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

Pilgrimage: Country Boy

Country Boy Brewing Company in Lexington, KY just had their second birthday in February. We missed it by a couple of weeks, but we still had a pretty great time with some awesome brews. We went on a Friday night pretty early, around 7 pm, and the place was packed.

Since the brewery is right off UK's campus, the throngs of college coeds shouldn't have surprised me, but I'm just not used to seeing it in a brewery. As you'd expect from a place with a name like Country Boy, right from the get go you feel at home. Everyone in the bar is friendly and the bartenders really know their beer. You get to taste some really cool and unique things, all served with a heaping pile of southern hospitality.


The inside looks like a country bar and a barn had a love child in a college town. It has a great rustic vibe with the bar and tables all made out of beautiful reclaimed wood. Two huge chalkboards flank the bar and they are full of different options. When we were there, they had over 18 of their own beers on tap and a few guest taps. Beers ranged from Russian imperial stouts to smoked porters to IPAs and all sorts of fun creations in between. There are two TVs directly behind the bar that patrons can check out, but for the most part everyone was at tables talking with friends. We met our friends from Brewmanity and had a couple pints. They don't serve food but we were able to bring pizza in with us and we saw a lot of people taking advantage of the food truck parked outside. The room is a little bit dark, but that just makes it a perfectly intimate place to have a drink and good conversation.

My favorite regular beer they had on tap was Shotgun Wedding. It's a big malty brown ale that's been aged on vanilla beans just long enough to get a subtle flavor. It's a very dark brown beer with an off-white head. The beer has a medium to medium-heavy body. The beer smells like vanilla and baker's chocolate. The flavor follows that nicely with big chocolate flavor followed up by a really smooth nuttiness. The vanilla beans compliment this in a way that almost makes the beer take on the taste of cake or other delicious baked goods. This brew is so good, I can barely believe it's a standard offering. So many brewers focus on IPAs, so it was great to see someone focus on something malty with a little twist. I give it an enthusiastic 4. We tried more than a half dozen of their beers and were impressed by almost everything.

This is a little off topic, but seeing how cool Country Boy's atmosphere was made me think about one of my biggest gripes about the Indy craft beer scene, which is the lack of brewery bars. I'm a big fan of the beer by Bier and Sun King, but I wish there was a place we could sit down and drink it. I love Flat 12 but their "pub" is lack luster when you can't use their wonderful outdoor space.

The good thing is, a lot of our newer breweries are doing a good job addressing this problem. Tow Yard, Outliers, Indiana City and Union have all brought us great hang out spots to drink their beer. I hope we keep up with the trend, and if the guys at Sun King are reading this, I would love to be able to get a pint when I do my growler fills, wink wink.

Walking into a brewery called Country Boy you have certain expectations. You expect a relaxed and comfortable environment, friendly people and traditional beer styles. Country Boy delivered on all of this. The Lexington craft beer scene is just a bit newer than Indy's and its awesome to see it taking off so well.

Pilgramage: Rhinegeist Brewing Co.

After Winterfest, I had basically fallen in love with Truth, an IPA by Rhinegeist, so on our way back from Lexington, the Little Lady and I decided to make a stop in Cincinnati, OH to check out the brewery in person.

The brewery is located in an area that used to be called "Over the Rhine" which was host to much of Cincinnati's German immigrant population, at one point getting over 43,000 people strong. People spoke German, ate German and most importantly drank German. Rhinegeist is a nod to the German heritage of the area. The name translates Ghost of the Rhine, remembering the people that came before and really helped bring that rich brewing tradition to the Midwest.

Rhinegeist pulls from the area's incredible German heritage and is obviously one of many businesses that seem to be helping to gentrify the beautiful old buildings in this part of Cincinnati. So often, when you go to a brewery downtown you're stuck with street parking, but Rhinegeist hooks it up with a lot across the street from their building.

Rhinegeist is housed in a beautiful old brick building that housed a bottling facility at the end of the 1800's. When we went through the door, I was surprised to see a set of stairs in front of me. There wasn't a lot of indication that the brewery was upstairs, but there really weren't any other options, so I started walking up. When I got to the next floor, I was surprised to see that there was no door on this floor, but there were more stairs. Up I went for three floors before finally finding the brewery, but when I did I was in awe of how amazing the space was.

The brewery occupies the top floor of this beautiful old building. The room is an easy thirty feet tall with huge windows all around and skylights that let tons of natural light into the room. There are hand made picnic tables made out of pipes and reclaimed wood. This created a bright contrast to all the old brick and concrete that form the rest of the building. Tanks and brewing equipment were right there in the middle of the open tap house space. The tables were all huge, which encouraged you to sit with someone you may not know and have a chat. This really is one of the biggest things that I think we're missing in Indy. All of our breweries that do pint sales have intimate drinking spaces. There are small tables that don't encourage any interaction. This place looked a lot like an old school German beer hall.

