If you're gong to San Francisco

There's more to this Californian city than meets the eye. Jeff Pickthall reports on a thriving beer culture

It is easy to make a list of things for which San Francisco is famous: steep hills; the Golden Gate Bridge; Dirty Harry; Haight Ashbury and the Summer of Love; the earthquake and fire; the Castro, gays and Harvey Milk; Pacific Fleet; the Gold Rush; Bullitt; Alcatraz; fog; sour dough bread; cable cars; Chinatown; Levis jeans; the Beat Poets.

There is one thing to add to the list – beer.

San Francisco is an exceptional beer town: excellent craft-brewed beers are simultaneously epidemic and endemic. It is very difficult to find – if you should so-bizarrely wish – a bar that sticks to Bud, Miller and Coors. Even takeaways are likely to sell craft-brews such as the legendary Sierra Nevada Pale Ale alongside mainstream beers. Supermarkets and local stores carry row after row of six-packs of craft beers in attractively designed packaging that invite the customer to cherish them for their aesthetic qualities as much as the great beer within.

The West Coast of the United States – California, Oregon and Washington – are three key states in the great American beerappreciation revival. To the visiting beerenthusiast the West Coast can be heaven – beer appreciation is everywhere and even the Californian wine business dare not be condescending and may even feel something of an inferiority complex.

The most influential of the San Francisco breweries is Anchor (see our feature on page 48), famed for its Steam beer which was first brewed in 1896. The old brewery scraped through the prohib.....

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By Jeff Pickthall

Section : Beer Journeys

Page number : 50