Editor’s note: We sent our intrepid reporter out into the field to embed himself in San Diego Beer Week proceedings and share a daily account of his impressions. We found him after day 10, curled up in a heap behind Benchmark Brewing, moaning something about Vladimir Putin’s treachery and clutching at this diary.
Day 1 – Friday – SDBG GuildFest
The line for the Guildfest is staggering. It does my heart good to know I am in the company of so many other craft brew fans. That said, were the earth to swallow them all whole so I could get to the front 10 minutes sooner, I’d welcome it.
My extensive industry pull has granted me entry to the opening festival a whopping 4.5 minutes earlier than everyone else. This means I am first in line to get pours that are about 85% foam, since everyone is still fiddling with their tap settings. It’s good to be the king.
Despite it being my job to drink copious volumes of SD beer, I am finding there’s a surprising number of brews here I’ve yet to encounter. For example, I just had my first Belching Beaver Pound Town Triple IPA. The name is appropriate: it tasted like a pineapple was having rough sex with a pine cone in my mouth. The new AleSmith Hawaiian Speedway Stout also made an appearance, which, true to its name, was like Speedway served with a Mounds bar for a swizzle stick.
The food vendors are really bringing the heat this year. The bacon-wrapped ribs are just an orgy of pork. A “porgy”, if you will. Brothers Provisions graced us with brownies made with over a gallon of Epic Brewing’s Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout, each crowned with a dollop of Mexican Mocha frosting. They taste like God smiling.
Despite being stuffed with beer and swine, I am not sated. Guildfest has only whetted my appetite for more. Sadly, in a less figurative sense, I honestly am in danger of physically bursting.
Day 2 – Saturday – Barrel Aged Night @ Sublime Ale House
The inaugural SDBW event has passed and ushered forth the inaugural SDBW rocky morning after. It’s not exactly a hangover, but more of a dull system-wide ache that subtly reminds that my body no longer approves of having fun at my age.
There was a surprising amount of traffic on the 78 tonight, so rather than drive over to Sublime Ale House in San Marcos, I hitched a ride on one of the aromatic trails of their macaroni & cheese that wafted by my house.
Their list of barrel-aged beers is impressive, not that it matters to my wife. It might as well just have Hangar 24 “Pugachev’s Cobra” written in 80 point font, with marquee lights flashing around it, in the middle as far as she’s concerned. She begrudgingly shares a sip with me, allowing me to revel in the dark fruits, soy sauce and molasses that come tumbling out of the taster. It’s so good I consider going in for a second taste, but her curling lip and raised hackles definitely signal I shouldn’t.
I instead opt for a lap around the barrel-aged world, enjoying many but worshiping the Lost Abbey Agave Maria Ale. I’ve had a few tequila barrel-aged beers in my time, but I’m convinced no one does it better. If you have any allegiance to tequila at all (and, let’s face it, tequila has likely ruined enough evenings to not be on the friendliest terms with most) it’s worth the extra coin to experience this brew.
Day 3 – Sunday – Danksauce & Dogs with Modern Times Beer
I’ll admit it: when I found out that Danksauce & Dogs wasn’t some kind of illicit barbeque event, I was mildly disappointed. Then I saw a dog wearing a malt bag and all was forgiven:
This was my first time to the Quartyard and it was kind of a revelation. Until I arrived there I never even considered the option of having a Modern Times Fortunate Islands while attending to my dog at the park. Now I can scarcely imagine a world without it.
Unfortunately I budgeted my time poorly and wasn’t able to stay long enough to see which dogs won for best costume. So I’ll just say for the record that if it wasn’t this dapper gent, you, sir, were robbed.
Day 4 – Monday – Duck Foot Brewing Stout Release
I was lured to Duck Foot Brewing tonight with the promise of my first Ukrainian Imperial Stout. Despite my encyclopedic knowledge of sobriety-inhibitors, this was a style I was totally ignorant of. I eagerly unsheathed my pad and pen upon arrival, ready to capture the rich and storied history of this esoteric style.
“It’s just like a Russian Imperial Stout, but without the Putin!”
Oh. Well, beer may be an odd platform to share a geopolitical outlook, but the name they chose is more appetizing sounding than Willful Violation of 1994 Budapest Memorandum Stout. I’ll roll with it.
The first thing I noticed about the Putin Is A Colossal Dickbag Stout is how sticky it is. The aromas cling to the nose, the brew clings to the glass, and the chocolate-covered espresso bean notes cling to the palate. As you chew on it further subtler notes of molasses and dark fruit emerge, all the while wearing its 10.8% ABV with ease.
Day 5 – Tuesday – A tragic, but necessary respite
I wanted to get out today, but courtesy of Duck Foot Brewing I was far too engrossed reading up on the 2014 unlawful annexation of Crimea. I really need to start following periodicals that aren’t beer related.
Day 6 – Wednesday – AlesSmith Brewing Company Speedway Grand Prix
AleSmith Brewing Company is not a place I typically associate with whimsy. Their reputation is primarily derived from a penchant for developing highly consistent and nuanced brews. However, for three brief days in SDBW, Peter “Wildman” Zien lets his hair down for Speedway Grand Prix.
In this annual celebration the much ballyhooed stout becomes a canvas for members of the AleSmith team to augment as they see fit. This usually amounts to 3 or 4 variants that are sensibly treated with coffee and a multitude of others borne out of one of Willy Wonka’s fever dreams.
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and crack wise on something like a Bananas Fosters Speedway, but I must confess that each variant, for better or worse, really did articulate the flavors they advertised. Whether it was a Butterfinger or PB&J Speedway, the snozzberries did indeed taste like snozzberries.
Day 7 – Thursday – Beer + Bites @ Maker’s Quarter
I visited the Maker’s Quarter website for details on the Guild’s Beer + Bites event, but quickly became distracted by the About link. I made the mistake of reading it without access to my Millennial Decoder Ring and am left trying to suss out what it means to be “both a place and a collective ethos.”
The festival itself was pretty standard fare. It had tiny cups, a couple dozen breweries with a handful of non-standard brews, and vendors offering paraphernalia with various hop-based puns. However, it did have something that no other brewfest prior has offered:
Where you at on this one, Darwin?
Day 8 – Friday – Avery Barrel Aged Night @ Stone Brewing Co.
No one has ever accused Stone Brewing of harboring low self-esteem. Certifying your beers as Liquid Arrogance signals a healthy ego. Hell, even the newest iteration of their cherished gargoyle seems to be throwing a little Blue Steel our way.
“But why gargoyle models?”
Still, it takes a large degree of self-assuredness to take one of the precious few SDBW slots and offer a tap-takeover to an outside brewery. Not that Avery Brewing isn’t worthy of the attention, especially when they trot out their barrel-aged wares.
The average ABV of the featured beers hovered somewhere around 16%. Needless to say, my tasting notes devolved into something resembling a richter scale reading pretty quickly. All I can say with certainty is you’d be hard-pressed to find a lovelier setting to enjoy them in than a fall evening on the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens – Escondido patio.
Day 9 – Saturday – Alpine Beer Company Tap Takeover @ Sublime Ale House
When I was putting my plan together for this week I was operating on three key principles:
1. Hit a variety of events
2. Don’t visit the same venue twice
3. If I run into Brandon Hernández, get him to autograph my tits
It was a pretty good plan and a simple one to execute considering the volume of SDBW happenings. And it was working for me right up until a friend clued me in that Sublime Ale House in San Marcos had Alpine H.F.S. on tap. My integrity has sold for far less.
While many breweries would suffer from being as far flung as Alpine Beer Company, they have flipped that paradigm on its head by becoming a walez-generating machine. Whether it’s Kiwi Herman or Exponential Hoppiness, there’s always a next Alpine brew to covet and chase in vain. H.F.S. American IPA, renamed from its former incarnation as a Bine & Vine anniversary brew, is one such ale.
As I am an tired and jaded beer writer, very few brews ever deliver the insta-gasm of the hypetrain that precedes it, but H.F.S. comes close. Next to Avery’s Raja DIPA, it is the juiciest IPA I’ve had in awhile. It extracts flavors of orange, pear and pine with startling acuity, but with little to no residual bitterness. A very tasty brew, worthy of SDBW’s grandeur.
Day 10 – Sunday – Karl Strauss Beer Brunch
In years past I always made hitting a SDBW beer-for-breakfast event a priority despite it having predictably poor results. It was always intended to be a launching pad for a frenzy of beer-y shenanigans, but more commonly it left me bloated and ready for a nap. As I am a consummate professional I would still soldier on to the subsequent events, feigning interest while mopping at the meat-sweats that enveloped me.
This may sound like I’m down on beer brunches, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Meat-sweats are a great way to flush out all of the toxins that have accumulated in my system from eating so much vegetable matter. It’s only the expectation to be ambulatory afterwards that I resent. So this year I decided to let a Karl Strauss breakfast buffet be the capper to my glorious SDBW experience.
While most beer pairing experiences run on rails, the Karl Strauss brunch takes more of a Montessori approach. You are free to express yourself creatively through collaborative play. Servers facilitate your hands-on learning, with suggestions and samples rather than edicts, because they know you are a very special person with remarkable insights to offer. This also how I learned the hard way that nothing pairs particularly well with an olive-bacon-sundried tomato-ham-bacon-spinach-garlic-peppers-jalapeño-cilantro-cheddar cheese omelette. A Windansea “Hefemosa” comes close though.
Someone did suggest that Red Trolley Ale pairs nicely with pancakes…with Red Trolley-infused maple syrup. Since pancakes are essentially only a vehicle to get syrup into your mouth, this is really tantamount to saying Red Trolley Ale pairs well with Red Trolley Ale. But they weren’t wrong, I suppose.
I capped the breakfast with a bacon-cookie sandwich and a barrel-aged Peanut Butter Cup Porter, because I promised myself as a child these would be the sorts of decisions I would make upon finally becoming an adult.
I was thoroughly sated, but found myself craving a cup of coffee. I was about to order one when I had a fantastic realization: Why order it now when I could have it at greater expense, much farther away, and discretely parceled across several Benchmark Brewing stouts? The choice was obvious.
This sudden change of plans is really emblematic of why San Diego Beer Week is so great. While there’s never a shortage of beer around these parts, for ten days a year SDBW lends the entire industry a festive feel. No matter what inspires you, there’s bound to be an event in proximity that will tickle your fancy. In this case, I wanted coffee and sublimated that need into getting tickled by brewmaster Matt Akin. Only culinarily speaking, of course. He’s happily married, I assure you.
My thanks to the San Diego Brewers Guild and the many, many breweries that kept this party going for so long.
Until we meet again, SDBW…
