Now in its fifth year, San Francisco Beer Week, held this year from February 8 to 17, celebrates and promotes the diversity and quality of craft beer in the Bay Area.
Published: February, 2013
Now in its fifth year, San Francisco Beer Week, held this year from February 8 to 17, celebrates and promotes the diversity and quality of craft beer in the Bay Area. It’s a grassroots collection of over 350 beer events held at over 100 venues throughout the Bay Area, from breweries and brewpubs to restaurants, bars and retail beverage stores.
SF Beer Week events include meet-the-brewer nights, beer dinners, tastings, special beer releases, collaborative brews, lectures and panel discussions, homebrewing demonstrations, beer festivals and other fun, educational events that connect and resonate with the existing local beer community while introducing many new people to the world of artisan beer.
The week kicks off with a big bang at the opening celebration produced by Beer Week’s presenting sponsor, the SF Brewers Guild. The event will take place on Friday, February 8 at the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco. Nearly every brewery in Northern California serves some of their most sought-after beer to 2,600 attendees. This celebration sells out every year and has become one of the premier craft beer events in the region.
Today, craft beer is the more popular than ever and dynamic craft beer communities are popping up all over the country. SF Beer Week was only the second event of its kind in 2009 and now serves as a model for the 80-plus regional beer weeks throughout the United States. The Bay Area remains a leader in the craft beer movement and SF Beer Week reinforces that fact.
The Bay Area’s longtime role as a leader in the production of wine, spirits, cheeses, pasture fed meats and bread—and any other number of artisan and organic products—dovetails extremely well with the local craft beer culture. Craft beer is now a part of most local restaurants’ beverage programs, beer and food pairing opportunities are a regular occurrence and there is a lot of collaboration among local brewers and other food and beverage producers. While these trends exist and grow year after year, they reach a highly visible, critical mass during SF Beer Week.
SF Beer Week demonstrates the vitality and versatility of craft beer, and nowhere else are those attributes more evident than in Northern California, the birthplace of the modern craft beer movement. Fritz Maytag’s purchase of the historic Anchor Brewing Company in 1965 set the stage for a Bay Area-led return to quality, flavorful beer in the United States. Many post-Prohibition firsts came out of Anchor and other local breweries over the next 20 years. New Albion Brewing Company, the nation’s first new microbrewery, was opened by Jack McAuliffe in Sonoma County in 1977. Sierra Nevada began brewing in Chico just three years later, while three of the country’s first four brewpubs opened in the Bay Area in the early 1980s.
For more information, check out the SF Beer Week website, www.sfbeerweek.org, and mobile app. These are the main portals to the over 350 events that will take place throughout the Bay Area. Users can find detailed information about events, create itineraries, get directions to venues and follow the latest updates on the blog.
