Archives for November 2020

Each year we like to help celebrate San Diego Beer Week with a huge barrel-aged beer night featuring our best cellared barrel-aged beers. This year the event will last an entire weekend! That’s right we will be pouring EIGHT spirit barrel-aged beers plus a wine barrel-aged sour for the entire weekend at both of our locations (while supplies last).  This year’s line-up will include two beers that we have never released before plus our new beer/wine hybrid Wine Grape Sour. We also have a 2-day old batch of Off the Lip IPA plus a couple hazy brews for you hop heads.

Both locations will be offering food as we are thrilled to have the Pizza Trolley food truck serving up brick oven pizza and salads in San Marcos. Thanks to COVID we will be outside, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the amazing tunes. On Saturday in San Marcos, we are stoked to have the return of the Gin Pistons band. They rocked the house at our anniversary party, so can’t image a better group to have at our barrel event.

After multiple years of maturation, we are thrilled to welcome the newest addition to our mixed-culture Sour Series … Barrel-Aged Grape Sour! On Thurs, Nov 12th you are cordially invited to join us for tasting this amazing new sour on tap at both locations.

The creation of a barrel-aged sour can take years to allow the various fermenting organisms to convert the sugars and other compounds into a bouquet of funky and sour aromas and flavors plus alcohol. Our Grape Sour started its journey as a blonde ale that was placed in a red wine barrel with a collection of multiple strains of brewers yeast, brettanomyces, pediococcus, and lactobacillus. Over the following years, the beer had matured to the right balance of sourness and barnyard-like character. The next step to make this a beer/wine hybrid we added 100 pounds of Cabernet Franc grapes to each barrel to round out the final flavor. A re-fermentation ensues resulting in the final beer that presents a pleasant melding of flavors from the barrel, grapes and the underlying sour beer.

We made this complex sour in collaboration with our friends and neighbors at La Fleur’s Winery. They are making fantastic wines and have a tasting room just down Grand Ave from us in San Marcos, so were a natural partner for this beer/wine hybrid beer.

2020 has been a challenging year for all of us, but does that mean this is the end for humanity? We don’t think so, however their is no point in leaving anything left to chance.

Back in 2016, we brewed up an insanely huge stout with roasted malts, oats, molasses and honey that we planned to long term age. Most of the batch went into bourbon barrels for nearly 3 years and was released last year to rave reviews. But what happened to the remainder?

Please join us on Friday, Nov 6th for the release of (non-barrel aged) End of the World Double Imperial Oatmeal Stout. This 4 1/2 year-old, 13.5% monster stout is smooth, complex and delicious yet very dangerous. It features complex aromas and flavors reminiscent of molasses, toffee, coffee, dark chocolate, figs, dates, raisons and plums.

If you still have a bottle of the Barrel-aged End of the World Stout and want to do a proper side-by-side you are welcome to bring in a bottle, no corkage fee! For those arriving when we first open in San Marcos you might find a small number of barrel-aged bottles available to purchase!