DON’T ANGER THIS THIRSTY BEAR

Ten years ago, when San Francisco was in the initial throes of what came to be known as “the dot-com boom”, a new tapas restaurant & brewery opened up South of Market called THIRSTY BEAR. It got good reviews, it served its own beer, and it catered to the yuppie dinner crowd, and who doesn’t need a good yuppie dinner every now & again, right? We went a few times and always figured it was OK, maybe the beer was just mediocre, but man, that Paella Valenciana was pretty smokin’. A couple years ago I went with some co-workers and had roughly the same reaction – beer was all right, food was better, and the general sense I got from Thirsty Bear was it was the sort of place you might want to hit about every third year.

Now that I work down the street from it, and am an amateur beer writer of zero renown, I decided to make another visit with some ex-co-workers. The waitress talked us into going with their small-batch 10TH ANNIVERSARY ALE, and man, it was something else. Beer snobs of Northern California, do not miss this one, because it’s a high-alcohol, complex and exceptionally tasty ale. I can’t find a single thing on the web to link to to help tell you about it, not even on the brewery’s web site, but don’t let that stop you. She told us that it was cask-conditioned, and was brewed in a small quantity a few months ago. She also pushed it on us because I think I asked too many questions & she took me for a beer dork, which I most certainly am not! No, check that, I totally am. It was a dark, cloudy brown with a medium head, and really tasted closer to a barleywine than the cask-driven brown ale I was expecting. Excellent. I gave it an 8/10, and promised to never misunderestimate this place again.