu. There was also a gremlin sitting near the wide selection of t-shirts for sale, and in the back was a row of brewing vats, each with a brewer’s name on it. If I lived here, I could see this place becoming a regular haunt.
We moved on to Original Pattern Brewing Company. I was intrigued by the name, as it brought to mind the Simplicity, McCall’s, and Butterick patterns that my mother used to buy in order to sew clothes. I couldn’t think how that would relate to beer and brewing, though, unless they used them to cut out the parts of the brewing vats or something. As it turns out, the brewers chose this name because they’re attempting to copy original brewing patterns while also developing innovations. The employee-owned brewery and taproom opened in 2018 in a 5500-square-foot building in Jack London Square. Since then they have won medals for their sour wild ales and New Zealand-style pales. Sticking to the home-economics references, that sounds to me like a good recipe for a brewery.
After we perused the beer menu on the wall, we sat at the bar and chatted briefly with three of the staff members, one who was finishing his final shift before leaving to go live in England for a while. When we told him that coincidentally I was leaving to go back to England, he let us have a taste of his Cherry Stout. Rick and I then chose two pints to share: one of All About HBC (6.8% ABV), brewed with Mango, lychee, spices, and the experimental hop HBC 586, and another one of Quantum of Solitude (6.9% ABV), with Moutere, Mosaic, and Centennial hops. The Quantum was pleasant enough and brought to my mind a certain soft vinyl, like some sort of large doll or plastic animal thing from my childhood. But the All About HBC was a definite Yes of a brew, again with that Oomph! factor. “Yes, yes!” I was shouting, hopefully only inside my head.
As we were starting to get hungry and the brewery is partnered with Good To Eat Dumplings, we decided to order some for dinner. So we shared the Tofu Bao buns with edamame beans, accompanied by the Pan Fried Noodles, which were a bit like Pad Thai noodles, only thick and endless. After our earlier lunch at a Jewish deli, this was perfect.
The brewery is kind of big and rambles all over the place. If we hadn’t sat at the bar, we could have sat in the back in a big, comfy booth, or else upstairs looking down, or even outside. But we were quite happy where we were.
Besides their beers and food, Original Pattern features live jazz every Friday, as well as other events like cardio kickboxing and comedy nights. So it’s a pretty cool addition to the Oakland brewpub scene.
Related Links