The Desert Breweries - Part 2

As my second day in Palm Desert began, I stepped outside to enjoy the moderate temperatures that settle in to the region overnight and to plan the trip over to Joshua Tree.  While a couple of posts about the park are still to come, we’ll fast forward to the evening when I sought out the other brewery in the area – Coachella Valley Brewing, which I visited on my way back to town after a day in the desert sun.  On their website, the brewery goes by the acronym CVB, which is the shorthand I’ll use in this post. 

To the west, 148 miles or so away, is Los Angeles.  In the city, the road is called “the 10” or “the Santa Monica freeway,” but here in the valley, the smog from the coast finds its destination on Interstate 10.  Freeway imagery is the theme at CVB, from the tap handles to the beer signs.  Calling upon Siri to navigate, I found the place pretty easily, including the twists and turns of the last mile when I arrived at the now ubiquitous office/industrial park that the brewery calls home.

CVB is the older of the two breweries I visited in the desert, and despite the suburban exterior there is a sense of place about the interior: you stroll through the barrel-aging program and find yourself in the taproom, where you’re greeted with an extensive tap list that is so exhaustive it’s displayed on two chalkboards.  With such a wide range of selections to choose from, it was challenging to put together a flight, but I began to decode all the offerings to pair them up properly with the experiences of the day.

I chose beers ranging in color from amber to golden at CVB.  They had a lager, which seemed appropriate for the 110+ degree temperatures I had been out in all day.  Then there were a couple of saisons, a style I like to add for a little variety.  Right in the middle of the board I had sat in front of was a list of several fruit beers – and those became the centerpiece of my flight.

This interest in fruit beers probably stems from Shiner’s Ruby Redbird I had a few summers ago – red grapefruit and ginger were used as adjuncts; and then DePeche Mode , which I tasted at Mother Bunch in Phoenix.  Since it was the summer, I’d already had a couple of peach beers during this trip, so the CVB offering was one of the four beers I chose in this flight.  I also tried one of their IPAs, which is table stakes for Southern California breweries.

It was a good selection of beers – I’ll highlight two of my choices with the description of the beers from the CVB website:

• Phoenix Vienna Lager:  Phoenix dactylifera is the genus name for the date palm tree, long cultivated for its edible sweet fruit.  This beer is brewed with German Pilsner, Vienna, and Carapils malts, and locally-grown Medjoul dates, which are added to the boil.  Subtle German Noble hop bitterness provides balance and crisp flavor, with notes of toffee, dates, and figs shining through to the finish.  Phoenix is fermented which Mexican lager yeast, and lagered for an additional 60 days…a uniquely Coachella Valley flavor.
• Windfarm Belgian Seasonal:  One of six core beers, this seasonal is named after the massive wind farms in the north end of the Palm Springs I-10 corridor stretching out towards Cabazon.  This beer accentuates big bubblegum flavors from the Belgian yeast strain and equally robust and tropical flavors from the large hop additions during the boil – and even more after fermentation – giving the Windfarm a huge aromatic zestiness.

As I enjoyed my flight, I realized that there was a steady happy hour crowd building at the brewery, it was really hot there, so it’s natural that you could build a good following with some air conditioning and decent beer served cold.  However, the pours these folks were ordering were unusual, so I asked about them.

They were served in those large 22-ounce pedestal lager glasses, like you get at west coast public golf course clubhouses.  They were rimmed with red margarita salt, and then the beer was mixed in with Clamato juice.  At this point, I don’t remember the name of this concoction – but they must have served six of them while I sat there. 

The one local I was chatting with – an anesthesiologist from Las Vegas who spent his week here in Palm Desert, flying home on the weekends – raved about it as he enjoyed one.  He and the bar staff were interested in what we were doing at Hawksbill Brewing and then filled me in on the history of the place and their local beer culture.  A good chat and a great experience, much as I’d enjoyed at all the breweries so far.

Soon enough, it was time for me to head on out to find some dinner, so I walked out into that blazing sun and was soon on my way.  

The Desert Breweries - part 1

After checking in to the hotel in Palm Desert (and setting the room temperature on the thermostat), I began gathering thoughts for some things I might like to do out here.  I had a plan to spend a day at Joshua Tree National Park – those posts are coming up later this week – but I also was thinking ahead to Friday in LA when I would give a presentation to my MBA reunion.  I decided to go find a haircut, and then to find a local brewery afterwards. 

Except for the face-melting heat in the desert, the haircut was unremarkable.  My next stop was LaQuinta Brewery, which is the newer of the two breweries in the area, founded in 2013.  When I arrived, I noticed a barrel-aging program – but even the beers that had been laid up in casks were older than Hawksbill Brewing!

