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Sometimes it takes a special individual, outside of one’s immediate circle of family and friends, to help one maintain a sense of well-being — a therapist, a hairstylist, a wisecracking TV detective.
For me, it’s Chris Bol, David Ciccolo, and Max Toste. These are the beer gurus at, respectively, Redbones Barbecue, Anam Cara Publick House, and Bukowski Tavern (Cambridge), three of greater Boston’s finer multi-tap bars.
They go to considerable lengths to make me and my fellow beer enthusiasts happy. It’s not just that they offer an extraordinary selection of artisanal beers from around the world. It’s that they pour those beers fresh, out of a clean draught line and into a clean glass — a practice that’s not as common as it should be. Their dedication to storing and serving beer properly can be as important to the quality of a malt beverage as the skill of the brewer who made it.
Bol and Toste, though only in their 20s, spent several years in the restaurant biz before becoming beer-bar managers. Bol has been a craft-beer enthusiast from the tender and illegal age of 14. Toste is a food and wine guy who gravitated toward beer because "it’s hard to have Champagne taste on a Bud budget." Ciccolo is the only one of the three with brewing experience — he worked for Tremont’s Charlestown plant until it closed — and the only one to own his bar (in partnership with Ailish Gilligan).
The three bars differ in concept — Redbones is as much about the barbecue as the beer, Bukowski is a hipster hangout, and Anam Cara caters to the serious beer geek — but Bol, Ciccolo, and Toste share the same basic rules of beermanship: keep your beer selection interesting, be a stickler for cleanliness, and educate yourself and your staff.
Each of these guys strives to serve beers that set him apart from his competitors. When I talked to Bol, he poured me a glass of Mestreechs Aajt, a tasty Flanders red ale and a Redbones exclusive. "It’s a thrill to get something no one else has. It’s like a treasure hunt," he said. With Toste, it was Sprecher Black Bavarian, a schwarzbier from Wisconsin. "Nobody has a schwarzbier on draught," he boasted. And when I visited Ciccolo at Anam Cara, I was pleasantly surprised to see De Ranke XX Bitter on draught (I had only seen it in bottles elsewhere). And it wasn’t just a temporary treat, explained Ciccolo. "We always have it on draught."
Keeping the beer selection interesting and one-upping your competitors involves dealing with multiple distributors, which can be chaotic. Bol says he does business with as many as 14 distributors, ranging from companies with big trucks and assigned delivery days to smaller concerns that show up at random with a van. He routinely special-orders kegs three or four months in advance. Not that his patience is always rewarded. "There are strikes on the docks, things get lost, brewers decide to stop shipping and don’t tell you," he said.
"It’s maddening," said Ciccolo, launching into a complaint about one distributor who showed up with not one, but three, kegs back-ordered. That meant that Ciccolo had to print new beer-special menus and that the guy who drove up from Connecticut that night because he read on BeerAdvocate.com that such-and-such would be on tap was out of luck. "They don’t really get what we’re trying to do here," said Ciccolo.
To keep their draught lines sanitary, the guys schedule thorough bi-weekly or monthly cleanings. To ensure freshness, they constantly rotate stock, preventing anything from sitting around for more than a couple of weeks. "I treat all the beer as if it’s perishable," said Toste. "I’m a freak about fresh, clean beer." How does he know if the beer’s fresh? "I’m always tasting. If I didn’t ride my bike, I’d have an enormous beer belly."
Tasting is also part of the beer-education process. Bol, Ciccolo, and Toste are always updating their knowledge. They ask for samples from a supplier before ordering a new beer and even talk to the brewer if possible. They also make sure their staffs are familiar with every beer on the menu. "Whenever something new comes in, there’s a mandatory tasting," said Ciccolo. "I don’t ever want to hear a server say ‘I don’t know’ when someone asks about a beer."
Mandatory tastings sound pretty severe, but I’m glad Ciccolo’s such a tough boss. If it means I can be guaranteed a clean, delicious brew every time I walk into his bar, so be it.
Anam Cara
1648 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA
617-277-2880
Bukowski Tavern
1281 Cambridge St.
Cambridge MA
617-497-7077
(also: 50 Dalton St.
Boston, MA
617-267-5028)
Redbones Barbecue
55 Chester St.
Somerville, MA
617-628-2200
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