Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

I’ve recently taken up running as a hobby (I’ve always been fairly active, cycling quite a bit, but have never been a runner) and decided I’d like to run a half marathon this year. While I’m still early in my training all this running has had some effects, both good and bad on my beer drinking. When my iPhone GPS app tells me I’ve burnt 800 calories on a run I take that as a free pass to drink an extra beer (or three). But it also means that after a long day at work when I want to crack open a beer I just can’t bring myself to drinking a big high ABV beer (which often come in 22oz bottles) because I know what that will do to my morale when the alarm goes off at 6am and it’s time to go out for a run. Thus, I’ve gotten a lot more interested in “session beers”.

While some beer geeks could argue about exactly what makes up a session beer for hours, I roughly define them as beers under 5% ABV, the word “session” comes into play because one could drink a handful of pints over a few hours during a “drinking session” and due to the low ABV still be able to walk out of the bar without being too drunk.

So it was one night after work, knowing I had to get up early, face the cold morning and go for a jog that I passed over the bottle of Pliny the Elder in the fridge for Stone Brewing Co.’s Levitation Ale. Levitation is a 4.4% ABV amber or red ale that I’ve had a handful of times in the past, but often pass up in favor of something with just a bit more kick.

Levitation Ale took the GABF Gold for American Style Amber/Red Ale in 2007 while competing against 67 other beers, which is an impressive feat considering many of those other beers were higher ABV so in some senses the brewers had more to work with.

I’ll just come right out and say I wasn’t too impressed with Levitation Ale. It wasn’t a bad beer, I just kept thinking of all the beers I’d enjoy more, sitting mere feet away in the refrigerator. (That said I was thanking myself in the morning when I got up before the sun that I didn’t drink any of those other beers, many of which are twice as strong as Levitation).

It’s got a toasty and earthy smell, a little sweet and a little hoppy that prepares you well for what’s in store. The taste is similar, it’s sweet malts up front think bread and toast as well as a bit more sweetness like caramel. Then the hop bitterness kicks in. This is actually where I was most disappointed, the finish was bitter as hell, with almost no hop flavor. There weren’t any of those delicious pine, citrus, tropical fruit or floral flavors so often tasted in a beer, just plenty of bitterness.

I will say that Levitation Ale had a great body and mouthfeel for being such a low ABV beer. It never felt thin or watery, and had I not known it was 4.4% ABV I doubt I would have guessed it was that low.

Levitation Ale does serve a purpose, it’s great those for those times when for whatever reason you can’t drink higher ABV craft beer (and you certainly wouldn’t be caught dead with a Bud Light) but compared to other craft beers it just doesn’t stand up. All things being equal though, it’s a fantastic sub 4.5% ABV beer.

Levitation Ale is pretty widely available around San Diego County (and other places you can find Stone’s beer). I picked this single 12oz bottle up at Bottlecraft for $1.55, usually it’s sold in 12oz 6-packs.

San Diego Brewed: Stone Brewing Co. Levitation Ale is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Pliny the Younger hits taps at Russian River’s Brewpub in Santa Rosa today according to their website. At the brewpub they have a dedicated number of kegs each day to make sure it lasts until at least mid February (meaning if they’ve sold enough one day it might be gone at 9pm, but they’ll have more on tap the next day when they open). Down here in San Diego we’re not so lucky. Most bars get a limited amount and it goes rather quickly, so if you want to get a taste don’t straggle, and be prepared for long lines, crowded bars (and sometime higher than usual prices for smaller than usual pours). But I think most people would agree, it’s worth the hassle.

It should be noted that we probably won’t see Pliny the Younger down here in San Diego for a week or two, I’d guess it will start showing up around town sometime between Feb 8th and 15th.

Below is a list of bars that I expect will be getting Pliny the Younger or have confirmed to me that they will be getting it. Any of the information could change, I suggest you check with individual bar’s if you want to be 100% sure, but I’ll do my best to keep this list updated.

Confirmed:

Churchill’s Pub - March 3rd for Churchill’s Renaissance via Beer Advocate

Encinitas Ale House - They say they’re getting a full keg

Neighborhood - Sometime mid February via their Twitter (warning bit of profanity at the link)

Suspected based on Previous Years (but not confirmed):

Blind Lady Ale House

Downtown Johnny Brown’s

Hamilton’s Tavern

The Linkery

Live Wire

Newport Pizza and Alehouse

O’Brien’s Pub

Pizza Port Carlsbad

Pizza Port Ocean Beach

Pizza Port Solana Beach

San Diego Brewing Company

Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens

Tap Room

Toronado

If you know of a bar or restaurant in San Diego that will be getting Pliny the Younger, or what day/time they’ll be tapping it, send me an email to get the list updated.

Updated 2/3/12 at 11:51am

Pliny the Younger in San Diego, 2012 is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

On a sad note West Coaster has a blog post about Airdale shutting down. Technically Airdale wasn’t a San Diego brewery, they contract brewed at Bayhawk, but they were a San Diego company. I always enjoyed their Dark and Stormy Imperial Stout, it’s sad to see them go.

