I’m very excited to announce the launch of a new project: Old Oak Beer Co. Old Oak is a brand new, San Francisco based brewery.  This venture is a partnership between myself and my brewing partner and friend, Damian Fagan.  Our new brewery together is dedicated to producing “Farm to Barrel” artisanal ales inspired by the farms of Northern California.  Each release is a unique vintage, rooted in the season and place its brewed: we start with a Belgian style ale, add seasonal fruit from a local farm, and then age the beer in used wine barrels.   Besides great beer, we are also dedicated to great design – raising the bar on how craft beer presents itself to the larger food community, both in the bottle, and on the bottle.

Our first release is currently aging in wine barrels now, and it will be gooooood.  We brewed a California styled Belgian Golden Strong Ale, with huge late Citra hop additions.  Then we added two hundred and fifty pounds of blackberries from Sebastapol Berry Farm, before moving the whole thing to age in wine barrels since July.

This new brewery is the fruition of a lot of work, beers, late night discussions, homebrew test batches, emails, dreams and paperwork. Of course, I didn’t do all of this alone:  I’m only half of this venture. The other half is my homebrewer and entrepreneur friend Damian Fagan. He’s also a talented designer—you may remember his artistry from the Notoberfest poster. Together, we’re very excited to start producing our contribution to San Francisco’s beer and food communities.

 

When I started this blog two years ago, I knew a lot less about beer, food and spam filters than I know today.  Overtime, The blog evolved, moving from playing archair critic of beer dinners to organizer of beer dinners.  Today it moves from criticizing beer, to creating, and contributing beer.  We are to brew a beer that reaches beyond the normal reach of beer drinkers, right into the heart of the bay area food community.  We took the ideals and values of the neighborhood, ingredient driven restaurant, and applied it to the beer making process.  The result is Old Oak.  We love it, and hope you do too.

Where can I learn more?
We just launched our sweet new website.  Check it out!

When Can I Buy Old Oak Beer?
Our first batch – Summer 2010 –  is currently aging in wine barrels now, slowly extracting note of vanilla and oak from the wood, as well as slight tannic hints from the red wine that previously called the barrels home. We are on schedule to release our first beer in mid-December.

Where Can I Buy Old Oak Beer?
We’ll be selling exclusively in the San Francisco Bay Area, and  focusing specifically on restaurants.  Our beers are seasonal, handcrafted products, just like the food at our favorite restaurants.  In fact, we’re so proud of how our beer goes with great food, we’re working with local chefs to create pairing dishes specifically for each release.  Take a look to see what Chef Jake Des Voignes of Local: Mission Eatery and Chef Tom McNaughton of Flour + Water have in mind for our first release.  We’re also excited to be served at the new The Summit, and be for sale to take home at the City Beer Store.  Of course we’ll have many, more more places when the beer is ready.  You can see our up to date list under “Buy Local” on our new website.

Wait A Minute!  Your Summer Batch Is Coming Out In Winter?
Yep.  We won’t rush this slow process that develops these complex flavors. We’ll release when it’s ready, and not a day sooner.  Plus, each release is designed to be cellar aged.  The wax dipped top helps prevent any oxygen from leaking into the bottle, spoiling it’s precious contents. While great when released, it’ll evolve when aged, just like fine wine.

Can I Visit The Brewery?
Not yet, but we hope that someday soon.  We’re starting small, which we are producing our beer through “Partner” brewing (or, if you’re feeling romantic, “Gypsy Brewing.”  This means we work with a local brewery to brew our beer under their license.   It allows us to create the kind of full licensed, legal beer that can be sold to the public.  We own the brand, the beer, and the recipes – just not the brewing equipment.  Not yet anyway.

Wither Beer & Nosh?
Jeez, I hope not.  Beer & Nosh isn’t going anywhere. I’ll still need to place to sprout out off on my personal opinions, share food photos and generally make trouble.  Of course, Old Oak is taking up quite a lot of my time, that will means less posts.  But we’ll see how it works out.  But never fear, even if there is less content going here, you’ve got a new source for my photos and tpyos at the Old Oak Blog.  We’ll be cataloging our brewing adventures, partner farms, and restaurants serving our beer there.

Tags: Old Oak Beer

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 9:41 pm and is filed under etc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.