Russian River Brewing's perennial cult favorite beer Pliny the Younger — the rabid, continued popularity and cult status of which is baffling to some but completely justified to others — is more plentiful than it used to be.

It's not your average Bay Area beer, if only because of the attention it gets. Decades on, the annual winter release of Pliny the Younger continues to get news coverage, with local TV stations often doing segments about the lines that form at Russian River Brewing's Sonoma County brewpubs.

Since the early 2010s, Pliny the Younger — which is the richer, hoppier limited release of Russian River's classic Pliny the Elder — has typically been released in conjunction with SF Beer Week, which has typically happened in early February. This year, Beer Week is pushed to late February, but the beer is starting to flow from the brewery nonetheless, and kegs are being tapped as we speak in San Francisco and elsewhere.

As SFist reported earlier, storied Lower Haight beer bar Toronado is doing its own Beer Week this year which kicks off tomorrow, February 7, with the tapping of its first Pliny keg of the season. Toronado's Beer Week is also a celebration for its owner and founder, Dave Keene, who is selling the bar and retiring.

600 kegs have now gone out to bars and restaurants in the Bay Area and beyond, with some steady customers of Russian River Brewing over the years getting larger quantities like two kegs or more. In addition to Toronado, The Page (298 Divisadero) is already pouring theirs, and you can grab a pint there tonight if they don't run out.

Hi Tops in the Castro will reportedly be getting some Pliny again this year, as they did last year, but they may wait until Beer Week (which starts February 21) to tap their first keg.

Other SF bars that could be tapping their kegs between now and Beer Week include Garaje (475 Third Street), Holy Water (309 Cortland Ave), Zeitgeist (199 Valencia), and Liquid Gold (1040 Hyde Street).

Over in Oakland, you can find Pliny the Younger at Monk's Kettle and Ben ‘N Nick’s. Gott's Roadside in Napa is apparently already pouring Pliny, and it's not clear if the Gott's locations in SF will be getting some too.

And as Sonoma Magazine reports, the Pliny will pouring on Super Bowl Sunday at The Goose & Fern (116 Fifth St., Santa Rosa), Trail House Cafe, (4036 Montgomery Drive, Suite C, Santa Rosa), and Taps On The River (54 E. Washington St., Petaluma).

Production of Pliny the Younger is much bigger than it was last decade. Russian River Brewing won't be doing their own Pliny pourings at their brewpubs in Santa Rosa and Windsor until later, when they finish a second batch of the beer in March. As owners Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo tell the Chronicle this week, this is a "happy accident" of scheduling that came out of a COVID-related shutdown of production in 2022.

"The weather is warmer, it’s daylight savings," Vinnie tells the paper. "And from a production standpoint, it works to split it up. It doesn’t tie up our tanks the way it used to."

So, expect the big Russian River brewpub event days to happen March 21 to April 3. Customers at those events get wristbands that entitle them to three 10-ounce draft pours and three to-go bottles of Pliny the Younger.

As for the first batch that has already started pouring at bars, the Cilurzos warn that extra-hoppy beers like these have a brief shelf life, which is part of the reason for the limited annual release. And they're telling bars that they shouldn't try to hold on to kegs too long — they should all be tapped in February, while the beer is still fresh.