Tony Gwynn's beer gets a limited 'Hall of Fame' edition for his birthday

The story of how Tony Gwynn came to have his own beer is a wonderful one. It’s also a fitting tale now that San Diego's AleSmith Brewing Co. is preparing to release a limited Hall of Fame version of its popular San Diego .394 Pale Ale on what would have been Gwynn’s 55th birthday.

You see, Tom Seaver has his own wine and he brings it to the annual Hall of Fame gathering in Cooperstown. Word is that Seaver wouldn’t share with any hitter who did well against him. So Gwynn never got any.

[Still not too late to sign up for Yahoo Sports Fantasy Baseball]

That’s why he partnered with AleSmith to make his own beer. It was something Gwynn could take to the Hall of Fame gathering, he told AleSmith’s owner Peter Zien when they met, something for the hitters.

Unfortunately Gwynn never got to take his beer to Cooperstown. It was released last June. He died 10 days later. So AleSmith is doing something that should delight both baseball fans and beer geeks — it’s releasing a Hall of Fame version of the .394 Pale Ale (named for Gwynn’s 1994 strike-shortened season, in which he hit .394).

The new version comes in a champagne bottle with real gold used to create the label, with help of 1,400-degree heat. There’s a silhouette of Gwynn batting, plus his signature that reads “Tony Gwynn HOF 07.” It an “imperial” version of the .394 Pale Ale, which if you don’t speak craft beer, essentially means it’s a stronger version of the original.

“When we were having our initial meetings back in 2014,” Zien says, “no one knew how sick Tony was, but he found this project to be really interesting. It was important to him. It is popular in beer culture to imperialize it or double-strengthen [beers]. We’re always thinking about what else we can do. A couple of months ago, we thought, ‘We could do an imperialized version, then we can call it the Hall of Fame version.’ “We put our love of Tony and love of baseball into every ounce of this beer.”

AleSmith still works closely with Gwynn’s widow, Alicia, who gave sign off on the new beer, as well as using Tony’s signature and likeness. AleSmith is making 6,000 bottles of its Hall of Fame .394 Pale Ale, and they can be reserved online as of this week through Brown Paper Tickets. The only catch: The bottles have to be picked up at their San Diego brewery. So if you’re a Tony Gwynn fan in Cleveland who absolutely has to have this, you’d better find someone in San Diego to grab you a bottle.

The actual release date for the beer is May 9, which would have been Gwynn’s birthday. The release is also part of AleSmith's 20th anniversary celebration. All proceeds of the beer will go toward creating a Tony Gwynn Museum at the new 100,000-square foot AleSmith brewery and tasting room in San Diego, the museum, in turn, will benefit the Tony and Alicia Gwynn Foundation. There will be a continued relationship between the Gwynn family and AleSmith, including more beers with his name on it, but AleSmith isn’t spilling those details yet.

[Check out Big League Stew on Tumblr for even more baseball awesomeness.]

“It was important to me and to Tony that this didn’t turn out to be a gimmick that had a famous person’s name on the bottle and you only bought it once,” Zien said. “We wanted to make a great beer.”

Gwynn’s lawyer linked the two of them together. AleSmith had hosted a tasting at his office and he knew Tony wanted to make his own beer. So Zien brought four of his beers to Gwynn’s house and they tasted them, trying to find just the right flavor. Gwynn liked the taste and aroma of hops that you commonly find in an IPA, but not the bitterness. So Zien went to work, trying to craft something that fit Gwynn’s request.

“I’m perfectionist, like you are at the plate,” Zien remembers telling Gwynn.

“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Gwynn responded.

It took three tries before AleSmith brewed the perfect beer, but when that third batch came to Gwynn, his response was: Don’t change a thing.

Consumers have agreed. The standard San Diego .394 Pale Ale has become a hit since its release last year. It’s even spreading outside of San Diego now, into other parts of Southern California now and AleSmith says it can’t keep up with demand.

“We can’t make enough of this beer right now,” Zien says. “Our local distributor is taking every drop and then some.”

But there’s a place you’ll be able to find it outside of Southern California soon enough. AleSmith has a distributor lined up in New York for this summer. Specifically in upstate New York, near a certain sports hall of fame.

“We’re taking 394 out to Cooperstown for induction this year,” Zien says.

And when that happens, you can bet Tony Gwynn will be somewhere, smiling that big smile of his.

More MLB coverage from Yahoo Sports:

- - - - - - -

Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz