So young. So unique. So tasty. So much drama! All of these phrases have been used to describe Toolbox Brewing Company (1495 Poinsettia Avenue, Suite 148, Vista)—by me, at least. After a recent visit, I’m happy to delete that last one from the list. It would seem since parting ways with original brewer Peter Perrecone (who has since taken over brewing and the sour ale program at Belching Beaver Brewery’s original brewhouse just a mile north), things have calmed down dramatically. Much of that has to do with their current head brewer, Ehren Schmidt.
Young, colorful (in dress and personality), and both bearded and be-dreaded, his look belies his scientific, methodic nature. This guy is all about wild yeast and the various microorganisms that dry out, sour and otherwise transform ales into more outlandish and exotically beautiful quaffs, and he has a lab full of beakers and Petri dishes to prove it. But in-house bugs by themselves mean little. It’s how they’re incorporated into beers that matters, so I was eager to see how Schmidt was doing on that front. After tasting through eight of Toolbox 2.0’s beers, the answer is: quite well.
The tasting room’s current line-up is heavy on beers that were developed under Toolbox’s original brewing regime, but with tweaks and deviations by Schmidt. In general, I found that fruited beers like Purple Drink, a boysenberry sour ale, are a bit softer in their acidity. There is still plenty of pucker-power, but it’s a bit rounder and a little easier for entry-level tart beer tasters to take. That said, Bramble On Rose—a barrel-aged blackberry wild ale—assaults taste buds with sourness, eliciting salivation. It’s definitely for those who relish Sour Patch Kids, Warheads and beers that push the pH barometer, it’s also darn tasty. A cranberry and raspberry Berliner weisse called Bog Sauce is less sour, less fruity and can be consumed in greater quantities. That beer is currently available in bottles at select beer outlets.
Also on-tap was a second Berliner weisse, this one brewed with cucumbers. I’ve had several cucumber ales in my day, but this one tasted like more than just beery spa-water. Eighteen pounds of cucumber per-batch equates to some subtle vegetal, chlorophyll character, but there are also nice earthy, melon-like nuances and a bit of lemony zing in the finish from the base beer. It was easy to enjoy, as was Life Gose On, a traditional German-style Gose brewed with salt and coriander that was the first beer Schmidt brewed after signing on with Toolbox.
I tend to prefer sours to beers fermented using Brettanomyces. That’s mostly because so many brewers have yet to get a handle on how to best utilize Brett. It’s not easy. But Schmidt seems to be well on his way with this family of yeast strains. Proof came in the form of three Belgian-style beers—Funky Wit, a foeder-aged farmhouse ale called Chêne Bretta and a saison brewed with ancient grains dubbed Rustique. Each exhibited two things I look for in Brett beers—clean, sharp dryness and lack of plastic- or Band-Aid-like off-flavors. The witbier had a nice twang, Rustique was gentler overall with nice lemon rind flavor and bitterness plus a bone-dry finish, and Chêne Bretta was big on oak flavors (so much so that I could smell it) and a perfect example of what fouder-aging can do for a beer.
Schmidt also has a Shandy-inspired Berliner weisse brewed with grapefruit and young ginger, and has plans to release a sour farmhouse ale aged in foudres as well as a barrel-aged ale flavored with California Chardonnay grapes. When Toolbox’s personnel change occurred last August, many wondered if this 100% wild-ale brewery would be able to find someone to fill its initial brewer’s boots. Not many have the knowledge-base to take on such an ambitious role. But it would seem Schmidt is the right man for the job. If anything, Toolbox is better now than it was before, and considering how much I enjoyed it previously, that’s saying something!