This is what Toronado's beer list looked like 10 years ago

Toronado, the Haight Street beer bar on October 31, 2018. Toronado, the Haight Street beer bar on October 31, 2018. Photo: Alyssa Pereira/SFGATE Photo: Alyssa Pereira/SFGATE Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close This is what Toronado's beer list looked like 10 years ago 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

Ten years ago, San Francisco was a different place. There was no Twitter building on Market Street, the Giants hadn’t yet three-peated even-year World Series wins, and there were about 80,000 fewer people living in the city. You were more likely to see a passing nude parade than a scooter haplessly abandoned in a city trash can.

But not everything’s changed. The Haight Street beer bar Toronado, for one, is still recognizable in a few capacities.

“[Owner] Dave [Keene] and I talked about this list,” says manager Chad Calvert of a November 2009 photo of Toronado’s beer menu. “The first thing [Keene] noticed is the prices haven’t changed in 10 years.”

Toronado, which Keene opened as a craft beer dive bar in 1987, still serves some of the same beers it did in 2009. It also still hosts the annual Barleywine Festival and maintains its reputation for its notoriously incisive bartenders.

But other things have evolved — namely, the beer selection. At the end of the last decade in 2009, “right before the second wave of American craft,” Calvert says, it was a simpler, far less hoppy time. The menu reflected that.

There were Belgians, including St. Bernardus Witbier, Chimay Cinq Cents (White Label), and a couple Rodenbachs. There were German classics, like Schneider’s Aventinus and Spaten’s Franziskaner. There were wet-hopped ales, too, per the season, and early holiday additions, like Anchor Christmas and Deschutes Jubelale. But many tiles on the menu were occupied by what everyone at the time was still calling “microbrews” — craft beers from now-iconic brewing mainstays, like Russian River, Allagash, Dogfish Head, Firestone Walker and Moonlight.

RELATED: From local dive to world-renowned beer bar: Toronado's Dave Keene on 'pushing the envelope'

“The Rodenbach Grand Cru was a standout beer for me personally,” says Stu Kane, a longtime bartender, looking over 2009’s offerings. “I’ve liked Flemish Reds since the first time I tasted one — Duchesse de Bourgogne.”

Calvert points out that the menu, and the sours in particular, is indicative of something about craft brewing as a whole in 2009: A number of American brewers made these sours, but few produced enough to fill kegs. So Toronado bought stock but imported drafts.

“If you could see the sour beer bottle list from that time, it would include three or four Cantillons, Cable Car (a rare collaboration beer between Toronado and Lost Abbey), and most likely a few bottles of Russian River,” he says. “We were really further into the sour movement than this list reflects. But definitely the second wave looks to be where every brewery seems to think they need to have a sour program.”

There are some beers that remain on the list today. Russian River claims a few taps, as does Moonlight. Anchor Steam is eternal, as is Allagash White. Even some of the imports are still there — though to a lesser degree. Over the years, imported Belgian sours were replaced by those from West Coast breweries; mixed-fermentation beers from Russian River and Firestone Walker were joined by those of The Rare Barrel, Sante Adairius, Cascade and Bruery Terreux.

Another glaring difference between the end-of-decade menus of 2009 and 2019: the evolving amount of IPAs. Calvert says in 2009, Keene would likely have kept at least 10 IPAs on at any given time, with one certainly being Anchor’s Liberty Ale, which had a permanent handle at Toronado for more than a decade. Longtime staffers even kid that the beer, which looked a bit cloudy, was the first hazy IPA.

“[Keene and former manager Dave Suurballe] always joked that there was a hazy on at the Toronado in 1991,” Calvert says.

In any case, 35 to 40 percent of the beer list today is made up of IPAs or double IPAs from newer breweries, such as Cellarmaker, Alvarado Street and Fieldwork. Like across America, Kane says the style still reigns in 2019.

“There’s no doubt that the Northeast-style IPA continues to be wildly popular, especially with tourists and occasional customers,” Kane says. “But most of our regulars drink [Russian River’s] Blind Pig, as was the case in 2009. It remains our most popular IPA after 10 years.”

Besides the IPAs and the imports, there’s something else that jumps out from the 2009 list, Calvert says: Publication.

Publication, he explains, was a brett-yeasted beer specially made by Russian River Brewing in tandem with the Publican National Committee, an exclusive coterie of those who own influential beer bars across the United States. Keene is a founding member, as is Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing, Chris Black from Falling Rock in Denver and Tom Peters from Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia, among a few others. (As it happens, the Committee will be dropping a new beer, a barrel-aged sour, at some point this month.)

Much has changed about San Francisco, and Toronado is not immune — the bar's patrons are different every year. The city will certainly look even more different at the end of the next decade 10 years from now.

But some things are immutable. There are eternal truths here: Definitely bring your jacket; don’t ever take the cable car from the Powell turnaround; remember the test siren goes off at noon Tuesdays.

And always know what you’re ordering before you step to the bar at Toronado.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGate digital editor. Email: apereira@sfchronicle.com | Twitter: @alyspereira