The bar had a great industrial vibe to it and about ten beers on tap. They had their three staple beers and some outstanding seasonals on the chalk board menu. Beers were being served in tasters, pint glasses and snifters, giving Rhinegeist options for any beer that they're bringing to the table.

I was pretty disappointed that they didn't have any cans available. There weren't even coolers that would say that cans would be there in soon. Since they just started canning a few weeks ago, I will give them the pass for now.

I got their Gramps, American Barleywine. It came in at 8.8 ABV and had a wonderful bitter American hop profile. It poured out a red orange color with a thin layer of off white head on top. There was a big hop aroma right up front, and the hops continued nicely into the flavor. The beer had a huge sweet candy malt flavor but was cut nicely with the strong citrus flavor of the American hops. This brew was missing some of the big dark fruits and sherry notes that I look for in a barleywine, but that could be because it was fresh. I prefer most of my barelywines aged at least a year or so. All this flavor did an awesome job hiding the taste from the big alcohol. This was a wonderfully balanced brew and if it wasn't so boozy and it hadn't been noon I probably would have had a few more.

It's exciting stuff because these guys have just started selling cans at the end of January to their local market. They started with two styles: Cougar Golden Ale an easy drinking, very accessible beer and Truth IPA. Truth IPA is a big, flavorful, hopped beer that I fell in love with at the first sip.

I'm really impressed because these guys just came to the market in June of 2013. That means in just about eight months they've gone from not existing to canning beers and the cans look awesome. If they keep up the quality, these guys are going to be a driving force here in the Midwest. I can't wait for them to add Indiana to their distribution foot print. 

If you have time to make the drive this Friday, Rhinegeist is releasing their Saber Tooth Tiger Double IPA. It should be a great beer and a great party! Cheers.

Pilgrimage: New Glarus Brewing Co.

Being a sales guy takes me all over the place. Normally I stay around Indianapolis but sometimes I get pulled to other areas of this great country.

I had the pleasure of going up to Wisconsin recently. If you haven't been to Wisconsin in February, it's a beautiful place, but its freaking cold. I mean a bone freezing, face numbing finger falling off kind of cold. The good thing is, nestled there in the middle of a few snow drifts is the town of New Glarus.

Although there isn't a whole lot going on in the town, there is a nice little brewery, New Glarus Brewing Co.



Being a bit of a trader and general beer conoisseur, I've really been impressed with some of their fruit beer offerings, so I was really excited to see what they had going on. El Duque was not as impressed with what he brought back a while ago, but I had faith.

For those of you who don't know, New Glarus used to distribute to states outside of Wisconsin, now they don't. They pulled back to better service their local customers in WI, and service them they do. Although you have to venture to the great white north just to get a taste of there brews, once you enter Wisconsin you can find their award winning beers at liquor stores, grocery stores and even gas stations. The station across from my hotel had an end-cap display full of 750s of their fruit beers. This is insanely cool, in a world where everyone is struggling for national prestige and recognition, these guys have taken their beers the oposite direction and really put a focus on their local customers.

Their brewery is in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful countryside and rolling hills surround this place that looks like an old style farm house. Once you're inside, it's anything but old school. Their brewery is bright, clean and modern. I took the brewery tour and had a nice time seeing all the details. The facilities are gorgeous. It's obviously a show piece for guests coming through. Tours are going around the clock and their tasting room has four or five beers on draft, including one of their fruit beers. These guys are probably most well known for their Spotted Cow in WI, but around the trading world their fruit beers are second to none. In fact a few of their fruit beers just got recognized by ratebeer as the best in the world in their style. I got to try the Raspberry Tart.

Raspberry Tart is an amazing fruit beer. It pours out a fairly clear and clean ruby red color with about a half inch of light pink head. It smells like raspberry fruit juice. Your first sip is sweet, like honey and fruit blended together in perfect harmony, but it's followed up with an awesome tartness from the raspberries. There's enough tart that it could easily be confused for a very light sour, and would probably go head to head nicely with a fruit lambic. For a beer that has such strong raspberry flavor, there was an impressive depth. Everything really seemed to meld together but still highlight the fruits. I give this one a lip smacking 4.

If you're ever up in Wisconsin make sure you take a little drive out to New Glarus. You will not be disappointed by the friendly people, beautiful facilities and awesome beers. I may have gotten a little carried away with what I brought home, cheers!

Pilgrimage: Revolution Brewing Company

The Big Guy and I had the opportunity to spend some time in downtown Chicago last weekend, one of my all time favorite places. One of the things that I love about the city is that there are so many great places to eat and drink. You can basically pick a street at random to walk down and you're bound to find something good. Sometimes though, you know exactly where you want to go.

