By Beer Obsessed

If you order a sandwich and a beer at the Stuffed Sandwich, you’ll get your sandwich pretty quickly, but it may take a while to get the beer.

“Found it,” says the counterwoman, 10 minutes later. “I had to dig it out--you know we’ve got more than 500 beers back there.”

She doesn’t mean more than 500 bottles of beer--she means more than 500 different kinds of beer. Last time owner Sam Samaniego checked, the count was over 650. “I’ve got to update that menu,” he mutters to himself.

Clearly, there is some serious beer-drinking going on. And Samaniego is the obsessed man behind it all.

“I travel all the time just to drink beer,” Samaniego says.

On one trip to England, Samaniego bought a guide to British pubs and set out each day to visit as many pubs as possible. At these pubs he didn’t merely have a friendly half-pint and soak up the atmosphere; it was his goal to try every beer available at each pub. He’d line them up, take a taste of each, maybe downing a glass of one he really liked and then move on to the next place.

“The nice thing about European and microbrewery beers is that there are no additives,” Samaniego says. “You never wake up with a hangover.”

Just after the start of the war with Iraq, Samaniego was on the road with a mission. He’d heard of three new breweries on the West Coast and had to check them out: “Seventeen days, 40 breweries, 10 wineries and 18 different motels--a different one each night,” he says. His wife, who, according to Samaniego, does not drink, is his designated driver.

It seems there is no beer in the world Samaniego does not know. And there are few he does not stock in his sandwich shop. Samaniego’s beer selection is as multicultural as the neighborhood. You might find Anker from Indonesia, Yebisu from Japan, Mambo from Africa and Dead Cat Lager from Woodland, Calif.--”Truly the cat’s meow,” says the label. Even Budweiser comes from both Van Nuys and St. Louis. “There is a difference,” Samaniego insists. “If I put a glass of each in front of you, you’d swear they were two different beers.”

When he hears that a brewery is discontinuing a label, Samaniego will buy up the company’s remaining supplies and keep it under cold storage, sometimes for years.

The novice drinker might ask--doesn’t the beer go bad?

“Some beers have a life expectancy of 25 years,” Samaniego explains. “The problem is most people don’t know how to take care of beer. Beer is food and must be treated that way.”

Samaniego keeps his beer at a constant 30 degrees. And kegs are not moved until a week or two before the beer goes on tap. “Nobody touches my beer but me,” Samaniego says.

OK, so we get the idea that Samaniego is serious about beer. But was there a time when he was ignorant about beer, when he’d sit around with his buddies and drink Oly from the can? No. He went to work for a beer distributor when he was in junior high school. “The owners were from the old country so I learned a lot,” Samaniego says. What he learned was how to taste beer--what makes it good and especially what makes it bad.

“See that guy over there?” he says, pointing to a man polishing off the last of a sub sandwich. “He’s a Bud man, that’s what he likes. He’ll drink Bud till he dies and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The man looks over and grins.

But Samaniego does persuade a lot of other people to experiment. David Gronquist and Walter Blushtein have been coming into the shop since they were kids--”since before we could drink,” Gronquist says. “Our parents brought us in for the sandwiches.” These days they almost always go for Samaniego’s beer of the day. “It’s always marked down,” Gronquist says. “It’s a good deal.”

And they still get the sandwiches. One of Samaniego’s house rules is no food, no beer. “This is not a bar,” he insists. “Families come in here all the time--I have three booster seats.”

Samaniego also specialized in dishing out what he likes to call friendly abuse. “What’s up grumpy?” he says to a hefty biker who looks like the kind of guy who’d enjoy wrapping a pool cue around a wiseacre’s neck.

“Hey, sweep up all this sawdust,” the biker responds. “The boss is going to catch you.”

To a husband and wife, sitting with their two children he calls out, “Where are the rest of your bratty kids?” Then in a softer voice, he says of the mother, “She’s been coming in since she was a little girl.

“Sometimes I think they come in just because I give them hell.”

One sign behind the counter reads: “This Isn’t Burger King! You Do It My Way!” Another reads: “Everybody Needs to Believe in Something. I Believe I’ll Have Another Beer.”

Samaniego has his principles. For instance, you’ll never see a bottle on his magnificent wall of empties that he doesn’t have in stock. “What I show is what I sell,” he says. “And I’ve tasted them all.”

“My only problem?” Samaniego says, “I can’t show all my beers.” Plans for a newer, bigger wall of beer are in the works.