About 15 club members and friends enjoyed a beautiful day in San Francisco’s Mission District, visiting six beer destinations in about seven hours’ time, guided by Mission denizen and beer guru Pete Slosberg.
Before the pub crawl officially began, a few attendees stopped by Pete’s place to drop off his samples from the Sudzers BBQ Beer Competition. Pete shared three new brews from his Mavericks line of session beers, which are being produced by Half Moon Bay Brewing Company. Geared toward an active outdoor consumer, the brews are all 3.75% alcohol by volume and packaged in aluminum cans. All three brews were super-flavorful session beers: the Back in the Saddle Rye Pale Ale, Pace Setter Belgian-style Wit, and the Pit Stop Porter brewed with vanilla and TCHO cocoa beans.
The day began with a layer of hearty fare for lunch at Giordano Brothers, purveyor of Pittsburgh-style sandwiches served with coleslaw and french fries right on the sandwiches, as well as an excellent tap list. We moved on to Gestalt Haus, home of the comfy couches, then Monk’s Kettle, where some of us learned what a deal the sampler flights are.
From Monk’s we headed to Cervecería de MateVeza by Dolores Park (with part of the group stopping by Tartine Bakery for some tasty baked snacks along the way), a very small production brewery with some interesting brews incorporating spices and other unique ingredients. They also serve fresh empanadas. While at MateVeza, a few of us did a double take as about 20 riders from the World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco zoomed by.
From MateVeza, we headed to Elixir, where a few in our party switched gears to take advantage of the make-your-own-bloody-mary bar, and others sampled some of Elixir’s house brews made by Sudwerk in Davis.
Our final stop (twice, as it turns out) was Dalva, where the beer selection was not only interesting but cheap – $3 happy hour pints of craft brews from Sonoma Springs, Moonlight Brewing, and several other notable breweries. After a round at Dalva, we adjourned to Taqueria Pancho Villa for some sustenance. However, as it turns out, our ride home was a little bit later than anticipated, and Dalva’s happy hour continued until 7 pm, so we headed back for one more round.
The weather was fantastic, the brews and the food were delicious, and our guide Pete never steered us wrong. Amazingly, because of the density of the Mission, we only walked a total of about a mile and a half to visit all of these places, and about half of that resulted from the walk over to MateVeza. A good time was had by all.
