The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [45]
The Bruery Provisions in Orange is a bottle shop with thirty taps and around five hundred bottled selections to choose from, along with $3 tasting flights—a great deal. There’s a large tasting area, and busy calendar of events (talks, tastings, classes, etc.), but beer isn’t the only draw: There’s also a dizzying array of cheese, charcuterie, chocolates, coffees, olive oils, marmalades, and other edibles.
PHILOSOPHY
Unorthodox. Since its inception, The Bruery has released around eighty-five beers conjured out of such ingredients as Thai basil, pasilla chiles, and purple mangosteen, some of the concoctions only dimly recognizable as beers to the layperson. To make his award-winning Autumn Maple, Rue roasts yams on a barbecue until they are soft and sugary, then smashes them up and adds them to a mash tun, the brewer’s tank used to extract fermentable sugars that normally come entirely from grain.
KEY BEER
Orchard White and Black Tuesday have made the biggest splashes, but try the Humulus Lager to really shock your expectations. It’s a superstrong lager (in the bock territory, at 7.2% ABV), aromatically hopped like an IPA.
Southern California & San Diego County
That an area often associated with surfing and skateboarding should turn out to be one of the country’s top craft beer destinations comes as a surprise to many. But it’s absolutely true: There are more than thirty top-tier brewing companies in the entire Southern California region now, and dozens of excellent beer bars. From crisp, refreshing lagers to pungent IPAs, Belgian ales, and even porters and stouts smoked with chipotle and other peppers, the brewers’ bold creativity stems from the area’s lack of brewing history. There are no expectations to live up to and no pressure to follow rules.
GREEN FLASH BREWING CO.
6550 Mira Mesa Blvd • San Diego, CA 92121 (858) 622-0085 • greenflashbrew.com • Established: 2002
SCENE & STORY
In the tradition of other San Diego County breweries, Green Flash could not be in a more flavorless location, an industrial warehouse space. No matter—even if the walls are adorned with little more than dry-erase boards, the beers are anything but bland, and it’s busy every weekend starting at 4 p.m., when space is made available on the bottling floor (Fridays 4 to 8 p.m; Saturdays 12 to 5 p.m; Sundays 12 to 4 p.m.). Standing around tasting amid the tanks and malt mill and bottling line, it’s easy to chat and mingle with other beer lovers who have made the trek.
PHILOSOPHY
Hoptopian. The best-known beers of Green Flash are by turns pungent, dank, grassy, piney, and bitter. If that’s your thing, this is your place. Lately though, the brewery has been doing a number of Belgian-style beers, including Bière De L’Amitié, a 9.5% ABV collaboration strong pale ale with Brasserie St. Feuillien in southwestern Belgium.
KEY BEER
West Coast IPA gets most of the love, but the fiery Hop Head Red (6% ABV), a copper-hued amber dry hopped with Amarillo, is a fun beer to drink and would go well with pepperoni pizza.
PORT BREWING CO./THE LOST ABBEY
155 Mata Way, No. 104 • San Marcos, CA 92069 (800) 918-6816 • lostabbey.com • Established: 2006
SCENE & STORY
Port Brewing Company and its Belgian-beer-influenced Lost Abbey line of beers are produced under the watchful eye of award-winning brewer Tomme Arthur, founding brewer of Pizza Port, and one of the first American craft brewers to employ barrel aging. The operation is based in an industrial space on the northern perimeter of San Diego County (one that used to house Stone, which outgrew the space and moved a few miles down the road).
One of San Diego county’s biggest beer traveler draws, Lost Abbey (as most refer to it now) has a spacious tasting room stacked high with oak barrels and kegs