“Just like the universe, we’re expanding. All the time.” That’s how Randy Clemens from Stone Brewing Co. started a recent blog post covering the ground breaking ceremony of Stone Packaging Hall, a 59,815 sq ft facility that will house all bottling and kegging operations, as well as additional offices, QA labs and more equipment. Founders Greg Koch and Steve Wagner rolled up to the August 2 ceremony in a bulldozer before addressing the crowd, along with Escondido Assistant City Manager Charles Grimm and Escondido Mayor Sam Abed. Check out the blog post for more photos and details.
- In more Stone news, Greg Koch will dye his hair red at 3:30 p.m. today along with Shelly Anguiano Figueroa (CEO of Boys & Girls Club of San Marcos) and Jackie Vella (Foundation Director of San Diego Blood Bank) in order to raise money for local charities. Every two years, Stone “Dyehards” dye their hair crazy colors in order to bring in more donations to supplement proceeds from the brewery’s annual Anniversary Celebration, happening this weekend (the Stone 16th Anniversary IPA is officially available today). Over the past 12 years, the Dyehards have raised more than $172,000; they are currently at $21,711 of their $50,000 goal for this year — donate today!
Karl Strauss Brewing Company, having recently expanded distribution outside Southern California for the first time since opening in 1989, isn’t forgetting their local roots. Last week, San Diego’s oldest operating craft brewery launched their seventh brewery restaurant in 4S Ranch. The 8,243 sq ft property (including a 1,780 sq ft patio) houses a 7-barrel, 2-vessel JV Northwest system along with a 14-barrel fermentor and two 14-barrel bright tanks; they are targeting one new specialty beer every month from the system. Like the other brewery restaurant locations, Thursday is cask night and there’s a rotating monthly beer and food pairing special (August = Blackball Belgian IPA with Steak Frites).
- Monkey Paw Pub & Brewery just announced their second homebrew competition this morning. Local blog Craft Beer Tasters posted a recap of the July 28 debut of the first competition’s winning beers. This go round, the Paw is looking for black beers of any style. Two bottles (12 or 22 oz) with labels denoting the brewer’s name, phone number, e-mail address, beer type and name are due by October 12. The prize? “You get to brew your beer with us, we serve it, we have a party, and we all have a good time.” The why? “We do this because we love supporting home brewers and we love the community. Let’s have a good time with it.”
As I type this, the Port Brewing / Lost Abbey crew is helping Sheldon Boren from Fallbrook Homegrown Hops harvest 200-300 lbs of hops that have come “surprisingly early” this year. The beer will be brewed tomorrow evening. This information has been added to our ‘Wet Hot Beer Watch 2012’ page, where we are tracking the wet hop beers that will become available over the next few months in San Diego. Most exciting for us is a wet-hopped West Coaster IPA by Hess Brewing, which is set for release at their anniversary party on August 25.
- In a recent blog post on Coronado Brewing Co.’s revamped website, Kyle Chapman provided a few tidbits of news. First, the Coronado crew will start training today on their new GAI 3003A BIER bottling line (spotted at the Craft Brewers Conference). The first beer that will go into bottles: Coronado Golden. As for the tasting room that is positioned right next to that bottling line, construction is expected to be completed in September. Chapman adds that it is “hard to cross one’s fingers while typing, but I’m doing it,” and so are we.
On page 7 of our latest issue, we discuss some of the ways the beer world is intersecting with hard liquor. Tonight at Sessions Public, “Battle of the Barrios” continues with Christian Siglin of Little Italy’s Craft & Commerce mixing his vision of the best beer cocktail using Zaya Rum. The big chalkboard in the OB brew hall was recently decorated by local artist Ben DeHart to commemorate the competition; check out a time-lapse video here.
- The public premiere of Suds County, USA will take place tomorrow night at Green Flash Brewing Co. in Mira Mesa. The scheduled premiere on 8/31 was postponed due to technical difficulties. To reserve a seat, RSVP to dave@greenflashbrew.com. Check out page 15 of our latest issue to read quotes from the film by four pioneers of our local brewing community.