If you're going to San Francisco...
Des de Moor visits the City Beer Store in sunny San Francisco.
San Francisco is a vibrant and cosmopolitan place with a reputation for both alternative lifestyles and fine food and drink. And a major tourist destination located in the heart of the one of the world’s most innovative and exciting beer regions. So it’s curious that city dwellers had to wait until May 2006 for their first speciality beer retailer.
Craig Wathen and his wife Beth opened City Beer Store precisely to fill that gap in the market, and because they believed in the contribution small businesses can make to the community. And a mixed and colourful community it is too, in the South of Market (SoMa) district where arty shops and cafés mix with light industry and the raunchier side of the city’s celebrated gay scene. The Folsom Street Fair at the end of September is billed as ‘the world’s largest leather event.’ “It happens right outside our door,” says Craig. “Easily our most memorable experience since opening, no competition!” A board on the sidewalk guides you down a few steps to a basement space – small according to the locals, but generous enough by European standards – with a scattering of comfortable seating, a bar with six regularly changing draught taps and shelves and fridges crammed with about 300 different bottled beers, almost half of them bottle conditioned.
The range splits moreor- less down the middle into North American and Belgian products, with a smattering of other imports. The American beers are almost all from West Coast craft brewers, with an un.....
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By Des de Moor
Section : Spotlight
Page number : 58