During these brewery visits in San Diego and now the desert, I had begun to notice how the locals interact with the business – the local trade is very important to our brewery as well, and we are starting to understand what that will mean to our culture and to our success.  Here at La Quinta, the website promises a “laid-back, desert style” and I wanted to know what that was like.

It wasn’t the Eagles (here I could throw in my line from The Big Lebowski, mind the f-bomb, of course); instead the music in the background had a pop-metal sort of vibe.  Behind the bar were the guys who had dialed that sound in, so I struck up a conversation, telling them about my story and listening to them tell me theirs – how they started, how they built the business and menu.  There was a decent crowd of 20 or so folks in, it being around the happy hour.  

For beers, as the photo shows, I kept to a monochromatic selection, mainly due to the desert heat.  I also tried to stay with a session idea, ABVs between 5-6%, although I made an exception with the IPA it tried there (these descriptions are from their web site):   

• Heatwave Amber:  Toasty malt character with a hint of caramel, this bee is slightly darker than your typical amber ale.  Generous amounts of Warrior hops provide the bitterness while Centennial and Chinook hops provide aroma.
• Bloody Hot Summer (Seasonal):  Nothing beats this beer on a scorching hot day in the Coachella Valley.  We’ve infused a pale wheat ale with just the right amount of blood oranges, producing a fantastic thirst quenching beer.  This brew is seasonal, so it dries up with the temperatures drop!
• Poolside Blonde:  A light maltiness provided by the Pilsner and Vienna malts.  Light straw in color, it has a moderately bitter finish.  A true palate cleansing ale.
• Even Par IPA:  This India Pale Ale is brewed with three of the most sought-after hops in brewing – Citra, Simcoe, and Mosaic.  The result is an explosion of floral, tropical, and fruity flavors.  While this “aiming fluid” may not help you shoot even par, it will certainly make you feel like you did!

The Even Par IPA advertised an IBU of 85 based on the high alpha/aromatic qualities of that hop bill.  At Hawksbill, we designed our IPA to be around 55 IBU, significantly lower than this to emphasize our malt-forward style, but we do use Citra as part of the hop recipe.  Despite the added bitterness, theirs was refreshing and on-point, but ours held up by comparison as well; both meet the objectives of the requirement to have an IPA on tap.

After finishing my flight, I drove back to the neighborhood near the hotel for dinner.  I began to understand something about the community – Palm Springs and Palm Desert are winter playgrounds, but here I was, in the middle of it, in July.  At least after dinner, around 7:30, the temperature had already cooled off – to 106!

San Diego Breweries - part 2

Continuing today with a couple of the breweries I visited in July during my Southern California vacation.  After spending Saturday evening with Mark and Nancy, my plan for Sunday was to look up Tony and Elizabeth, who live up in the north part of the city.  I mapped a route to their place and found two breweries on the way, with the plan to wrap up the second one and head directly to their house – even though our plans changed and we met in San Diego’s Little Italy instead.

Longship Flight and beer list.

My first stop was a new brewery, Longship Brewery, less than one-year old.  The brewery uses a Viking theme to emphasize their exploration with flavors and ingredients, and there is a lot of Viking paraphernalia around.  Like many of our Northern Virginia establishments, this one was located in an office park - it was a little hard to find, but they had plenty of space to operate a 20-barrel brewery.   

I tried a flight of four there, but enough time has passed that I don’t remember all of them.  I do remember two, however; in line with their spirit of exploration, they were two beers I might not have chosen otherwise (these descriptions are from their web page):

• Funeral Pyre Smoked Porter – smokey and spiced, this dry porter has a sweet smoke aroma and flavor.  Like all our beers, the flavor is pronounced, but not overpowering.  Brewed with allspice, this porter is a unique blend of smoke, malt, and spice.
• Topaz SMASH – this juicy, hazy IPA is our first expedition with the new Topaz hop.  With an amazing grapefruit and passion fruit aroma, and a bitter linger with just enough malt to maintain a balance, this hop experiment does not disappoint.

I wore my Hawksbill Hopyards polo shirt during these visits, and it was a conversation piece at both of the breweries I visited.  In San Diego, they acknowledge the brewery community whenever they have visitors from other operations.  At Longship, they gave me a tour of the place – and we spent a few minutes talking about the Topaz SMASH and why they tried it, acknowledging that it was a work in progress.

Tasting room at Green Flash San Diego

For my next stop, I had decided to make a stop at Green Flash Brewing.  Now that’s a recognizable name to Virginia craft beer fans, because Green Flash was one of the first California operations to open on the East Coast, in the Hampton Roads/Virginia Beach area.  Others have joined them now – Stone in Richmond is among the first to come to mind – it’s a topic I may have more to write about in the future, but for now we’ll get back to the Southern California vacation.

