21st Amendment Zed Lupulin – Strong Beer Month XVI

From 21st Amendment:

Strong Beer Month has returned and just coming off the heals of San Francisco Beer Week which was two weeks earlier this year due to the SuperBowl coming to town. SBM is our month-long festival in February where the 21st Amendment and Magnolia Brewery each put six strong beers on tap at the start of the month, all over 8.5% ABV, for a total of 12.  Once you’ve enjoyed all 12 beers from both establishments you get to keep the commemorative glass, designed especially for the month. We chose Led Zeppelin II as this year’s album with our usual twist and now calling it “Zed Lupulin – Strong Beer XVI” with members of the brewery staff from both the 21A and Magnolia.

Strong Beer Month started over a conversation that Dave McLean (owner and Brewmaster at Magnolia) and I had over a beer one day, I believe it was at the Toronado, when we were trying to figure out how to get more people into our pubs during February, which historically in the restaurant industry is one of the slowest months of the year. We thought, hey it’s cold, we like to drink strong beers, people want to drink strong beers as they have been at other Bay Area events in February such as the Toronado Barleywine festival, which has been cancelled ths year, and theThe Bistro’s Imperial IPA festival.

For the first few years of Strong Beer Month we started a theme of reproducing a classic rock album cover with the brewers and owners from both breweries inserting ourselves into the album with a Strong Beer Month spin. Our good friend Eric (Schweick) Schweickert is the creative mojo behind this exercise in egotism  and responsible for the art direction, design and layout of these masterpieces. His day job is working for ILM at the Presidio here in San Francisco and when he is not rendering that 10 second shot in the latest Star Wars, he is also a craft beer freak and an avid hombrewer.