Independent Brewing Company

To me, the brewery scene is supposed to be about a more relaxed approach to life, a way to take time and enjoy the finer things. Having a few good pints instead of a 12 pack and shots. Going out with family and friends to a brewpub or an afternoon in a tasting room instead of partying late with 5 bands playing. Long nights are a thing of the past – and then there was this week.
After last week’s big night in the city I’ve gone to three more shows in the past 7 days, about two more shows than I normally go to in a year. Each of them proceeded with a visit to a brewery nearby.

Sorry Brewz Newz readers! I had to replace the photo that used to be in this spot, although preapproved ahead of time by all those involved, the powers that be deemed the level of attire not up to the standards expected of hardcore metal musicians. Here is another photo of Deathgrave, (minus The Wizard) and, appropriately it features a Lagunitas Censored Ale!

Last Saturday our friend Fern posted that her band Deathgrave would be playing a hardcore Metal Fest in Oakland. 20 bands from all over the world playing 15 minute sets in rotating rooms. I was the one who suggested to the wife that we should go. Usually it’s the other way around. I figured a night of hardcore metal wouldn’t be so bad in 15-minute chunks.
Both the kids were with friends so we left pretty early in the afternoon. The first stop was the new Oakland location for Ale Industries. This brewery had been the previous weeks guest on my longtime favorite brewing show “The Session” That particular show was about “sustainable methods they employ for the resource-intensive process that is brewing.” The show is much more fun to listen to than it sounds. When they interview breweries I like to hear how they operate business wise more than their brewing methods. The stories about running a brewery are much more entertaining and much more impressive to me than the art of brewing itself.

now closed

In the years after the economy crashed in 2007 several brew pubs never recovered and closed down. Part of the reason that I originally wanted to visit all of the breweries in Northern California was because I was afraid some of them wouldn’t be around for long. Ironically, the crash ended up helping the brewing business. Previously dysfunctional cities such as Oakland changed their attitude towards beer. Before that time every story I heard about people trying to open a brewery involved thousands of dollars and thousands of hours invested only to sit idle for months at a time dealing with zoning laws and waiting for permits to come through. Since then it seems the process has become, I don’t want to say streamlined, but it seems to be less of a nightmare than it used to be to get a craft beer business operational.

Today a brewery can be found close to just about any destination in California. One exception is the Hwy 120 Hwy 108 corridor. If you leave the Bay Area to go camping up in the Sierra’s there are no longer any cool brewpub stops or growler fills on the way. The most disappointing loss was Kelley Brother’s in Manteca. That was a really cool old style brewery. It sucks that it’s gone. Lumberyard Brewing was also a big loss, but at least the location reopened as Standard Pour. It should be your last stop for a sit down meal if you go camping in the area -great tap list and menu, friendly, good for kids etc.

When I started to write this I didn’t intend to start writing about dead breweries. I’ll have to

Continuing the Brewz Newz art that is on our wall theme. This one is by Judd, husband to Becky, former drummer of Rein Aveva and with Judd in Brainbloodvolume.

save the Brewz Newz from my other two nights out for later posts. That’s the problem with leaving the house. It gives me too much to write about and I get easily sidetracked. Anyway, back to Ale Industries, from my memory, I think Ale Industries was one of the first new breweries to open that only brewed non-standard beers. They didn’t do the regular line-up of pale ale, stout etc. Their first bottled beer didn’t even use hops. They bottled a Rye before it became popular and I think they were one of the first breweries to have a session IPA and everybody does that now. They also had more interesting stuff on tap at the “Jingletown Jazz Room” I made a mistake and ordered a pint of “This Is the Shit That Killed Elvis” If I would have realized earlier that they sold it there in bottles I wouldn’t have done that. It was the only high alcohol beer on the menu and I should have realized I was in for a long drinking day.

Thankfully the brewer Steve tipped us to the fact that the Oakland Brewing Company did not actually close down as the Internet had told me. It just changed names to the Independent Brewing Company so that was our next stop. Great place, a very laid back warehouse setting. In fact, Keri recognized it right away as a warehouse space where she saw a show a few years ago. It’s located a short walking distance from the entrance to Jack London Square where the now famous Beer Revolution is located.

Oakland Metro Operahouse, I don’t know what band this was. I think I was just trying to take a photo of Fern there on the right.

Just another two blocks from Beer Rev is where the show was at the Oakland Metro Operahouse. Unlike the venue from a week earlier, this place had a better selection of beer and the prices were good. We kept drinking. At the very moment we were at that show, BJ, the Hamm’s drinkin’ head of the San Jose Drunks, as well as crust punk vinyl collector, 6drinking6celebrity6 on instagram posted a photo of the Reina Aveja 7” and likewise, that will be the YouTube selection for this Brewz Newz post.
Speaking of failed businesses, my greatest failure ever is that I quit doing Probe Records before I finished putting out the Reina Aveja full length. The band flew out to California to play some shows and record with Billy Anderson. The tracks were all recorded and the covers were done. Around that same time I realized that my time was done too. The Internet had replaced my usefulness as a publisher. My attempt to reboot the distribution for the record label was a complete failure. I covered the money to get the tracks mastered at Fantasy Studios and then another label was to to take over from there. Then…. I don’t know who to blame other than myself so I’ll avoid the details but basically, not only did the full length never get released, but it disappeared. It’s just gone! The recordings don’t even exist to put on bandcamp. I would say it was infuriating, but that would undermine how the band must have felt.
So this YouTube recording is not actually that recording but from the aforementioned low budget 7” recorded in 1998. It was Jessica bass, Becky drums, Margaret guitar (in the YouTube photo below Margaret and Becky had switched instruments.) It’s Jen’s amazing vocals that make this recording remarkable. I’ve seen over a thousand bands play in my life and I’ve never witnessed anybody as powerful as Jen.