Scale of ops at Green Flash - 1 of 4 rows.

Like Longship, Green Flash is in an industrial park, but they have a much larger space, and they need it due to the scale of the operation.  There were several food trucks outside, and plentiful space for picnics.  The overall arrival experience reminded me of Kansas City’s Boulevard a few years ago (blog post here) – and I’m not even sure if I went in the main entry, as I had to navigate some corridors to get back to the tasting area.

Once I was inside, I took in all the offerings, which were plentiful; eventually I figured out that having 15 or more beers on tap was table stakes for all these breweries!  I made my selections for a flight of four, and settled in for the tasting.  My hopyards Polo came up in conversation again, and the tap room manager offered me their new East Coast IPA as a sample. 

The Green Flash flight -
coincidentally monochromatic.

There was a lot about the business to take in at Green Flash, maybe a few thoughts that we could take away and use to guide how Hawksbill Brewing will develop over the years.  

1. There is a clear benefit from longevity, these 10-year-old plus breweries are all holding their own and expanding – if we make it that long, that might be an option for us.
2. Green Flash bought Alpine Brewery, another operation in San Diego County, but they kept the recipes and branding separate – this is another expansion model that could come into play, should we be so lucky.  
3. I was still not sure what to make of the fact that there are 140 breweries in San Diego (3-million population), and several of them have the same scale as Green Flash – that’s one brewery per 22,000 people (approximately Page County’s population), so maybe we got that part right, who knows?

Clearly, I was immersed in thinking about the business, but it was time to get on the road to meet Tony and Elizabeth.  I asked for my check, but found that I had received an industry comp.  That was a nice touch, Green Flash!

San Diego Breweries - part 1

Thorn Street Tap List

In the months since we opened Hawksbill Brewing, I’ve had a couple of road trips.  Now that I own a brewery, I’m taking the time to check out the local action in the places I visit.  Although I didn’t post on my May trip to Columbus, Ohio, there are 34 breweries there, and I went to four.

That’s an abundance of breweries, but it doesn’t compare to what’s happening in towns on the West Coast.  The industry continues to explode there, and even the brewery visits Mary and I made during our last Northern California vacation couldn’t prepare me for what I found in San Diego.  According to this list from San Diego.org, there are 140 breweries in San Diego county, give or take!

I knew that my friends Mark and Nancy had a couple of breweries within an easy walk of their place.  In fact, there was one right next door – Thorn St. Brewery, so after our catch-up conversation and the tour of their new place, we took a walk over to check the place out.  Dogs are welcome in a lot of these places, so we took Dax with us – he’s a good boy and knows the ropes.

As we arrived, there was a food truck outside, so we grabbed a bite and went in to find a place to sit, ending up in the back room where the brewery infrastructure is.  We paused to check out the offerings and put together a flight of eight to share – enough time has passed that I can’t remember all the selections, but I’m pretty sure the three below were included (descriptions from the brewery’s page):

• Cocomotive Coconut Porter – This robust porter tastes like a fresh macaroon dipped in a delicious malty beer.  The base recipe is a smooth strong porter, slightly less roasty than a stout but with plenty of chocolate overtones.  Organic coconut is oven roasted and steeped in the finished beer.
• Red Headed Hop Child – This west coast style is a complex blend of rich toasted malts whose sweetness pairs well with the citrus, pine, and tropical notes from the Centennial and Simcoe hops.
• Thorn Street Pale Ale – A sessionable classic American Pale Ale that strikes a balance between its 2-row barley and caramel malts with the bitterness of the super high alpha acid Warrior hop.  Late addition of Cascade and an additional Cascade dry hop rounds it out very nicely.

Mark and Nancy live in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego.  It seemed to have been developed as an early 20^th Century suburb, with many bungalow-style homes, some California contemporaries, garden apartments, and in-fills.  With so many breweries in town, it was an easy walk through the neighborhood to Modern Times North Park tasting room, where we enjoyed the scene and more beers (I'm pretty sure I had the Farmhouse Saison), before calling it an evening.

There’s one final takeaway from the too-short visit to North Park:  a few thoughts about neighborhood brewing from the Thorn St. web site.  They describe North Park as a neighborhood where “…folks pride themselves on walking or riding their bike to get locally produced food, where people devote large parts of their property to growing their own edibles, where people love gardening, fishing, and of course, brewing their own beers…Reduce your carbon footprint, eat local, buy local, produce something local, be self-sufficient as much as you can, smile, and please try to leave the world a little better than you found it…”

That’s not too far from what we’re trying to do at Hawksbill Brewing, come to think of it.