After 38 years of slinging "extreme" beers for a crowd of beer geeks and average beer lovers alike, the Lower Haight's Toronado is facing the end of an era and an uncertain future.

The bar posted on Instagram over the weekend saying that owner and founder Dave Keene is retiring and selling the business. "This marks the end of an era for the generations of beer drinkers that have shared lives with us," the staff writes.

Keene founded Toronado in 1987 and built it into a haven for beer afficionados — particularly for those who love the funkiest, oddest, highest alcohol, and most "extreme" end of the beer spectrum. As the era of the IPA took hold over two decades ago, Toronado was already ahead of the game with many of the style's cult favorites in heavy rotation.

And it only took a few years for Toronado to gain an outsized reputation in the craft beer world, which by the early 1990s was still in its infancy.

As Keene recalled to SFGate in 2018, "A brewer that I'd met came in [in 1993] and was taking pictures, and I go, 'What are you doing?' 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."

In those early years, Keene also started what has become an annual pilgrimage for beer drinkers of certain tastes, the Barleywine Festival. At one point it was lined up with SF Beer Week, but now it happens on its own every November, with the bar turning many of its taps over to dozens of high-alcohol, high malt barleywines — a style that remains at the outer outskirts of beer-making world, but which Keene himself always loved.

From 2014 to 2020, there was also a second Toronado location up in Seattle, but that closed when the pandemic hit.

Now, for this special year marking Keene's sendoff, Toronado is hosting their own Toronado Beer Week, which for the first time will not coincide with the Bay Area-wide Beer Week, which starts February 21.

Toronado Beer Week will run February 7 to February 16, and at the opening "gala" on the 7th, as well as on Saturday the 8th, the bar will be tapping the latest release of Pliny the Younger — two weeks ahead of when the regular Beer Week crowd will be tasting it. The opening events will also feature new beers from Cellarmaker, McIlhenny, Monkish, and more.

Fans of Toronado are naturally anxious about the bar being up for sale, and the Instagram announcement came with plenty of comments to the effect of "please sell to a fan of the bar."

As Eater reports, the business is on the market for $1.75 million, and the listing can be found here.

The sale price includes the two-unit, single-story commercial building (543-547 Haight Street), and the bar's Type 42 liquor license. This includes the kitchen and storefront of the sausage shop Berliner Berliner next door. The impending sale of the building likely contributed to the decision by Berliner Berliner owner Christine Blunck to close up shop last month.