Beer Tourism: San Diego

Modern Times

I recently went on a trip to San Diego and the southwest to see my family and go camping. Since I'm from San Diego I usually make this trip 2-3 times a year. If you don't already know San Diego is one of the craft beer meccas of the world, if not the beer mecca: 90-ish breweries up and running in the county (and dozens more in the works), several craft beer juggernauts (Stone, Green Flash, Alesmith, Ballast Point, Port/Lost Abbey, etc), lots of fast rising stars (Societe and Modern Times), entire neighborhoods that are defined by their craft beer culture, and some of the best bars (a seperate IPA bar housed in a shipping container within another craft beer bar? Yes please) and bottle shops around. I mean a small mountain town with one main street, no stoplights, and a population of 1500 people has 2 breweries! 

This is essentially the Disneyland of craft beer. 

Modern Times

While beer is never the sole reason for my trips to San Diego it's always involved. This is a recounting of my last trip to San Diego breweries and one in Arizona thrown in. The rundown in the order I visited them:

Modern Times**

Arizona Wilderness (AZ; ratebeer's 2013 best new brewery in the world)**

Ballast Point (Scripps Ranch location)

Wet'n'reckless**

Green Flash

Alesmith

Intergalactic**

Groundswell Brewing**

Coronado Brewing (Knox St)*

Pizza Port (Solana Beach)

Culture Brewing**

Stone Brewing (Liberty Station)**

Nickel Brewing**

* New to me

**New brewery

Lots of breweries, so I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow (you can look at the pretty pictures), but I'm going to hit the highlights and summarize my thoughts. 

Modern Times and Culture were easily my favorites of the new breweries. MT is about 10 minutes from the airport so this is worthy of a stop when you get into town. Their Fortunate Islands hoppy wheat and Black House coffee stout are 2 new favorites of mine and their space is great. Culture is a few minutes walk from the beach in north SD county and definitely has a surf vibe. Lots of variety in the beers they brew and all of them were tasty. Again the space here is wonderful; small with nicely finished woods everywhere, but there's 2 garage door size openings that make it feel big- one is the entrance and the other leads to an outdoor patio. The bonus to a Culture visit is that pizza port is a block away. Pizza port has multiple locations in San Diego and all of them serve fantastic pizza and house brewed beers (some of which they've started canning). 

The other new places: Wet'n'reckless, Intergalactic, Groundswell, and Nickel all were mostly positive visits. WNR is tiny tiny tiny, but the beers were good. Intergalactic and Groundswell were both fun places, with nice space and good beers. Nickel is intriguing since it's in that 1500 people mountain town. The beers were interesting, but average. I would likely go back as there's something that tells me they will improve. 

The only non-SD brewery I went to was Arizona Wilderness outside of Phoeniz, AZ. They recently were awarded RateBeer's "2013 Best New Brewery in the World" title... and I'm not sure why after my visit. When I went they had 5 beers on tap, none of which I would drink again as they were average at best. Service was slow and the food we ordered was just okay (fries were great though). I'm not saying AZW is a bad brewery/brewpub, and for all I know I could've been there on a bad night, but results from my one point of data inducate I'd rather go to dozens of other places before I go to AZW again. 

Most of the other breweries I visited this time around were places i'd been to before or places that had a new location (Stone and Coronado). One thing that really struck me about a lot of the places was the amount of inviting space they have available for beer drinkers to lounge around in; something that Indy breweries are sorely lacking. There are few places that come to mind around here that I would actually spend time in other than to fill my growler. It's unfair to compare Indy breweries to posh beer landmarks like Stone and Green Flash, but there are breweries in San Diego that do a lot more with a lot less and that's ignoring the weather and geographic advantages they may have. There's a fair amount of breweries in Indy that make better beer, but I'd pick the SD counterparts just because they're a lot more inviting. In other words It's time for places to start thinking outside the (cold concrete) box. Again, it's unfair to compare the scenes in my 2 homes, but there's a lot that can be learned from San Diego's beer community... I mean they've got to be doing something right if they can sustain all those breweries.

Whether or not you've been there before, there's always something new to explore in the San Diego craft beer scene. I would highly recommend anyone with a serious interest in craft beer take a trip there and spend at least few days exploring. You will come away with a serious appreciation for the San Diego beer scene... just don't blame me if you don't want to leave.   

Arizona Wilderness

Ballast Point

Wet'N'Reckless

Green Flash

Groundswell

Coronado Brewing- Knox St

Culture Brewing

Stone- Liberty Station

Stone- Liberty Station

Nickel Brewing

Nickel Brewing

A Wish List to Beer Santa (The Ghost of Indy's beer future)

Dear Santa,

We here at the Beer Barons have been very good this year. We haven't been thrown out of many bars. We have always finished our beers. We've kept spills to a minimum, and we have always invited our friends to share in the splendor that is the Indiana craft beer scene. We're extremely appreciative of that scene, but like all kids (or kids at heart) we want more stuff! So we've put together a short list for Santa of the things that we'd all like to see happen in the Indy beer scene... we don't expect this to all happen by next Christmas, but maybe some will if we're extra good this coming year!