Speaking of West Coaster, the February 2012 issue is out now, I have a column about the big beer companies trying to move in on the craft beer space. You can read it online here or better yet, pick it up at your favorite watering hole.

This Sunday is the Super Bowl which also mean’t it’s Stone Brewing Co.’s Winter Storm. Ton’s of great Stone beers on tap and in bottles including plenty of vintage releases. The Calm Before the Storm breakfast is sold out, so show up at 11am. Check the link for more details and the full tap/bottle list.

Beer Notes, Early February 2012 is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

Mission Brewery produces a solid line up of core beers, their Hefeweizen is quite good, and all of their other beers can hold their own fairly well in my opinion. But when a brewery only makes the same five beers us beer geeks can get a little bored. Because of that I was pretty excited when they announced Dark Seas a Russian Imperial Stout a few months back. Unfortunately after trying it I think I’ll opt for a Hefeweizen next time I’m at Mission.

Dark Seas isn’t a bad beer, it’s just not for me. And when there are so many amazing Imperial Stouts we have access to here in San Diego, why drink one you’re not blown away by? My biggest complaint about Dark Seas was the sweetness, it just didn’t feel like there was much hop bitterness to balance out the sweeter malts. Caramel, toffee and a sweet roastiness all came to mind as I drank it. There’s a long and lingering roasted, almost burnt tasting bitterness from the roasted malt that leaves a bad impression after every sip. It felt low bodied and thin, fairly lacking for what I thought would be a fairly robust drinking stout.

I will say that I typically like my Imperial Stouts with a big hop kick, so if you don’t you may want to give Dark Seas a chance. I just couldn’t get over the sweet roastiness of it.

San Diego Brewed: Mission Brewery Dark Seas is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

First up is Escondido’s Holiday Wine Cellar’s 3rd Annual Homebrew Competition. You might remember last year’s winner, Indra Kunindra Curry Export Stout, which was brewed by Ballast Point and led to homebrewer Alex Tweet landing a job at the brewery. For this year’s winner will be brewedin collaboration with Iron Fist Brewing Company. There’s no entry fee, homebrewers are limited to three entries each and entries must be in by January 30th. So if you’ve got something good ready to go, read all the details here.

Next up is Bottlecraft’s homebrew share and recipe swap. This one isn’t a formal competition, just a friendly bottle share and recipe swap. There’s no charge, just bring some homebrew and recipes to share. It’s happening Wednesday February 15th at 7pm. Check Bottlecraft’s Facebook page for more info as the date nears.

Last but not least, Monkey Paw is hosting their first ever homebrew competition in February. Monkey Paw’s head brewer Derek Freese got his start as a homebrewer (in fact Monkey Paw is his first pro brewing gig). Entries are free and each brewer can enter two different beers. Beers must be delivered to Monkey Paw by February 24th. The winning entry will be brewed at Monkey Paw, check here for all the details.

Get Your Homebrew Ready: Competitions and Homebrew Share is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

The Lost Abbey’s Cuvee de Tomme isn’t cheap, but if you like sour beer it’s worth it. Cuvee de Tomme starts it’s life as another Lost Abbey beer, Judgement Day, but goes through a year long journey to become the final product. The most recent batch of Cuvee de Tomme was released on Christmas Eve, so this is the 2011 batch that is on store shelves now. The previous year, the 2010 batch was underwhelming and wasn’t nearly as good as the year before that, 2009. But thankfully this 2011 batch is much better than 2010 in my opinion and is as good as I remember 2009 being. As the bottle notes: “… each batch of Cuvee will vary slightly between bottlings” and there are a ton of things that can contribute to the flavors between years.

I was a little worried when I opened the bottle and poured and there was almost no sign of carbonation, but thankfully there was just a bit of bubbles hiding in there, what seemed like the perfect amount.

Cuvee de Tomme is pretty sour, it smells of juicy sour cherries and tastes the same upon first sip. There’s plenty of woody oak flavor in there as well. I’m not much of a wine drinker but this reminds me of red wine, maybe it’s those “supple tannins” the label refers to.

At 11% ABV Cuvee de Tomme is very much a sipper and could take a good hour or two to finish, which isn’t a bad thing as the flavors really open up as it warms up. Don’t drink this one cold.

If you like sour beers I highly recommend Cuvee de Tomme. $17 for 375ml is pricey, it’s not an everyday beer, but worth it when you find the right time to open it. If you’re not much into sour beers, or don’t have much experience with them, this might not be the best to start with. Though picking up a bottle now while you can still find it on store shelves and saving it for a while isn’t a bad idea.

San Diego Brewed: The Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

If you read this this blog regularly you may have noticed I haven’t been posting much. After the holidays things got extremely busy at the day job. While working ten, twelve and even sixteen hour days there wasn’t much time to focus on beer. Lucky for me things seem to be slowing down now.

