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.

San Diego Arrival

After arriving at LAX, I drove down to San Diego with the goal of visiting friends.  I guess I’ve gotten to know the 405 and the 5 well enough by now to have my own landmarks along the way; one thing I was on the lookout for was an easily accessible In-and-Out Burger stand like the one I had visited a few years ago in Ontario.  I was successful, and even having a friendly little chat with a UCLA alum while waiting for our burgers didn’t hurt the experience of this pit stop!

Finally, I arrived in San Diego, and firmed up plans for the evening’s visit with Mark and Nancy.  They’ve appeared in the blog before, when they stopped by Hawksbill Cabin during their cross-country trip in their RV – there’s a post about their visit here.  Our goal was to reconnect, have some beers at one of the numerous local breweries in San Diego – but most importantly, to check out their very cool house, which Mark designed and they built over the last year or so.

We’ve been friends with Mark and Nancy for years – they lived in DC a long time ago before moving to Santa Barbara, and then five years ago they moved down to San Diego.  During that time, besides the cross-country trip, architecture, and personal training, they’ve been keeping busy doing real estate projects.  On this trip out, I got to visit them in the latest one, which I think showcases some excellent urban living design.

They found the lot by chance, it had been part of a three-lot parcel that had housed a service station.  The service station went out of business and the three lots were broken apart; this particular one was deep but only 25 feet wide.  They went through the process of deeding the property and then rezoning so that it would be reclassified to something where they could build a house – settling on mixed use commercial/residential.

The city required a 12-foot set back from the lot line, so that left them with 13 feet to build on – that’s where the urban design comes in.  They came up with a 2-bedroom, 2-bath home with excellent amenities and plentiful outdoor spaces to enjoy the wonderful San Diego weather.  Plus, they’re only a half block away from one of the many San Diego breweries – I’ll post on a few of them next time – and they overlook a thriving street scene.

Good design always gets me thinking about my own potential projects. While we may never do it, I’d love to rework the addition to Hawksbill Cabin, and if we did, I’d like to try and adapt the grade beam foundation approach they used in San Diego, and we might apply some of the same materials to the exterior.  I think they’re flexible enough to look good back here in the hollow, too!

July California Trip

Between the brewery and my day job, the pace of life these days seems to have conspired against my blogging hobby.  I’ve missed it, and although I don’t think I can get back into the habit of posting as often as I used to – eight to 12 times per month – I do intend to make a go of getting a few posts up a month, maybe along the lines of four to six times per month.  I still want to write up all the excitement of those last few months of getting the brewery up and running, and that will come, but for now I thought I might start with a few posts about the Southern California trip I did back in July…so here goes.

Orth, with coffee (repositioned to hide
the abundant intellectual property).

Mary and I had been planning for this year’s vacation to be centered around a talk I was invited to give at USC, during the 40^th anniversary celebration for the MBA program I attended there.  The USC portion of the trip was certainly a highlight, but it came at the end of the trip, so those posts will come up later in this tale.   There’s one other caveat I need to add:  due to a last-minute family logistics issue, Mary wasn’t able to join me for this week-long adventure – I wish we had been able to work this out, because these experiences are some I would have loved to share with her.

The itinerary I’d planned involved was a three-legged journey.  After flying in to LAX, I would drive down to San Diego for a few days, then head out to Palm Desert to tour Joshua Tree National Park, and finally come back to LA for the USC event.  These chronological posts will follow that itinerary.

One of the friends I’d planned to check in with in San Diego was my Air Force buddy, Tony.  He and his wife Elizabeth are scientists out there, and have been working in the field for nearly 20 years.  At first, we planned to meet at their house for a cook-out, but they offered an alternative to meet in San Diego’s Little Italy District (who knew there was one in San Diego?), so we had a wonderful dinner catching up on life’s events. 

They have two kids who are growing up too fast, and one of them just graduated from high school.  Mary and I had sent a gift, and during part of the evening I was given a thank you card – well, I’ve inherited my grandfather’s old habit of tearing up at any event like this, and that instinct didn’t let me down when I read the card.

The next day, I’d planned to get on the road over to Palm Desert, but Tony suggested I come by to see his work place in La Jolla – it was on the way, so that was a no-brainer.  We toured the lab where he works, and I learned a little bit about the science they’re doing, along with some of the methods. 

Over coffee, he invited a colleague of his down.  It turns out this colleague had done some work around brewer’s yeast, and not only that – he’s an award-winning brewer.  We spent some time talking about a scientific paper they’d done on the topic, which was very educational and rewarding for me. 

Soon enough, I took my leave and was on my way to Palm Desert.  I’ll get to that part of the trip next week, but my next post will go back to day one, to close the loop on those activities.