{"id":11123,"date":"2015-06-22T08:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T15:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=11123"},"modified":"2015-06-22T12:21:52","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T19:21:52","slug":"barrel-rescue-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2015\/06\/22\/barrel-rescue-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Barrel Rescue Brewing Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BRB\"<\/a>Many local breweries lend their skill and effort to charities, but it takes an nth-level degree of devotion to make a cause the crux of a brewing company\u2019s entire identity. But that\u2019s how deeply engrained Greg Littrell<\/strong>\u2019s and Katie Earle<\/strong>\u2019s shared love of rescuing dogs is. In fact, it\u2019s how they met ten years ago when Littrell adopted dachshunds from Earle\u2019s rescue. During that transaction, they discovered that they had more in common than canines, namely a love of beer and brewing. Fast-forward and the duo is in the process of opening a boutique operation called Barrel Rescue Brewing Company<\/strong><\/a> (8125 Ronson Road, Suite F, Kearny Mesa)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Last week, Littrell and Earle signed the lease on a 2,000-square-foot space in which to install a projected seven-barrel brewhouse which they intend to acquire from an existing local brewery looking to up its capacity, 300 oak barrels and a tasting room. Like the output of most of its beers, the tasting room will be very tiny\u2014likely a mere 500 square feet (though an outdoor patio is planned to provide patrons extra space). If all goes as planned, the interior will feature canvas-wrap wall art of dogs available for adoption from various San Diego rescue groups.<\/p>\n

Additionally, Barrel Rescue\u2019s brews will be named after some of their four-legged friends. A Belgian golden ale built for barrel-aging will bear the name of Nellie, a dachshund Katie rescued from a puppy mill, and a blueberry sour will be called Rainbow Blueberry Frost after the first deaf dog she rescued. Additionally, there will be a line of Brettanomyces-fermented beers will be called the Goldilocks Series: Papa Brett, Mama Brett and Baby Brett (though they’ve never had pups named Goldilocks or Brett).<\/p>\n

In reading that last paragraph, astute imbibers will notice that every beer mentioned falls in the sour or wild category. As the business\u2019 name implies, this will be Barrel Rescue\u2019s bailiwick. There will be year-round beers, but Littrell and Earle are all about crafting \u201ctrue\u201d barrel-aged sour beers aged at least a year before blending or fruiting. They aim to produce lambics, gueuzes and fruited sour ales. The latter will incorporate more typical fruits such as cherries, raspberries and apricots, as well as lesser utilized edibles such as apples and Meyer lemons.<\/p>\n

\"Greg<\/a>
Greg Littrell and Katie Earle are all smiles after signing the lease on the site for Barrel Rescue Brewing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Littrell and Earle will both handle brewing, extending on four years spent brewing sour beers as a tandem. They started with two used barrels from San Marcos\u2019 The Lost Abbey<\/strong><\/a>, followed by a quartet of oak receptacles from a local winery. From there, they entered some of their ales into local competitions, garnering awards and positive feedback. Earle also won an internal homebrewing contest while working at Ballast Point Brewing and Spirits<\/strong><\/a> (she now works at The Lost Abbey Confessional<\/strong><\/a> in Cardiff), which led to the commercial brewing of Home Brew Mart Homework Series #5, a hoppy Belgian-style pale ale. That beer recently took silver at last weekend’s San Diego International Beer Festival<\/strong><\/a>. Still, one of the most rewarding moments of their time on the tart side was when a friend of theirs took a bottle of their framboise to Belgium\u2019s lambic mecca, Cantillon<\/strong><\/a>, and were told the brewer they shared it with refused to believe it was a homebrew creation.<\/p>\n

A number of Barrel Rescue beers are already resting in oak. Littrell and Earle used homebrewer Jeff Swem<\/strong>‘s home brew system (which readers may have seen on the cover of the June issue of West Coaster<\/em><\/strong><\/a>) to brew the base beers. As soon as their brewhouse is installed, the duo plan to get to work immediately brewing up beers and transferring them to barrels to begin the aging process. Still, they report it will be at least a year before the business opens. Even when that happens, beer will be rather scarce. They liken it to a boutique winery producing very minute vintages. Once a year, they will offer up limited-release bottles of their barrel-aged stock and when they\u2019re gone, they\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n

In selecting Kearny Mesa, not only did Littrell and Earle pick a community with a burgeoning beer scene and breweries they share the sour bug with, they also inherited built-in comrades who have already been exceptionally helpful to them, lending advice throughout the early stages of Barrel Rescue\u2019s life. Among them are Douglas Constantiner<\/strong> and Travis Smith <\/strong>of Societe Brewing Company<\/strong><\/a>, Liz and Curtis Chism <\/strong>of Council Brewing Company<\/strong><\/a>, and Tom and Lindsey Nickel <\/strong>of O\u2019Brien\u2019s Pub<\/strong><\/a>. But who wouldn\u2019t want to help an operation that will not only rescue dogs in need, but as Earle puts it, \u201crescue barrels from the horrible fate of becoming planters sold at Dixieline.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many local breweries lend their skill and effort to charities, but it takes an nth-level degree of devotion to make a cause the crux of a brewing company\u2019s entire identity. But that\u2019s how deeply engrained Greg Littrell\u2019s and Katie Earle\u2019s shared love of rescuing dogs is. In fact, it\u2019s how they met ten years ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[368,1],"tags":[1353,52,1631,376,1603,1602,477,1640,1537,390,391,1638,1635,1634,1639,1636,926,1633,1449,754,1439,430,276,1632,644,1637],"class_list":{"0":"post-11123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-beer-news","7":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","8":"tag-sdbeer","9":"tag-ballast-point","10":"tag-barrel-rescue","11":"tag-beer","12":"tag-brett","13":"tag-brettanomyces","14":"tag-cantillon","15":"tag-confessional","16":"tag-council-brewing","17":"tag-craft-beer","18":"tag-craftbeer","19":"tag-dog-rescue","20":"tag-greg-littrell","21":"tag-gueuze","22":"tag-jeff-swem","23":"tag-katie-earle","24":"tag-kearny-mesa","25":"tag-lambic","26":"tag-lost-abbey","27":"tag-obriens-pub","28":"tag-san-diego","29":"tag-san-diego-international-beer-festival","30":"tag-societe","31":"tag-sour-ale","32":"tag-sour-beer","33":"tag-west-coaster","34":"entry","35":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-2Tp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}