Local Barley Juice

I’ve been aware of San Diego’s soaring stature among beer cognoscenti for several years. Since 1986 almost 2 dozen commercial brewers have begun making craft beers here, and their handiwork increasingly has been winning national and international awards and commanding attention in the media. An article in this month’s (June 2009) issue of Food and Wine, for example, calls the local beer scene “one of the most dynamic…in America and arguably the world,” adding that “no other place in the U.S. offers the diversity of styles, techniques and flavors that San Diego County does.”

Steve and I dabbled in home brewing back in the 90s, and while we eventually abandoned that hobby for lack of time and passion, we remain interested in beers with exceptional flavor. To glimpse what’s happening on the San Diego craft beer scene now, we went on a do-it-ourselves odyssey that filled in a lot of blanks. For anyone interested in following in our footsteps, here’s a thumbnail sketch of what we did.

Tour of Stone Brewery

We started at Stone, the Escondido brewery and bistro that must rank as the most beautiful of all the county sudseries. To the best of my knowledge, Stone is currently the only local commercial brewery offering public tours. That may soon change, given Karl Strauss’s recent relocation of its beer-bottling operations to San Diego. (Although Karl Strauss is the oldest surviving San Diego microbrewery and its chain of local brew pubs have always produced kegs here, six-packs have been brewed and bottled back in Wisconsin.) The Karl Strauss website suggests that a brewery tour may be inaugurated soon, but it  hasn’t happened yet.

Stone, on the other hand, offers more than a dozen free public tours a week. About an hour long, they’re entertaining, educational, and deftly delivered. Better yet, at the conclusion tour-takers get substantial servings of 4 very different Stone products (ranging from a pale ale to a hefty porter). The only hitch is that the tours are limited to about 25 people, and passes are given out first-come, first-served.  While Stone recommends showing up up to 2 hours early, we arrived about 11 on a Saturday morning and bagged passes for the noon tour, the first of the day. In the interim, we strolled on a trail that wound past the facilities, but the bistro would have provided another pleasant way to pass the time.

After Stone, we fit in visits to the Lost Abbey in San Marcos, Vista’s Green Flash Brewing, and Alesmith and Ballast Point  Brewing (both off Miramar Road). We interrupted all the tasting with a quick stop at a San Marcos taco shop to absorb some of the alcohol (the only food available at any of the tastings was Stone’s glossy bistro and a communal bowl of pretzels at Ballast Point.) When we left Ballast Point, late in the afternoon, I still  had other potential destinations on my wish list, notably Lightning Brewery in Poway and Alpine Beer Company. But cramming them into one afternoon might have been not just exhausting but actively dangerous.

As it was, we’d been bombarded by flavors we’d never before associated with beer, not just smoky hops and intense hops and aggressive hops, but also tastes that included chocolate, fruit , coriander, caramel , brandy and more. The scene, too, was intriguing, particularly at the smaller breweries (such as the Lost Abbey, Alesmith, and Green Flash). All are located in industrial parks that look lifeless on a Saturday afternoon. You walk into what looks like a warehouse. But it smells like beer, and in an inner room, you find a throng of animated, convivial, mostly but not entirely young beer quaffers. It feels like you’ve penetrated some underground cabal. Or at least found a cheap date. (Although Stone offered the only free samples,  tastes elsewhere cost between 50 cents and $1.50.)

Why is this lively culture thriving in the land of terrible-tasting imported water? (The brewers have to strip it of all its unsavory elements and then re-introduce desirable minerals.) The Food and Wine article argues that all this bold creativity stems from San Diego’s lack of brewing history. With no traditions binding them, the local craftsmen have been able to take flight. A different explanation, offered in a 2006 Journal of San Diego History article, suggests that San Diego’s proximity to good Mexican beers like Tecate, Dos Equis, and others introduced local beer-drinkers to more interesting approaches to beer. When the dollar fell in the 1980s and imported beer costs sky-rocketed, those more educated tastes fostered the demand for something different created on US soil.