Dave Keene steps through Toronado's Dutch door with a butted out, half-smoked cigar. It's Halloween, but Keene, the owner of the revered 31-year-old Haight Street beer bar, sports a simple shirt with the dive's logo on it.

Saturday, Nov. 3 marks the bar's 25th annual Barleywine Festival, a singular event almost as old as the bar itself, dedicated to appreciating a full-bodied, viscous and boozy style of beer that Keene loves.

That first year of the festival saw just four barleywines on the menu, made by brewers like Anchor, Sierra Nevada and Marin Brewing; this year, there will be at least 58. These days, brewers like Russian River, Wren House and Sante Adairius work barleywines into their brewing schedules just to be featured on the board at this festival — if they're deemed worthy by Keene and the bar's manager, Chad Calvert.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when it became a recognized rite of passage for a brewery to land on Toronado's menu, not just during Barleywine Fest, but at any time of year. But Keene knew his dive was something special only a few years after opening.

"A brewer that I'd met came in and was taking pictures, and I go, 'What are you doing?'" Keene recalls. "He said, 'I've dreamed of having my beer on Toronado's board. And now I have.' He was so proud of it. That was the first time, five years in, seeing a brewer totally humbled to have a beer on the board."

As Keene says, it was never his intention to "make or break a brewery" by including them on the menu. He was more after the interesting styles, or what he calls the "extreme beers." Today, patrons don't flinch at seeing a puckery sour or a triple IPA, but 25 or 30 years ago, Toronado was "pushing the envelope on every style."

"It was always (about) my enthusiasm for what I liked and presenting things that they've never had," he says. "I always approached it like that. I never thought I had this huge club that I was walking around knighting people with."

Barleywine fit the "extreme" bill. A devotee of Anchor Brewing's Old Foghorn barleywine, Keene gathered up a handful of other similar local beers and threw them on the menu one Sunday in February 1993. The next year, Keene searched for more, and asked some brewers to make a beer for the occasion. Soon, it got to be too popular for just Sunday, so Keene moved it to Saturday, and recruited a panel of dozens of BJCP-certified judges to choose victors in a barleywine competition (who, actually, had to sit in the rented bar across the street, as Toronado's space was too small). Eventually, Toronado moved the whole event to November, to set some distance from the busy schedule of February's San Francisco Beer Week.

Judging was done away with in 2010, but for the 25th event, Keene and Calvert decided to bring it back, inviting 16 industry professionals to take part, including veteran beer writers Gail Ann Williams and Steve Shapiro, Magnolia's Dick Cantwell, and Don't Drink Beer's barleywine hype man Alex Kidd. The invitees will select three winners in three different categories and then crown one sweepstakes winner.

"Interest in barleywine has gone up and a little down but we're hoping to bring it back up again this year," Keene says. "With the interest in triple IPAs, double IPAs, a lot of people who normally would have explored barleywine have gone those directions."

Keene understands that flow of consciousness. Sipping on a Blind Pig from Russian River Brewing, Keene says he loves IPAs — in fact, IPA is his favorite style — although even he was surprised by the swift rise in the style's prominence. Mentioning that Anchor's Liberty Ale was "probably the first IPA in America," Keene adds that the IPA is "definitely the most exciting segment of beer." On Friday, Calvert chimes in, Toronado's menu listed 21 different IPAs.

But even that many IPAs still leaves dozens of taps for other styles. Alongside menu stalwarts like Moonlight's Death & Taxes, Anchor's Steam, and Unibroue's La Fin du Monde, there are offerings from buzzy newcomers like Humble Sea, Alvarado Street, New Glory and Moksa. It's a balance of old guard and new guard that Calvert now curates and oversees.

In "the old days" of the bar, Keene says, he'd drive to a brewery with empty kegs in the car, taste a few beers, fill up the kegs and bring them back to the Haight. "That's a whole different world," he remembers.

Now, Calvert says they don't get the chance to get out as much. In some cases he'll reach out to a brewery with "a lot of hype," but often, up-and-coming breweries will bring samples to the bar.

"We try to be pretty open with breweries coming in and giving them an opportunities to get on the board," he says. "Some people really catch on, like Moksa, but there are other small breweries who are really good but maybe not right for Toronado."

Sixty percent of the menu is rotated, which allows Calvert to occasionally add a few rare and out-of-market beers, like those by recently featured brewers Highland Park, Bottle Logic and Horus. The tradeoff, however, is that some "old line" brewers may be rotated off the board.

"The younger people come in and they're looking for something different than what that brewer is making," Keene says. "It's kind of down to the brewer to keep up with the times before they start to drop off the menu. For instance, Liberty, which is a favorite historical beer of mine, fades off the menu because no one is drinking it. I think it's sad, because this is where IPA started in America. But it's no longer on here. It can't just occupy a place because of its history — it's also got to sell."

Maintaining that criteria has been very effective for Toronado's reputation, although Keene says he had "no foresight" that the bar would ever reach this level of fame with its longevity.

"When I set out I wanted to be here 30 years in the future," Keene says. "I originally opened a local dive bar. And then it became a local dive bar that was famous for beer. Now it's one of the best dive bars in the world. I just layered on top of it."

And being a dive is quintessential to Toronado's identity. Don't expect to see "sterile" walls here or an extensive range of glassware filled with overpriced booze.

"We're not going to have the bartenders in white shirts with little skinny black ties," he adds. "We're a dive bar and we have reasonable prices, and are trying to be a place with every man beers for every man, not the elite who are trying to outdo each other. We are what we are."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.



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