{"id":16346,"date":"2017-02-08T08:00:48","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/?p=16346"},"modified":"2017-01-29T13:38:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-29T21:38:54","slug":"beer-touring-ob-brewery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/2017\/02\/08\/beer-touring-ob-brewery\/","title":{"rendered":"Beer Touring: OB Brewery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It took more than three years to open, standing as a three-story enigma\u00a0on the western end of Newport Avenue. But OB Brewery <\/strong><\/a>(5041 Newport Avenue, Ocean Beach)<\/em> finally debuted with the bang of fireworks last Independence Day weekend. When conceived, there was only one other brewery in town, the southernmost porthole of local brewpub chain Pizza Port<\/strong><\/a>. Now, this sister-business of craft-beer early-adopter Newport Pizza and Ale House<\/strong> is one of seven brewery-owned venues within a half-mile<\/em> of each other\u2026and that doesn\u2019t even count the recently opened Voltaire Beach\u00a0House <\/strong><\/a>and its on-site tasting room for Santa Clara-based Golden State Brewery<\/strong><\/a>, or beer-centric businesses like Bar 1502<\/strong>, Wonderland<\/strong>, Raglan Public House<\/strong> or The Joint<\/strong>. Competition for imbiber interest is fiercer than ever, and it would seem the neighborhood\u2019s namesake brewery is ill-equipped to put up much of a fight.<\/p>\n

The major appeal of OB Brewery is its triple-decker architecture. The venue provides three unique environments in which to relax with a cold one, be it house-beers or ales and lagers from guest taps. As one would expect, the most popular of those options is an open-air, tiered deck on the top-floor providing fantastic\u00a0views of the ocean and the eclectic mix of comers-and-goers on Newport\u2026at least during the sunny season. Of late it\u2019s been far too cold for this choice value-added\u00a0to factor in, requiring beer-quality to carry the day. After a recent visit, I feel comfortable venturing the theory that OB Brewery\u2019s scarce patronage is directly attributable to its lackluster wares.<\/p>\n

The house India pale ale (IPA), Hop On Board, was low on carbonation and had competing notes of pine, kumquat (odd, but not off-putting)\u2026and butter. The latter is an off-flavor associated with the presence of diacetyl. An oatmeal stout started off nice and coffee-like but quickly devolved into an ashy finish that was like kissing a chain-smoker. A red IPA had no nose to speak of, but did exhibit some tea-like hop notes on the palate. If anything, it came across as an amplified version of an English-style extra special bitter (ESB). The beer with the most redeeming qualities was Roll Wit\u2019 It, a Belgian-style witbier that had plenty of trademark citrus character plus a touch of earthy notes from the addition of coriander. It will do well with the Blue Moon and Shock Top crowd\u2014something an OB watering hole must consider\u2014but a legitimate San Diego beer experience requires mastery of more than a lone wheat ale.<\/p>\n

Were this superiorly cool venue to touch-down in a community under-served from a craft-beer perspective, it would fare much better. The same would be true if this business could have taken less than an entire high-school career to open. But smack-dab in the heart of current-day OB, a neighborhood that is, frankly, over-saturated with local beer options at present, the odds of this place competing (even against its parent business), much less emerging victorious, are rail-thin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took more than three years to open, standing as a three-story enigma\u00a0on the western end of Newport Avenue. But OB Brewery (5041 Newport Avenue, Ocean Beach) finally debuted with the bang of fireworks last Independence Day weekend. When conceived, there was only one other brewery in town, the southernmost porthole of local brewpub chain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16299,"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":[368,369,287,1],"tags":[1353,1244,376,1732,442,391,2051,3515,2483,1010,2561,2559,2012,2558,763,566,3583,1439,1314,3517,1637,3582],"class_list":{"0":"post-16346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-beer-news","8":"category-beer-styles","9":"category-homebrewing","10":"category-san-diego-beer-beverage-news","11":"tag-sdbeer","12":"tag-bar-1502","13":"tag-beer","14":"tag-beer-touring","15":"tag-brandon-hernandez","16":"tag-craftbeer","17":"tag-esb","18":"tag-golden-state-brewery","19":"tag-indiebeer","20":"tag-ipa","21":"tag-newport-avenue","22":"tag-newport-pizza","23":"tag-ob","24":"tag-ob-brewery","25":"tag-ocean-beach","26":"tag-raglan-public-house","27":"tag-red-ipa","28":"tag-san-diego","29":"tag-the-joint","30":"tag-voltaire-beach-house","31":"tag-west-coaster","32":"tag-wonderland","33":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/ob_brewery.jpg?fit=1000%2C770&ssl=1","wps_subtitle":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdtr4y-4fE","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16346","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=16346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archives.csusm.edu\/westcoastersd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}