The BrewniBomber:
1. Realistically I would love to see Ballast Point (San Diego, CA) distribute here. Not so realistically- Alpine Brewing Co (just outside San Diego)

2.  For the west side of town (Avon, Plainfield, etc.) to get an actual real-life craft beer bar or high-quality production brewery. Cutter's is here and there's some hope with Cartel Brewing coming early 2014, but a beer bar? Nothing close. I live out here and it sucks having to drive 30 minutes plus to get a decent craft beer on tap. There's a lot of people out here and a lot of new retail popping-up… one could wish for one of those spots to be a decent bar and not another pizza joint (there's a lot of them out here for some reason).

3. For a "destination" brewery to establish itself in Indy in 2014. Don't get me wrong, there's some amazing breweries here in town, but I would like to see someone become a destination that beer geeks flock to. Think Stone, Russian River, Three Floyd's, Founder's, Cigar City, Hill Farmstead, etc. These types of breweries exist in towns large and small, so why not Indy?  I think there are some existing breweries that are on the verge and who knows what one of the 30-plus slated breweries will bring to the table.

The Big Guy:
1. I want world peace and good will towards men.. who am I kidding? Realistically, I would like to see either Jester King or Prairie start selling more of their limited one off beers here (I know I'm cheating a little bit but I'd love to see these guys bring all the amazing beers we have to trade for here with their regular line up). I'd also be giddy with some childlike excitement if Cigar City started distributing to Indy in any capacity. I LOVE Jai Alai.

2. I'd love to see some of the current breweries, like Bier and UBC start bottling, and guys like Flat 12, Fountain Square and Triton do more outside the box seasonal brews in four packs or bombers. There is some great beer being made in the breweries and brew pubs, I just wish it could get into a bottle so I could enjoy it at home.

3. I want Indy to get more notoriety! I want Santa to bring our great state the recognition it deserves as a great place to get craft beer.

El Duque:
1.  My X-mas dreams came true this year when Oskar Blues and Green Flash, my two favorite national breweries starting distributing here, so what else could I hope for?  As much as I would love to see beer flow in from the West even more with breweries like Russian River, Cascade, or Ballast Point, and my new favorite, Cigar City, what I want is more Midwestern beers distributing to the Midwest like Revolution or New Glarus.  Yeah, New Glarus.  Strawberry Rhubarb Lambic: WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF.

2.  I want 2014 to be the year of the six pack for Indy breweries.  I realize that Indiana's liquor laws make growlers such a success, but I want to share and brag and not be forced to drink all that beer, or as I normally do, cook with it.  If Fountain Square Brewing could do a limited bottling of their 1221 stout, I would rip of my shirt and set my beard on fire; a conflagration of joy.

3.  I want a real brew pub.  Upland is trying.  Broad Ripple Brew Pub will always remain mediocre.  Brugge is a restaurant with an inconsistent list of beers.  My dream would be to see a Gastro-pub approach for a brewery's brew pub.  We're looking at you Sun King and Fountain Square.  Both have solid line ups.  Both are bottling.  Both have claustrophobic tasting rooms.  Sun King stands alone in its brand recognition, but the problem with Indy is that it doesn't really have a food or beer culture that is broad enough for a Gastro Brewpub to really take off, but I can dream about pairing pork belly and hops.

O-Dawg:
1.  I want Toppling Goliath and Surly to distribute in Indiana.  Ever since I heard that a month old pseudoSue blew a three day old Zombie Dust out of the water I have been interested in trying anything from this small self proclaimed stealth brewery.  Let's be Frank, and not Pete, on the second choice...  having regular access to Coffee Bender and Abrasive would make me a happy kid any day of the year!

2.  I know Joe and Josh will hate me for saying this (I empathize) but I would love to have Pinko and/or Big Black Dog 68  more often.  Make a big batch when you brew and store kegs away for release gradually through the year, bottle it, ANYTHING!  I would just love to enjoy it more often than I do currently.

3.  Third and final wish for the year... Competition.  I am tired of hearing about this brewery or that brewery "coming soon" to the Indy Craft Beer Scene.  Grow some balls and open for business already.  Competition breeds creativity.  When brewers and Breweries are creative it makes being a craft beer junkie a fun ride to be on in Indy!

The Little Lady:
1. I've been lucky enough to sample some really great beers over the past year at different events and with the trades the Big Guy has been getting. We've also had a chance to visit some of those breweries in person. The top two on my list- Revolution and TallGrass.

2. In 2014, I want to get more involved in the Big Guy's home-brewing. You'll notice that isn't on his list anywhere ;-). Now that my BJCP exam is complete, I really want to get a better idea for the process and the science involved. I'd like to experiment more with flavor combinations and what goes in to making the beer I like to drink. I totally admit that opening our own brewery is kind of a pipe dream- but this is a good first step.

3. I want to keep discovering new breweries next year. Maybe that will be some of the new breweries opening up in Indiana next year. Maybe that will be taking some more quick weekend trips to see new things. We're already going to Kentucky later this winter and you know that we'll be sampling some local favorites- beer and bourbon. Other trips we've talked about are Michigan and Chicago, and I'm sure we'll make it out to Ohio at least once. Maybe Pennsylvania? Yeah, those last two are really just excuses to go visit family. There's a lot of great beer out there, and I want to see more of it come to me, but until that happens I'll go where the beer is.