(Press Release)

CHICO, CA—Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is targeting early November to open its Berkeley, Calif., space, coined the Torpedo Room. The intimate venue—whose name is inspired by the brewery’s innovative dry-hopping device, the Hop Torpedo—fits into a mixed-use building on Fourth Street between University Avenue and Addison Street. The Torpedo Room can host approximately 45 craft beer drinkers for educational tastings of unique and limited Sierra Nevada beers, as well as the occasional craft-centric event dedicated to beer science.

“Our brewers develop creative, flavorful beers at an impressive pace,” said Ken Grossman, Sierra Nevada’s founder. “They’re usually small batches, and it’s those beers folks will find in the Torpedo Room. We think it’s exciting—using rare offerings to showcase who we are and to talk about the science behind our beers. We really hope visitors take part in the dialogue.”

The Torpedo Room will feature 16 taps, and draught beer will be served in taster flights. Guests will also have the option of filling growlers to go, as well as purchasing six-packs, cases and individual specialty bottles. Light snacks will accompany beer flights, but there is not a full menu.

“West Berkeley fosters a great, progressive culture,” Grossman said, “and that includes a lot of ambitious food and drink. We’re eager to be part of the Bay Area craft scene while still staying close to our home base in Chico.”

Ongoing construction on the Torpedo Room capitalizes on Berkeley and greater Northern California talent. West Berkeley neighbor Trachtenberg Architects, Inc.; Ferrous Studios, Inc., in nearby Richmond, Calif.; and Chico-based craftspeople Westgate Hardwoods are among those helping Sierra Nevada create a rich atmosphere.

Keep an eye on the Sierra Nevada blog in coming weeks for more Torpedo Room visual milestones.

About Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Founded in 1980, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is one of America’s premier craft breweries, highly regarded for using only whole-cone hops and the finest quality ingredients. The pioneering spirit that launched Sierra Nevada spans more than three decades, with innovation emerging from both the brewhouse and sustainability initiatives. Sierra Nevada has set the standard for artisan brewers worldwide as a winner of numerous awards for its extensive line of beers including Pale Ale, Torpedo^®, Porter, Stout, Kellerweis^®and a host of seasonal, specialty and limited release beers. Learn more at www.sierranevada.com.

In Philadelphia, Russell is Joe Sixpack, a man who turned beer into a full time job: reason enough to admire him. He has also rather brazenly declared his hometown “America’s Best Beer Drinking City,” and slapped that tagline on a 10-day beer festival he helped organize called Philly Beer Week.

Mr. Sixpack’s boast doesn’t sit well in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco. At the Brewer’s Association in Boulder, CO, officials stopped short of censuring him, saying only that Russell ought to be prepared to defend his claim over a place like, say, Denver or Boulder or Fort Collins. In a column that ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette a day before the festival started, fellow beer writer Bob Batz Jr. wasn’t so sure that Philly was even the best beer drinking city in Pennsylvania.

Before we go on and I’m exposed, I ought to confess that I like Russell a lot. I wrote about him for another magazine and, afterward, took him up on an invitation to let him convince me about Philly. After four days with friends hoisting glasses in the South Philly Taproom, the Pub on Passyunk East (POPE), Capone’s, the Old Eagle Tavern, Monk’s, the Standard Tap, Azure, the Royal Tavern and, for good measure, a last Racer 5 again at POPE, I was in no shape to disagree with him.

Now, before you reach for your bung starter, realize that Mr. Sixpack has done us all a big favor. He has helped stir a national discussion about what makes a beer city good or great or even the best. We’ve had these debates from the time someone took note that there was more than one microbrewery in a city or that a neighborhood had suddenly sprouted several bars with exotic tap handles. Admit it. We love to fight over the best places to drink beer.

People used to pester Michael Jackson all the time for his favorite places. In 2000, he wrote that there were exactly seven great beer cities in America: Austin, Boston, Denver, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle. Baltimore, Chicago and New York might be contenders, he said at the time.

Just two years ago, Celebrator Beer News declared that not only did it know that there were 10 great beer cities but knew what order they came in: Portland, followed by San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Philadelphia, San Diego, Washington, D.C./Baltimore, Boston and a tie between Chicago and New York. The Web is choked with Top 10 lists.

Some of this is just spreadsheet work: numbers of microbreweries, brewpubs, good beers bars and homebrew clubs, population ratios and all that. But if it were merely a matter of mathematics, all of the lists would be exactly the same.

What is missing from all of the calculating is what Paul Gatza, the director of the Brewers Association, calls “the mystical experiences that people talk about.” It’s that heady feeling, impossible to quantify, that you are in a place among people who care as passionately about beer as you do. It is by this giddily subjective standard that Don Russell can claim Philadelphia’s supremacy. “Other towns, you sit in a bar, you could be anywhere in the United States,” Russell wrote in one of his recent columns. “You can’t drink beer in this city and not feel Philadelphia.”

And so, it is by Russell’s standard that I have been liberated to create my own, altogether different, list of beer cities. Without getting out the calculator, they are cities that have reached a certain critical mass in the availability of good beer. Unlike those Top 10 cities, they are not often recognized outside of their regions. Some are established stalwarts. Some are audacious upstarts. But they are all capable of making the argument that beer is an intrinsic part of their culture.

So as to ensure hurt feelings, I deliberately left off this list some fine beer cities: Milwaukee, my hometown, where I’ve probably had as much good beer as any one place in my lifetime; Baltimore, with its bewitching combination of locale, ethnicity and old and new brewers; St. Louis, where a certain brewing behemoth overshadows a vibrant craft brewing scene; and Austin, the city where my wife, Susan, and I have raised our children and where a major microbrewery (Celis) and a core of brewpubs have closed since the city made Michael Jackson’s list. While well known for beer, none of these has the same dynamism and momentum of the cities on my list. “Beauty,” as Gatza says, “is in the eye of the beerholder.”