CulturAle Press

San Francisco Stars #6:  Freewheel English IPA.  Redwood City, California

Date:  July 3 , 2019  —

The Story— Freewheel Brewery’s mission is to “fuse English tradition with American audacity” and they do a good job– though their best work may come when the hew closer to the British styles.  The brewery and kitchen are in Redwood City near Palo Alto, but we ran into their beers all over San Francisco. and respected them, but a British IPA at City Beer Story almost prevented us from moving on with the rest of the planned activities of the evening.  We hope we’ll get a chance to get to the brewery taproom and sample their beers on beer engines.

City Beer Story is a remarkable combination of multi-tap, upscale bottle shop and modest cafe that from humble origins has developed into one of the city’s most respected beer purveyors.  A long bar sits in from of about 40 taps, though duplicates reduced the number of available beers to about half that when we were there.  It’s a bar that makes no pretense of pandering to the Millercoors masses or even those to seek a wide range of craft beer.   They know what styles and they like and they pour great examples of them.  The beers on tap on our visit included 2 “light” beers (a pils and a farmhouse), three darks of various sorts, a half a dozen sours and fully 14 IPAs.  While the number of beers on tap and in the store are substantial neither approaches the variety you can find elsewhere.  As long as a decade ago some California multi-taps offered 100 choices and some stores stocked thousands of beers.  What makes City Beer special is that the care with which they select what they sell.   Of the half dozen beers we tried there, we rated five “above average.”  (The exception was fine, also, just not above average).  This very English style beer was served so appropriately on cask.

Tucked into that big range of IPAs was this English style gem.   Many breweries across the country claim to make a British IPA, but that often involves throwing some Fuggles into a pretty American recipe otherwise.  Brewer Orion Lakota a former stone cutter from Vermont, nails the style.  Recent research has shown that original British IPAs may well have been as heavily hopped as modern American IPAs and were probably a good deal stronger than modern British IPAs.   When the British imposed sky high taxes based on original gravity of beer (which is directly linked to a beer’s final alcohol content) nearly all styles dialed back the booze and they stayed dialed back at least until the recent craft revolution.  Today you can find plenty of US style huge-hopped 7%ers in England but the UK style remains restrained.  In a country where pale ales can settle in below 4%, beers approaching 5% are considered strong.  This balanced sessionable ale (4.8% abv, 45 IBUs) builds on British Marris Otter malt, but includes American hops; still, it drinks like a trip to London.

The Beer–  Hello UK! Nutty and biscuity malts greet from the beginning.   Maybe its the authenticity of the malt, but the big brace of American hops show more floral notes than fruit here.  It’s all in balance and a joyful celebration of aroma, clean mouthfeel and good taste.  Ellie’s comment after a hard day of work was “iwannagobacktoengland.”  She was in a fairly foul mood, for her, until her first sip of this curative.

Value —  Excellent.  Seven bucks for an honest pint of a beer this good is the best you can hope for in this very expensive city.

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

We just got back from a week in San Francisco.   We hadn’t been there in eleven years and the remarkably vibrant beer scene we experienced then has become, well, even vibranter.   Ellie, poor girl, had to work long hours during the day while I got to roam the streets checking out the best places to find great beers.   At least when Ellie got off work I had places to take her before she crashed for the night.   We’ll post a week or two of Beers of the Day by the Bay before returning to research for our book on Inns and Breweries of the Mid-Atlantic.

Interestingly, the downtown area of San Francisco, while awash with beers from the surrounding areas, has few brewing spots of its own.  In that regard it reminds us of New York, where you have to leave Manhattan and go to Brooklyn to really find a nest of breweries.  Away from downtown, several brewery taps thrive and public transportation gets you almost anywhere.  Beyond the city limits, of breweries ring the city, and many of them produce exceptionally good beers and the myriad of tap houses all over town tend to focus on local beers.  Name the style you like and you can find an excellent version of it, though at a price.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”