San Diego Brewers Guild Festival

Scott and I went to the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival tonight.

The crowd was a little bigger this year compared to last year, and they must have learned from last year that they’d do better to serve more food this time along with the beer as well as offer some water for sale, so this year’s event had many food samples from various vendors — some brewers’ restaurants and some just restaurants. Bella Pizza was really good and a welcome companion to the beer. Too bad they’re located all the way in Chula Vista. While other food samples were quite good, a lot of them were spicy, which isn’t really appropriate food for beer tasting as it kills taste buds. Also last year, they provided a sink to clean out our taster glasses (and drain out any disagreeable beer), but there was no such sink provided this year. As for the beer, this year was not as heavy on the IPAs, although Alpine’s Pure Hoppiness still made the menu. Oddly, this year’s festival featured a few sour beers. Maybe the brewers felt the need to be a little more exotic this year.

I have to preface my beer review: I like German-style lagers far more than Belgium beers or IPAs. And if you’re a microbrew fan in San Diego, you probably noticed that San Diego’s microbrew scene leans more toward IPAs than anything else. But in my view, lagers are generally a better basis for creating a beer with a crisp taste, a clean finish, and a little bit of something interesting; it’s difficult to convey subtle or not-so-subtle flavors when you have so much hoppiness that it drowns out everything else. Scott’s theory as to why microbreweries tend to focus more on IPAs and Belgium-style beers is that the big breweries — Budweiser, Miller Light, etc. — are predominately German-style lagers, and so if they want to stand out as a microbrewery and justify the $5 extra you might pay for a microbrewery’s beer, they have to try a totally different style of beer. Now, as a fan of microbrews, I believe you can produce a lager that has something interesting and worthwhile to offer. Karl Strauss, for example, produces balanced, flavorful lagers that are interesting enough to justify the extra cost. That said, here is my review:

I went for the lighter beers first and then progressively darker. First up was San Diego Brewing Co.’s Blueberry Wheat. I tried this at last year’s festival, but was luke-warm to it then probably because it was one of the last beers I tasted that night, so my taste buds were shot by then and hence, last year’s version tasted a bit like blueberry cough syrup. But this year — WOW. Scott, who liked this beer last year, has been on a scavenger hunt for blueberry beers, taking his hunt on the road all the way to a microbrewery in Maine. But nothing came close to San Diego Brewing Co’s Blueberry Wheat. Where the other microbrews only delivered a subtle flavor of blueberry, this one has a definitive and clean taste of blueberries.

Rock Bottom La Jolla’s Bumble Beer Honey Ale. This one was nothing special, and in fact, it peeved me a bit. There are a lot of microbreweries that have beers with the word “honey” it the name, but don’t deliver honey at all. This was one of those beers. At last year’s festival, they had something called Orange Honey, which was much better than this year’s honey beer. But so far as “honey beers” go, my favorite is Pizza Port’s California Honey beer, which unfortunately, I’ve never seen featured at these events.

Mission Brewery’s Helles. This was my favorite of the evening. It had a remarkably crisp taste and a very clean finish. Normally, I look for a little bit of non-beer flavor in a good beer, but this one was so crisp and so clean that it beat out the more exotic blends.

La Jolla Brewhouse’s Red Lion (Belgian Red). This one was okay by itself, but it was complemented with their meatloaf and sweet potato hash forming an excellent pairing and highlighting the beer in a way that I don’t think it would have been able to on its own.

Rock Bottom La Jolla’s Ragtop Red. Another disappointment from Rock Bottom. Their Fire Chief Red was my favorite at the Lager Festival last year, so I had expected an equally impressive red beer this time around with the Ragtop Red. Like their Bumble Beer Honey Ale, the beer was okay, but nothing special – not the rich toasted barley flavor of their Fire Chief Red.

Oggi’s Sunset Amber. This one was overly bitter. Even though I am not a fan of IPAs, I do see craft in something like Alpine’s Pure Hoppiness (which I didn’t taste this year, but tasted last year). This one didn’t leverage the hops, and instead it was just flat bitterness all around.

Ballast Point’s Rocktoberfest. This was okay, and perhaps my taste buds had had enough for the evening by this point. I really had no patience to drink beyond the first couple of impressions. At this point in the evening, I wanted to end with one of the two coffee stouts featured tonight, but instead decided that having to drain out the remaining Rocktoberfest was a sign that I really didn’t have the capacity to try anymore beers tonight. And then…

Karl Strauss’s Sour Beer. Scott decided to end his evening with one of the sour beers. This year, Karl Strauss skipped any of their beers readily available at grocery stores and instead went for their exotic beers, some of which barely constitute as beers. Their Sour Beer is REALLY sour, so it’s best left as a stand-alone desert drink. I liked it. Like many of Karl Strauss beers, this one is a bit sweet, so there was a slight sweetness mixed with the sour taste, and this sweet, almost grape taste compliments and finishes the sour taste for an interesting blend that unfolds and changes through each taste.

Brewers I didn’t try this year (mostly because I’ve tried these before): Alpine, Backstreet, Coronado, Firehouse, Gordon Biersch, Green Flash, Lightning, Pizza Port, Stone, and Alesmith. Actually, I just noticed Alesmith this year and was looking forward to giving them a taste, but then decided to strike them off my taste list after I saw the names of their beers. Judging by their beer names, their stint seemed to be a bit like Stone: going for the arrogant bastard beer enthusiasts too proud to admit that they like sweet lagers better than bitter IPAs.

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