Happy Beer Week from the Linkery and 30th Street

It's Beer Week! And The Nation's Best Beer Boulevard ain't gonna disappoint.

Probably the highlight of the week, from a 30th Street point of view, is the Green Flash Progressive Beer Dinner on Thursday...replete with a free hop-on/hop-off shuttle running up and down the three-oh.

As for us here at the Linkery...here's our lineup.

* We're starting a day early, Thursday, with Alesmith Winter Yule on cask paired with fried green tomatoes (local, of course) and with Stone Ruination on cask paired with grilled Baja octopus and ginger chile dressing. I know that a lot of you won't read this before Thursday is done, but fortunately we'll have Winter Yule on cask Friday, too. It's an Imperial Red Ale, 9% ABV, hand tended by AleSmith's cask maestro Bill Batten.

Then the real stuff starts. I'm pretty confident that this week we're setting a benchmark for craft beer celebrations at a farm-to-table restaurant:

* Friday the 6th is Airdale Airlines Nite. This is just meant to be a lot of fun and showcase Airdale, which is a newcomer to the local brewing scene but worthy of being a San Diego brewery. We'll have their Pale Ale, Spiced Porter, and Dark & Stormy Tap on draft -- at $1 each for everyone dressed in their pilot or flight crew carb. I figure the place should look like something from "Only Angles Have Wings" (Howard Hawks/Clark Gable joint, Google it.)

* Sunday the 8th, all day and nite, is our Green Flash Smoke Out. We're super-sizing (in a non fast-food sense) our regular Smokehouse Sunday to include 6 GF beers on cask, and 5 on draft. The cask beers all have specific pairings, too, and they're avaliable for $8 for the dish of food and a half pour of beer. A couple unusual beers on cask include Hop-less, Green Flash's new gruit beer made with herbs instead of hops, and SuperFreak, Green Flash's Belgian IPA with wild yeast for sourness and aged in wine barrels. Green Flash brewer and loyal North Parkian Chuck Silva will be on the premises, we'll have sausages made from Green Flash's spent barley, and Max is also considering spit roasting a pig. Just 'cause. Here's the full menu.

* Thursday the 12th is the Green Flash progressive dinner. For this we're teaming up with our great neighbor restaurants on 30th: Sea Rocket Bistro, Ritual Tavern, Jayne's Gastropub, and (on 30th in spirit only) Blind Lady Ale House. At each location you'll find multiple Green Flash beers available with paired dishes always under $10 for the pairing. If you're really a hedon you can probably get up to 12 or 15 in total. Green Flash is running a hop-on/hop-off shuttle on 30th to make it easy to get to all the venues. As an added bonus, totally unrelated to Green Flash, Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing, who is an inspiration to all of us who love craft food and beverages, will be at Toronado right up the street that night, too.

* Saturday we're capping off the week with a reprise of one of our most successful beer events ever: Mad River Serious Madness 2. Mad River is a phenomenal brewery from Blue Lake, California in Humboldt County. We've been friends with them a while, and once again they are bringing 6 cask beers and 5 draft beers to bust out on Saturday at noon. It's very rare for Mad River to offer specialty brews -- they're known for their consistent and excellent lineup -- so this is an amazing opportunity for which we are very grateful. We'll have their bourbon stout, double brown, chile beer, pumpkin ale, wheat wine and more. And, of course, we'll have pairings for each of the cask beers, at $8 for the food and the half pour of beer. Check out the full menu.

* Every nite of beer week we'll have multiple cask conditioned beers (actually we have that every nite of the year), great craft beers on draft, lots of delicious food, and, you know, good wine and house made nonalcoholic beverages too.

* Totally unrelated to Beer Week, we're co-sponsoring a free showing of Food, Inc. at the Velo Cult Bike Shop on Saturday nite. It's a look inside the industrial food system that we at the Linkery are working to move beyond. We like the fun of what we do but we also don't forget that we're trying to develop a way of eating and living that you and we will be happy to be in touch with. Food, Inc is another step toward a world like that. If you're interested, come to Velo Cult (2220 Fern, it's basically 30th but randomly has a different name that block) by 7pm on Saturday nite. Some of us will ride up to the Link for dinner afterward.