The Session: Introducing the Thirsty Hopster

When I first met Jessica, I had no idea that I had just met every beer geek’s dream girl. Smart, beautiful, and a virtual walking beer encyclopedia.

It was July 17th, 2007, and I was on the tail end of my Great Northwest Beer Adventure. After a month of busing, thumbing, and train-ing all the way up to Vancouver, I was on the last leg of my trip, staying in San Francisco’s Presidio with my buddy Spencer.

That afternoon, we had visited Magnolia where we thoroughly enjoyed the Blue Boy Bitter, the Lazy Boy IPA, the Prescription Pale, and their cask wheat beer (well, maybe we didn’t enjoy the cask wheat beer that much). It was still pretty early in the afternoon, and we had several more bars to hit, so we hopped on the bus and made our way down to the Toronado, a world renowned beer bar I had not yet visited.

It goes without saying that Toronado was everything I expected and more. The lovely Jennifer (aka Princess) recommended the Brother David’s Double, followed by some Old Foghorn on draft. As you can imagine, by this point we were on our way to getting absolutely snockered.

(By the way, thanks to Stonch for hosting this month’s Session!).

It was time to journey on, so we left Toronado to find our next bar. We made it all of about 10 feet before we decided we needed to take a hot dog break at the sausage shop next door, and it was there while waiting for my weiner I met Jessica.

“Did you guys just come from Toronado? I love that place. Proximity to Toronado was an important factor when I was looking for an apartment.”

Love at first sight?

We got to talking beer, and I told her about my travels, and believe it or not, she was planning a Great Northwest Beer Adventure of her own!

I gave her a few recommendations for Portland, told her about beermapping.com, and then Spence and I were on our way.

In the weeks that followed, we exchanged a few emails, shared a few beer recommendations, and became Facebook friends. It was Facebook that told me Jess went to Harvard, and that we had spent the first 18 years of our lives living no more than 10 miles away from each other in Los Angeles. Weird, right?

Jessica is an amazing writer, words flow out of her like endless rain into a paper cup. She can effortlessly crank out a few hundred words on any topic. From atheism to beer to Freakonomics, Jess has an opinion and she’s ready to argue about it.

Her beer notes, originally posted on Facebook, were so popular with her friends she had no choice but to start a blog and migrate her postings.

Oh yeah, and she’s also on Yelp. Here’s a few snippets to give you the flavor of her writing.

On Gordon Biersch:

Thanks, Gordon Biersch, for reminding me why I’ve got to get out of the consulting business sooner rather than later.

Let me put it this way, I’m sure you’re doing quite well for yourself. You get to ride the wave of craft brew popularity without actually demonstrating any craft in your brewing. You’ve wrapped up the baseball market, nailing down the SF pre-Giants game scene and winning the chance to be the BMC alternative in Dodgers Stadium, my home team’s field. And when my company, and I’m sure many others in the Financial District, needs to know where to take groups of 30 to 50 corporate types who don’t care if their food is cold and beer is warm so long as it’s free, you’re there for them.

On visiting Anderson Valley Brewing Co.:

How can you not like a place that offers carriage rides and a DISC GOLF course? Now, I’m always suspicious of frisbee players because their cultishness the verges on the level displayed by scientologists, but that just sounds like an awesome way to spend a sunny day in Mendocino.

On BottleWorks, a beer store in Seattle:

This is what San Francisco’s City Beer Store wishes it was.

It almost pained me to leave the store knowing there was so much good stuff still on the shelf. It’s a long, narrow space and all 3 walls except the front where the door is are lined with beer. And it seems like at least half the space is dedicated to refrigerated beer. Which is awesome, because when I went to Bottleworks, I was so excited about what we bought that I could barely wait to get home, much less for our beer to chill.

A couple months after our brief meeting at the sausage shop, I was back in the Bay Area for a weekend jaunt. We had a chance to catch up over a few beers at Thirsty Bear and 21st Amendment.

A lot of times, when I make new friends that are really into beer, there’s a propensity to talk beer the whole time; breweries, beer styles, upcoming seasonals and whatnot. But sometimes, when you’re savoring a delicious IPA on a sunny Saturday afternoon, it’s nice to let the beer fade into the background and enjoy the company of your new beer friend.

Be sure to visit Jessica at http://thethirstyhopster.wordpress.com/

Bookmark her, Blogroll her, Subscribe to her RSS and all that great stuff.

For a complete Session roundup, visit Stonch’s Beer Blog.

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