That's how we were with Revolution Brewing Company. I had tried a few of their brews before this, specifically Anti Hero and Rosa and was definitely interested in trying more. They had a great selection on tap, and I went with their El Hefe Loco, a hefeweizen, and was really glad that I did. Delicious brew, great banana and clove flavor with a very smooth finish. I also tried Cat Herder (a golden ale) and E. Norma Gene (a bourbon barrel aged imperial porter) while we were there. I love porters and I'm no slouch when it comes to bourbon so the combination is pretty much always a winner for me. The Big Guy had a few others as well.

We had a fantastic bartender who made some great recommendations and helped us work our way through their beer list. That always makes a big difference in my experience. I know just enough to be dangerous or extremely boring in a bar. I know what I like and I tend to stick to it, or I try something completely outside my wheelhouse which doesn't always go the way I think it should. Having a bar tender who's willing to take the time and make recommendations based on a combination of my preferences and theirs is awesome.

As you're sitting at the bar you can see the brewing equipment through the windows in the back. There's a mix of old school classic style and a strong contemporary industrial feel in the décor. Totally up my alley. The bar is front and center as you walk in with oversized versions of the Revolution fist holding things up. All the taps are fists as well with different colors corresponding to different beers. 

We didn't get there in time to try their food menu, late night partying like we do, so we'll have to go back again. I'm sure I'll really have to twist the Big Guy's arm to make that happen. We heard some really good things about their brunch so maybe we can convince my parents to meet us there.

All in, the people and the atmosphere were great and the beer was outstanding. It's one that I'll be keeping on my list so we can go next time we're in the city!

The Big Guy: When you have good beer and a great space, the only thing that can elevate a bar or brewery to the next level is the staff. Our bartender was outstanding. He explained what they had on tap, and for the most part I just let him decide what I was drinking all night. They had a couple ferkin beers on cask, and they were running them through a beer engine. I love it when a brewery gives you some options. I had Anti Hero off a standard keg and off cask. Tomorrow, I will let you know what I thought. Cheers!

Pilgrimage: Three Floyds

Last Saturday we took a road trip from Indy up to Munster, Indiana to have lunch at Three Floyds (3Floyds, FFF). There are a few things to keep in mind if you decide to go. We didn't know these things ahead of time so I'm telling you in the hopes that you can learn from our experience.

1. There will be a line to get into the brew pub. The line is just a courtesy kind of thing and because I think people have a natural tendency to form lines while they wait. When you get there, be sure that someone in your group goes inside and puts your name on the list. We'd been there for about an hour when we realized this was how it was done. Oops. The nice thing is once you put your name in, you can get into the real line for the little shop area and buy some beers and other goodies to take home.

2. Go on a nice day. You'll be waiting outside and there's no cover. It would be bad in the rain. Also, pack sunscreen. The Professor had just shaved his head to raise money for children's cancer research. Pretty sure he got sunburned all over his head.

We planned the trip before we knew they were releasing I <3 Deesko that weekend, so our timing was unintentionally perfect. Everybody got some beer to take home, and a few t-shirts made their way back with us as well.

 

**If you look closely you may see Ghostbusters playing on the screen behind us

Once you're in the brew pub, prepare to be pleasantly surprised. The beer selection on tap is fantastic,both with the FFF selections and the guest brews. My favorites of the day were Sand Pebbles, Tonnere Neige, And Jinx Proof all by FFF. If you can make it through the first three pages of the menu, all beer, to the last page, you get to see the food selections. Pork rind nachos? Absolutely. Cheeseburger on a pretzel bun with a fried egg? Don't mind if I do. Think gourmet pub food that really pairs well with the beer. We came just for the beer and expected to have something to eat while we were there, but I'm just as likely to go back for the food.

Lots of heavy metal in the background and a movie playing on the wall add to the fun atmosphere. We didn't do the tour this time, but it's definitely on my list. All in, we had a great time, and I'm already looking forward to going back.

O-Dawg: The Big Guy and I did one of these a year back during the week.  A couple of stark differences between the two?  Lines... Lines... A coke addict's wet dream, LINES!  It may have had something to do with Crown Beer Fest...  or not?!  I tend to lean towards the ridiculous food and beers, but that is just me.

If you ever get a chance to stop in.  PLEASE DO IT!  You are missing out on this great combo of food/atmosphere/beer combo.  It is like a great brewery got into a bar fight with a foodie at a Death Metal concert held in a Drive In Theater...  Yeah!  Wrap your head around that one...!

