Anchor Brewing Tour etc.

This was the day we were waiting for. Due to the extreme dilligence of one Elizabeth Ralph, we were able to get into a free tour of the Anchor Brewing Company. The plan was to get up early(ish), walk down to downtown Sausalito, and get on the bus so we could be in the city and at the brewery so we could scope things out before the tour began. The goal was not to waste any time looking at the memorabilia after the tour so that time for free samples could be maximimized. Liz had been on the tour before so she had a strategy worked out to make sure that we were first in line for the tasting. The key was to get to the front of the group when in the bottling room in order to make a sprint to the tap room. Liz and Kate were pissed at me because I didn't push an elderly man out of our way in order to get to the front sooner. Despite this enormous gaffe on my part, we were still able to get to the head of the pack. This turned out to not even really matter because it seemed as though everyone got a standard amount of beer. Liz claimed that the last time she went, at some point, the tour guide just allowed a free for all on beer and she was able to get trashed. This was not our experience though we did receive several generous "tastes;" enough to get a reasonable buzz going.

The tour was very interesting. I was tempted throughout the whole thing to ask nerdy questions to let the dude know that I brew and then decided against it because I'm not quite that douchey. One of the reasons that Anchor's signature beer is called steam beer is that they use the cool air to ferment it rather than ice/refrigeration. The beer ferments in big open tubs for a couple of days and then goes into takes for secondary fermentation. As you might imagine, because the tubs are open, the beer loses some of its carbonation. So, in order to preserve natural carbonation, Anchor mixes 85% three day fermented beer with 15% 1 day fermented beer. (The 1 day fermented has more sugar left to be converted to alcohol releasing c02 in the process).

After the tour, we started out on our quest to make our buzzes last for the rest of the day until Liz's sister was off work and ready to drive our drunk asses home. The plan was to walk towards her office and make several stops at various watering holes along the way. You know, just see the city.

Our first stop was at a pizza place just down the hill from the Anchor Brewing Company. We got a margherita pizza and something called pizza "cannibal" with sausage and egg on it - it was incredible and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just the beer.

After Pizza Nostra, we headed toward Market St and had more trouble than we expected finding places to buy/drink alcohol. Eventually, we saw Sellers Markets which had draft beer and was the first reasonable place (i.e. no strippers) on Market St that we passed. So, we stopped and had a beer as our buzzes were certainly endangered and almost extinct at this point. We had walked much further than we originally anticipated for the first leg of our pilgrimage.

We then went to the Ferry Building (which is on the water) and had an over priced beer while we looked out at the water. Kate and Liz got dulce de leche gelato and taunted me with it. After our visit to the ferry building, it was about 5 o'clock and we met up with Rebecca to go back to Sausalito.

Our total walk from the Anchor to the Ferry Building was just over 3 miles. I wanted to post a Gmaps Pedometer image of our route but was too dumb to figure out how to do it.