Overflow crowd of beer lovers awaits Pliny the Younger

You don't call this stuff brewski.

The hundreds of people who lined up in the rain in downtown Santa Rosa on Friday morning - some arriving the night before with umbrellas, North Face parkas and a good bit of facial hair - came to pay tribute to craft beer.

Specifically, they sought this year's batch of Pliny the Younger, a super-hoppy, high-alcohol "triple IPA" that has silenced the whiniest of beer snobs and put the small Russian River Brewing Co. on the map. Some call it the best beer on Earth.

With a limited supply available, the annual release on the first Friday of February has become an affair akin to the revealing of an Apple gadget or a cult sneaker, a testament to a craft-beer explosion in which imperial stouts and sour ales have nudged into a marketplace once dominated by the likes of Miller and Bud.

Sales of Russian River ales and other U.S. specialty brews have pushed craft-beer sales to 10.2 percent of the domestic beer market, in dollar terms, according to the Brewers Association, an industry group.


http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Overflow-crowd-of-beer-lovers-awaits-Pliny-the-5214552.php