For a number of years, two breweries—Oceanside Ale Works and Breakwater Brewing Company—called the City of Oceanside home. Then, seemingly overnight, the North County coastal community found itself in the midst of a food-and-drink revolution. Adventurous restaurants began opening at a rapid clip, and with them have come numerous brewing operations (Bagby Beer Company, Legacy Brewing Company, Belching Beaver Brewery, Midnight Jack Brewing Company, Urge Gastropub’s Mason Ale Works and the open-and-soon-shut Beer Brewing Company), as well as the county’s only meadery, Golden Coast Mead. Last month, O-side welcomed another into its suddenly sudsy scene, Oceanside Brewing Company (312 Via Del Norte, Oceanside).
Though the latest addition, this project goes back further than any of the others. Master brewer Greg Distefano (who has been brewing for 25 years, served as master brewer for Stuffed Pizza—now Oggi’s—and founded local homebrew club San Diego Brew Techs) purchased the name Oceanside Brewing Company 15 years ago with the dream of starting a world-class brewery. Now, he and co-founder/head brewer Tomas Bryant have brought it to life in a 2,100-square-foot space with a three-and-a-half-barrel brewhouse and 1,900-square-foot outdoor patio. Both share a love of Oceanside’s diverse population and hometown feel, and hope to contribute something of quality to the community. One thing’s for sure, they’ve certainly brought quantity with 18 taps, all pumping out different and widely varied beer styles.
Core beers include an American pale ale, India pale ale (IPA), amber ale, cream ale, hefeweizen and English-style porter. Those share space beside a pineapple-infused IPA, double IPA, black IPA (or Cascadian dark ale, as they prefer to refer to it), barley-wine, tropical hefe, imperial stout, Belgian-style strong ale and witbier. Honey-wines and braggots are also something they will produce with great regularity. Distefano and Bryant utilize more than 20 yeast strains from nearby Real Brewer’s Yeast to ferment these and their other beers.
What might look like a beer-board populated by randomly landing spitballs actually has quite a bit of reason behind it. Distefano and Bryant are self-proclaimed historical brewers, and say each beer has a historical reason for being on-tap, calling their style “classic-meets-innovation”. They are enthused that this is the only time in the history of the world that literally every beer ingredient known to mankind is at brewers’ disposal, cautiously adding that this may not always be the case. While it is, they intend to take advantage of the current state of the fermentation arts.