But it was last week, after one of those ten hour days that I decided I needed a beer. I stopped into Bottlecraft after work looking with nothing specific in mind but had a few ideas about what I was looking for: hops, a reasonable price, and something I hadn’t had in a while. Without knowing it before hand, Alpine Beer Co.’s Pure Hoppiness was exactly what I was looking for at $8 for a 22oz bomber.

I’m a big fan of Alpine’s beers, especially their IPAs, but for some reason I haven’t had Pure Hoppiness in awhile (I tend to find myself drinking the lower ABV beers, Hoppy Birthday and New Millennium, or the extreme triple IPA Exponential Hoppiness when I’m drinking Alpine).

All sorts of hop aromas fill the air as soon as you start pouring: citrus, pine and that hop smell that’s often described as “tropical fruit” that I can never quite put my finger on which fruit that might be (mango if I had to guess).

For a big hoppy beer Pure Hoppiness is less bitter than one might expect, but with plenty of great hop flavor, pine and citrus standing out to me the most. There’s a tiny bit of sweetness, very light tasting, almost like honey.

San Diego has plenty of choices for hop heads, and Pure Hoppiness stands out among the best. Alpine’s beers have always been pretty easy to get at the brewery and it seems to me like there’s been a bit of an uptick in distribution over the last year or two. Alpine is planning a pretty big expansion, so we may start seeing more of their beer out and about when that happens.

San Diego Brewed: Alpine Pure Hoppiness is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

In the recent The 45 Places to Go in 2012 list in the New York Times Travel section San Diego gets a mention at spot number fourteen, but not for our near perfect weather, sunny beaches or delicious Mexican food. Instead they point out what makes San Diego really great: our brewers and beer culture.

Even in times of tight budgets, finely crafted beer remains a relatively approachable luxury, and few American regions have more brewing momentum than San Diego County. Maybe it’s time, then, to think about building a beer safari in the land of sunshine, fish tacos and hopped-up American IPAs.

On the brewery side Karl Strauss, Stone Brewing Co. and Hess Brewing get shoutouts. On the retail/bar side our friends at Bottlecraft along with the Pizza Port Bottleshop get mentiioned with Hamilton’s Tavern, O’Brien’s Pub and Local Habit.

And no talk of San Diego beer would be complete without mentioning San Diego Beer Week.

It’s worth noting that San Diego is one of only four US cities to make the worldly list. I don’t know how many people follow the recommendations of the NY Times Travel section when planning their vacations, but I’d be willing to be beer tourism is still on the upswing in this fine town of ours.

New York Times San Diego for Beer is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Because of that I was pretty excited to hear that Mikkeller has teamed up with Drake’s Brewing up in the Bay Area to brew some of his beers for the US market. For us down here in San Diego this will help immensely with the freshness aspect. Chances are also good the price points could be a bit better as well since the beers don’t have to be shipped nearly as far.

Invasion IPA didn’t blow me away, it’s a sold IPA, but far from the best I’ve ever had (though I wouldn’t hesitate to drink it again). At $7 or $8 for a 22oz I felt it was a fair price, a bit higher than many of San Diego’s best IPAs, but much easier on the wallet than European-made Mikkeller beers tend to be. Hopefully we start to see more US brewed Mikkeller beers showing up, especially the IPAs.

Mikkeller Invasion IPA brewed in California is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog

Bottlecraft is a retail shop and tasting room in Little Italy showcasing local, domestic and international craft beers. They offer hundreds of beers for your enjoyment in their onsite tasting room or to-go, as well as daily beer flights, events, glassware, merchandise, and gifts. Open Noon-10pm seven days a week. 2161 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101.

I picked up this bottle of Rayon Vert, a recently (re-) released Belgian-Style Pale Ale from Green Flash with low expectations. Green Flash released a small amount of a beer called Treasure Chest in June of this year, which was a test run of sorts for Rayon Vert, Brewmaster Chuck Silva told me there were some minor recipe changes but they’re pretty similar.

Unfortunately I didn’t like Treasure Chest too much. Everytime I opened a bottle I smelled and tasted band-aids. This was most likely a result of the Brettanomyces used to bottle condition the beer. After pouring carefully into a glass (while being careful not to disturb the yeast at the bottom of the bottle) I took a whiff and was immediately reminded of plastic-smelling band-aids.

Upon first cautious sip however I didn’t taste much of the sort, instead I was greeted by fruity (pineapple?) like hops, a toast-like malt character, and a nice dry finish. Rayon Vert is bottle conditioned with Brett, so it will change over time, it’s hard to say if the band-aid like flavor will emerge (though with Treasure Chest it was there even when the beer was fresh). As Green Flash noted in a press release announcing the beer last month,

Because it is bottle conditioned, the beer will continue to change with age and there is no way to foresee what it will taste like after years in the bottle. Silva predicts that the results from this ageing process will be akin to Champagne.  He is convinced that Rayon Vert left to rest in the proper conditions will only improve over time.

Rayon Vert is a solid beer when fresh, hopefully it ages gracefully.

San Diego Brewed: Green Flash Rayon Vert is a post from: San Diego Beer Blog