On the West Coaster industry watch page, you’ll see there are 32 breweries in the county being planned. One of them, Offbeat Brewing Company, is hard at work putting the pieces of the puzzle together just one mile south of Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido (1223 Pacific Oaks Place, Suite 101). I decided to interview Dan Reed, Marketing & Media Manager for Offbeat, to see how things are progressing, and what San Diegans can expect the newcomers.
First, the million-dollar question: When are you going to open?
Well, that’s become somewhat of a running joke at this point, as almost anyone who’s opened a brewery I’m sure can relate to. It always takes so much longer than you anticipate. I feel I can say with a fair amount of confidence that we’ll be open and pouring beer sometime around late August. UPDATE: Offbeat’s Grand Opening party is scheduled for this Saturday, September 15th from noon – 8 p.m., complete with a photo booth, food from Casanova Fish Tacos and local art on display.
You and Brewmaster/President Tom Garcia have both held previous positions in the craft beer industry. How has that helped you develop Offbeat?
One of the most significant advantages to Tom’s experience is that he is a veteran commercial-scale brewer. Making the leap from homebrewer to starting a microbrewery can be an incredibly sharp learning curve, since you’re now faced with entirely new challenges that come with increased volume and very different equipment. It can also be expensive, since it can be hard to know what you need vs. what other people just want to sell you. Tom has had so much experience brewing on a large scale that a lot of those challenges have been minimized. For me, working for two excellent San Diego breweries, Stone and Green Flash, in the last five years has definitely provided a lot of insight on how I’d like our tasting room to run and feel, and on some of the more effective avenues for promotion. Honestly, though, I think the time I spent in the music industry before all that has been even more valuable. Mostly because I have cultivated a lot of talented, artistic friends that I can take advantage of for our media, but also because playing in bands I realized two things: you have to be very good at what you do, and you have to put your money where your mouth is with your crazy ideas. Both of those translate pretty well to craft beer, I think.
What is the main inspiration for starting a brewery? Epiphany moment?
I think Tom would tell you that the “epiphany moment” was the first time he made his own beer. I think a lot of professional brewers would probably agree. Realizing you’re able to create something you love is a pretty monumental concept. As far as the motivation to actually put it on the line and start something of his own, it was a result of his years of experience in the brewing industry as a brewer and cellar supervisor at Stone, combined with his later work as a brewery consultant that provided the necessary confidence to do something as big and terrifying as this.
Will Offbeat focus on certain beer styles?
That’s something we’re still very much enjoying working out at the moment. Tom has a rolodex full of recipes, and we’re going to have a lot of different beers on tap early on so we can feel it out and see what we really dig. We’ll have some big, experimental stuff, but we’re also going to put a lot of focus into some more traditional flavors and session beers, which is something we feel San Diego could stand a bit more of. To put a narrower focus on it, we’ve got a brown ale, an IPA, and an abbey ale planned, which we’ve done a couple different iterations of and are experimenting with adding some of the local flora to as well.
How did the name Offbeat Brewing Company get chosen? What type of overall branding are you trying to convey to craft beer drinkers or future fans?
Offbeat was chosen by Tom due to the fact that it relates to his approach to… well, pretty much everything. Ask any of his friends or former co-workers to describe him and I guarantee the word “conventional” will not be a part of the conversation. I think that holds true for all three of us currently involved. We don’t want to make beer we’ve already had or create things we’ve already seen. More than that, we want to do as much as we can to foster individual thinking and daring creativity in those around us. We’ll be working closely with the local artistic community, be it visual, culinary, musical, or any other media to continue to make it a little weirder and more fun to live in Escondido. On a related note, local Escondido artist Mike McGaugh, who designed our labels, will be showing a pretty ambitious piece at Escondido’s “Glow in the Park” event on August 4th. Come out if you can and support our local artists!
What part are you most looking forward to once the tasting room is open and operations are in full swing?
Tom, Sarah Garcia, our Vice President & Co-Founder, and I are really looking forward to doing our actual jobs! In the last few months we’ve built this place from the ground up with a lot of help from our families and surprisingly few sub-contractors. I think we’re all ready to get up in the morning and be a brewery instead of a construction site. For Tom, that means putting on his boots, checking gravities, and creating things every day. I’m excited to put together some events and get our beer on tap in town, but really I can’t wait to just get behind the bar, pour some beer, and meet our patrons! Sarah, I can say with a fair degree of confidence, is pretty stoked on the idea of doing accounting related to money coming in as opposed to sorting through what we’re spending on 2×4’s and drywall screws.
This interview was originally published in the August 2012 issue of West Coaster. In addition to writing for West Coaster, Nickie also works at Stone Brewing Co.