A current day photo of Jen with her son Henry.

This is now the beer column of punk rock’s past. I have to expel a few ghosts. If you came here strictly for beer news, prepare for bemusement.

My son Henry is 11 and he is old school. Last Christmas he could have asked for an Xbox, but he didn’t want one. He wanted a Game Cube. It doesn’t work right on the flat-screen TV so he has to play it out in the garage on the tube TV.
Two years ago his gymnastics coach said that he was able to bond with Henry because “He’s into the old school Pokémon from when I was a kid!” He said that Henry had memorized the first 150 characters along with knowing all of their powers. That surprised me. Later on I asked him if he had really memorized the first 150 Pokémon characters. He said, “No, I didn’t memorize them. I just know all of them from playing the game.”
That made sense to me. 20 years ago I could name over 150 record labels and tell you which bands were on each one. That was just part of my world at the time.
These days I can easily name over 150 breweries and tell you what beers they brew, where they are located, if they have a taproom and whether or not they are kid friendly. It’s just something I’ve been into.
Thankfully the wife also enjoys breweries however she does not share my mission in seeking them out. I had to harangue her into taking a half-day off work so we could have time to check out some new breweries before we went to the expensive old guy punk rock show in the big city.

New School Brewz
First we went to Cellarmaker (already featured in an earlier post) just because I wanted to make sure that we started things off right, then we stocked up on beer around the corner at the City Beer Store. Close by is another new brewery next to the Giants baseball stadium simply called the Local Brewing Company. I liked this place right away, partly because it was nearly empty, but also because Neutral Milk Hotel was playing as we walked in. It was a nice mellow scene at 3pm. The place looks like a hole in the wall from outside but there is a

Representing approximately 15 seconds of my 15 minutes of fame, the drunken guy on the cover of a Queers record is wearing a Probe t-shirt. Sticking with the ongoing Brewz Newz theme of featuring the art hanging on my walls, I am presenting a photo of the promo poster of the album that has been tacked up above my closet dresser for many years now.

lot of space inside with 14 of their beers on tap.

The show was at the Regency Ballroom and, of course, there is a new brewery less than a mile walk away called Bartlett Hall. This place seemed to have no business being a fully functioning brewery. It’s a darkened restaurant that sells $17 hamburgers because they are in the middle of the city. However, fuck it, it’s a real brewery, I must go. We were already tanked by the time we got there but I’m sure the beer was spectacular.

Screeching Weasel, The Mr. T. Experience and The Queers
The Regency Hall was selling beer in a plastic cup for $12. For that very reason many people missed the best band because they were next door at the 101 getting a cheap infusion of alcohol before they came in. The Queers opening set was a quick slap in the face. If you came late, you missed it.
I remember reading that the people who attend sporting events where they get charged high prices for alcohol actually consume more alcohol because they binge drink before coming in. I’m sure the same thing is true for punk rock. Part of the reason that I planned to spend half the day drinking before this show is because I anticipated the aggressive drinking prices at the show. Not to mention the aggressive pat down everyone got before going in. They weren’t checking for weapons, they were checking for vodka.

Featured beer: Rouge clearly wins the contest for best looking bottle, but if you really want a true spicy beer I would get the Six Rivers Brewery selection on the left. It cost half the price for twice the hot pepper gratification. Good for clearing the head.

My memory of The Queers is bittersweet as they were one of the first well-known touring bands to play the old Haps Bar ($1 pints by the way) and it was fantastic. Then they played my first all ages show and that didn’t go as well for reasons I won’t get into. However, I never had a chance to make it up to them because the week that they were coming back for the 4th time the building was sold and Donna lost the bar. The new owner cancelled my shows and turned the place into an upscale steak house.
In 20-year-old craft beer news, I was the one responsible for getting Donna to add a Sierra Nevada tap to Hap’s bar, before that they only sold Bud. She explained to me that it cost her 35cents to fill a red solo cup with Bud, but it cost 65cents to fill it with Sierra Nevada so she charged $2 instead of $1. On one busy night she ran out of Bud. She announced over the PA that since they were out of Bud she would be selling the Sierra Nevada for $1. The roar from the crowd was deafening, and hilarious.

Unless you count Jaz and the Helper Monkeys I don’t have any history at all with MTX but Ted the guitar player is a key member of the current day Brewz Newz brewery clan. Plus Keri has read Dr. Frank’s books so we were down for the Mr. T Experience.

Ted

When Screeching Weasel came out on stage … but I’ll leave the show here for now. I’ve done enough show reviews in my life. Instead I will save my Ben Weasel /Probe Records swan song bit for my next old guy school of punk rock beer – whatever this is I need to keep these posts short or you fine people will stop clicking on the link.

The search for acoustic music is still ongoing. Which brings me to the youtube music clip for this post. Because I had stopped paying attention to new music for several years, when I joined instagram last year I just thought Pipsqueak was Jerome’s instagram name.

Then I saw a photo of the Pipsqueak LP, put two and two together, and ended up buying it on bandcamp. Not only is it acoustic but there are violins, a really great fucking record. A big switch from the 3-minute punk rock he was doing with Snuggle. I found one of the songs on youtube…

The wife was clearly excited to meet the author.

Jerome