Background – Almanac Beer Company
The Almanac Beer Company was founded in 2010 by Jesse Friedman and Damian Fagan. The duo met through a local homebrew club. For years they experimented with unique recipes brewing five gallon stove-top batches made in their San Francisco apartments. They began selling their beer at various farmers markets and felt they were on to something. Soon Friedman and Fagan decided to go the gypsy route and contracted with Drake’s Brewing to commercially brew their first beer. After Drake’s outgrew their ability to do contract beer, they contracted with Hermitage Brewing in San Jose.
Hermitage opened their first brewpub opened in 1987, one of the first half dozen in the Golden State, and is still open today. They been busy brewing for many other Bay Area breweries’ brands. Their annual volume puts them in the top 5% of breweries in the USA.
In June 2016, Almanac Beer Company announced the addition of four new year-round beers that would be available in cans. This is the first time Almanac utilized cans for its beers. An IPA, a Farmhouse, a Pilsner, and a Saison would be brewed by Speakeasy Brewery, a contract brewer in San Francisco. Speakeasy, which was founded in 1997, had just had a major expansion that increased its annual production capacity to 90,000 barrels.
Late in 2016 Friedman and Fagan opened their beer company’s first physical storefront in San Francisco. The space has 74 seats indoors with additional seating for 25 in the beer garden outside. Within months of opening, the duo was hit with learning Speakeasy, who was producing their fresh beer series, went bankrupt and abruptly closed. This not only affected the supply of beer into the new pub, but disrupted their 26 state distributions. The Almanac owners had to scramble to find other brewers in the bay area to contract with to get beer flowing again.
Soon after opening the brewpub, Friedman and Fagan was presented with an opportunity of a lifetime. Admiral Malting, a new project from Ron Silberstein of Thirsty Bear and Dave McLean of Magnolia Brewing was interested in locating in a WWII redwood Naval structure from 1942 on Alameda Island across the bay. They reached out to Almanac about setting up business in the other half of the building. Friedman and Fagan could not resist and set about planning to equip a new brewery to quadruple their brewing capacity and finally being in charge of their own production. The new facility has plenty of room for brewing, lots of barrel aging space, an indoor taproom and an outdoor beer garden. In 2019, patrons in San Francisco will be able to take a ferry from the San Francisco ferry plaza building to a new ferry terminal Alameda is putting in about 100 yards the Almanac front door.
About a month before this publication Jesse Friedman one of the founders, announced he was stepping away from Almanac. He will still be on the board for Almanac, but will step away from day to day operations.
Experience
The new facility is on Alameda Island in an industrial area about 100 yards from San Francisco bay. We found exposed beams, a large tasting room with many communal tables. Also had a long bar both in view of the vast brewing area complete with huge foeders and many barrels. There is some beautiful artwork on the wall inside from the patio. We had been enjoying Almanac bottled sour beers for several years and were excited to finally visit their new brewery. There were 19 different beers available on tap the day we arrived. Many of their bottles were also available for purchase. We loved all the draft sours and were surprised to find so many different “fresh” beers. Fresh such as four different hazy IPA’s, one clear IPA, two stouts, a lager and a pilsner. We had to leave with cans of Love, one of the hazy IPAs. They offer a few snacks and often have food trucks like the day we were there. If you love sour beer, this is a must stop. But don’t discount the hazy ipa!
We did not note any nearby lodging.