 

Best FFF Taps:

Tonnere Neige (4)

Honey apple nose. Light with a sweet taste. Dry finish. Like a beery cider?(bottom left)

Battle of Charro (4)

That is the best amber I have had to date. Light honey nose. Not crazy malt. Light and chugable! (bottom right)

 

Best guest Taps
Spoontanfranfig by Mikkeller (4)

Sour vinigar fig sweet nose. Sour start. Fizzy to dry finish. Pucker and savor the afterglow of fig. (bottom left)
Good JuJu by Left Hand (4)

Ginger nose. Fizzy bitter sweet. Grassy notes. Dry finish. (bottom right)

 

The Big Guy: Damn it feels good to be a gangsta!!! We had a great time other than the line sitting. The brews were awesome. We ran into Jake, a friend of the blog and writer for Indiana Beer, who stopped in to grab some Deesko as well. Apparently it was where all the cool kids were. My favorite beers of the day were the Toxic Revolution and the Tonnere Neige. Tonnere Neige was not available in bottles but was damn good so check it out at the brewery if you can. Honorable mention for me was the Supa Rice Ronin of Death, an awesome Japanese rice lager. The food was awesome. We had nachos made out of pork rinds, and an awesome poutine dish (gravy and cheese covered french fries). All of us had some sort of burger and they were absolutely fantastic. Odog and The Little Lady had one with a egg on it (below left), Prof Beer had one that was ground up short ribs (below right) and I had one covered in more meat than you can shake a stick at (no picture). They were all done to perfection. I recommend staying for lunch or dinner.

 

I felt like one of the kids with the golden tickets in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I picked up two of everything and three or four of some other things. I got shirts and glasses and damn the food was good. If you haven't been up there yet, it is well worth the drive.

Prof. Beer:  It was a long drive up and we spent more time in the normal Saturday lines (which we hadn't know about in advance) than we had hoped (plus the car trouble on the way home), but the Three Floyds Brewpub was well worth the trip.  As has already been mentioned above, the food was excellent, much better than I expected from a brewpub.  The chicharrón nachos were excellent; replacing chips with pork rinds is much better than it sounds (even if you think it sounds good).  I also recommend the hesat slayer burger (though the other burgers looked great as well).

They had a large selection of Three Floyds beers on draft, as well as some good guest taps.  I tried Three Floyds' Toxic Revolution and Evil Power, and had a Good Juju by Left Hand Brewing.  Also, I got a taste of several other beers.  I ended up buying two of all the limited-availability beers, and four of the Deesko (as well as two Rabbid Rabbits and a shirt).  Three Floyds was a lot of fun, and I'm definitely looking forward to making another trip there.

The Quest: In Search Of the Perfect Stout Float/Shake

In 1998 I found myself at the T.G.I. Friday's in Austin, Texas. I was being put up by my employer at the time while considering a relocation opportunity there. For the week I stayed at the hotel I would head down to the bar while waiting for my dinner. Each night I ordered a Guinness, and eventually my dinner would come and I'd finish the stout, grab my food and up to my room I would go.

On the third night, the bartender asked me if I had ever tried a Guinness Float. That night, back in March of 98 was the first time I'd had the magical combination of a dry Irish stout and wonderful Blue Bell's Vanilla Ice Cream. Since that night, I've been trying different combinations of ice cream and stouts in search of a more perfect shake or float. In those years I've come to appreciate the stout float as much as the shake; in fact one of the benefits of the float is that one often gets a sidecar of stout in addition to the float proper  to make a complete and legal pint. Shakes, on the other hand are/have been.. shaky at best in this department.

Recently I was at 10-01 in Broad Ripple and while perusing the menu I happened to notice that they had the following: Brown Butter Maple Caramel Ice Cream - house made and as I would find out, absolutely delicious. This ice cream sounded amazing and was even more so than the name hinted at. The stout on hand that night was Rail Jumper from People's Brewing in Lafayette (BOILER UP!). The stout by itself is a wonderful chocolate stout and deserves its own post. The real magic though is in the combination. The chocolateness of the stout AND the dryness pair perfectly with the amazing ice cream. This is, without a doubt, the quantum leap in stout/float/shakes that I've experienced in a long long time. At 10-01, you can order the "stout float" and one day *cough* The Good-Knight (tm) and get this awesome combination yourself. Sure, you can buy a Founder's Breakfast Stout and mix it with a good Bryer's Vanilla Bean ice cream at home and have an awesome dessert but THIS combo is truly an amazing mixture. Right now, it's the dessert on my "last meal" list.. if I had one... ahem.. Anyway I recommend it to anyone who likes this rare (or is it?) treat. For the stout or ice cream fan it is well worth the experience. At a minimum, it's a good reminder that beer can be a wonderful ingredient and not simply a beverage. This is one combination capable of challenging anyone's notion other wise. Oh, and if you disagree.. I'll be happy to finish yours.

Cheers!