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!