ANSWERS
1. How can I make reservations for lunch or dinner?
You can't. Speakeasy makes beer and
only beer, which is distributed throughout the Bay Area and across America
in giant beer trucks.We do not have a kitchen, a chef, or waitstaff.
Our philosophy is that we want to be the jackasses getting kicked out
of a place at 2AM, rather than having to be the ones kicking YOU out.
Note to California politicians... Extend those drinking hours
- it prevents binge drinking at last call and is good for the economy!
2. What is a microbrewery?
Breweries all make beer (though many
times it sucks), and we are subcatagorized by our output, or size. A
microbrewery is a relatively small brewery which produces up
to 15,000 U.S. barrels, or 465,000 gallons, per year. If there is a
restaurant component (which Speakeasy does NOT have), the operation
would be called a brewpub, not a microbrewery. Regional
breweries are larger in size and produce from 15,001 to 1,000,000
barrels (examples include local Anchor, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium
from Colorado). After that, there are big-ass breweries like Anheuser
Busch, Miller, Coors... oh, and Sam Adams. Then, last and least, is
the Beer Marketing Company, which makes labels and not beer
(just like clothing... check the label to see where it was made). Speakeasy
is the second-largest brewery in The City (behind Anchor - which is
over 10 times our size) and is San Francisco's largest microbrewery!
3. Are ales or lagers darker in color?
Stupid question! We have seen this
printed more times wrong than right, so we want to correct the field
here. Ales and lagers differ ONLY by the yeast strain (or family) used
to ferment the beer. Both ales and lagers can be pale or black. Furthermore,
either can be light or strong, hoppy or not, flat or highly-carbonated,
warm or ice-cold. Not to say all of the above combinations make for
good beer, but theoretically they are all true possibilities. Ale brewers
employ Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast and the beer ferments quickly
(in about a week), while lager brewers use Saccharomyces uvarum (now,
don't you feel smarter). Lagers take longer to ferment (about four weeks)
and require cooler temperatures to do so. Speakeasy brewers make both
types of beer for draft, though only a selection of our ales are available
in bottles.
4. Is local beer better?
Of course it is! Beer is like liquid
bread, and bread is better fresh, isn't it? The closer the brewery,
the fresher the beer will be (if the distributors do their job). Budweiser
has spent millions of dollars to tell consumers this very fact, and
just as it applies to Bud, it applies more so to Speakeasy. After all,
a Speakeasy beer has a lot more flavor to begin with... just like a
really good loaf of bread. Speakeasy marks every six-pack & four-pack
carrier with a plain-in-english date stamp bearing the day the beer
was bottled. Look at that stamp next time you buy a Speakeasy beer and
see how fresh it is. Beer does last longer than bread... about four-to-six
months if kept cool.
5. Where can I find Speakeasy beers.
Six-packs of Prohibition
Ale, Big Daddy I.P.A. and Untouchable Pale Ale are available in most
markets throughout San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Double Daddy and Old Godfather are both in four-packs (of 12oz bottles) and are available in more discerning beer outlets. In areas surrounding
S.F. our bottled beers can be found in Beverages & More, as well as most
smaller markets and liquor stores. Speakeasy beer is offered on draft
at hundreds of establishments across the Bay Area and beyond. Look for the eyes
on the tap handles, and if you don't see our beer at your local... Demand
Prohibition!... or your own personal favorite.
6. Can I meet the Mob and see the brewery?
Yes, but not just any time you feel
like it. We are busy running our racket, so we have to limit access
to the brewery to our planned special events, Friday afternoons from
4-8pm, or to tours that have been scheduled in advance by phone at
415-642-3371.
7. Why are most Speakeasy beers so damn strong?
Because booze tastes good! Alcohol
is a critical component of the overall flavor of a beer, and every type
of beer has an optimal range of alcohol, as a percentage by volume,
for flavor profile. Most of our beers are properly balanced with higher-than-average
alcohol levels, due to the overall higher-impact of their flavors compared
to our more mainstream competitors. There are some exceptions, such
as the Bootlegger Black Lager that work better at lower alcohol levels,
but we generally brew BIG beers, and they require more booze for
balance (kind of ironic, eh). Why do you think non-alcoholic beers
suck? Those poor things were actually real beer at one time, only to
have their lifeblood of alcohol extracted away from them.
8. Why are Speakeasy bottles painted instead of paper-labeled?
We are built to last. Everything about
Speakeasy speaks to our commitment to quality, history and our beer-drinking
friends that remind us regularly how damn good our beer really is. Besides,
with all the sexually-charged people around here, labels get peeled-off
pretty quickly, so if people hook up, at least they can remember what
beer they were drinking when it happened.
9. Does filtering beer take away from it's character?
Not unless part of the character
you are trying to retain comes from an infectious organism which has
contaminated your beer, or from yeast muck, that you somehow rationalized
was not a bug but a feature. Filtering does three
basic things: A) it clarifies the beer (duh!) and makes it look pretty,
B) it removes all non-soluble material to the nominal pore size of the
filter, which in Speakeasy's case is small enough to remove contaminating
organisms (in the unlikely event that they exist) - thus "sterilizing"
the beer, and C) it stabilizes the beer by removing particulates which
can create physical instability on the shelf. For those brewers who
disagree - If your beer is not hoppy after filtration, then you didn't
add enough hops to begin with... and yes, hops are expensive.
10. Are we related to speakeasy.net (the internet service provider)?
No.
11. Why was our web page down for so long?
Because we make love and beer, not
web pages!
