All posts by Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
Tasting Room

O’Sullivan Brothers – San Diego CA

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O’Sullivan Brothers is the second new brewery I’ve visited recently that started with everything they need right off the bat and a clear vision in place of where they want to go. Started by five Irish brothers who wanted to re-create the beer styles they love, O’Sullivan Brothers focuses on porters and stouts but they also brew a solid brown ale, pale ale, and amber.

Osullivan Brothers 01

This is one of the smaller tasting rooms in San Diego. The front area is especially small and has two tables with a little bar space. There is some more seating past the bar into the brewing area but when I visited it was quite hot back there. The air conditioning is all in the front space. Still, I was glad to see that they started things out with six beers to try, a pale ale, amber, brown ale, porter, smoked porter, and stout.

OSullivan Brothers 02The Amber has a nice light hop kick that combines nicely with the malts to give it a good balanced flavor. The pale ale is similar to something like an Alesmith pale at 5.5% using mosaic hops to give it a light citrus kick. The bitterness here is not too intense either but it has some solid flavors. Both of these are as hoppy as you will get for now. Though they talked about possibly doing an IPA in the future to meet with local demand, that isn’t a priority. Thankfully, these two hit the right notes in that flavor profile.

Taster flight. Front left to right, amber, pale, porter, brown ale. Back smoked porter, stout.
Taster flight. Front left to right, amber, pale, porter, brown ale. Back smoked porter, stout.

We had a bit of a mix up between the porter and brown ale when I got my taster flight. The server wasn’t sure if she might have mixed up the two and I had a difficult time telling the two apart. The nice thing about this is that both beers have a good roasted malt flavor. When I talked to one of the owners in the back he said they add a little bit of hops on the back of the brown ale to give it a little extra kick.

The smoked porter was a little too much like drinking mesquite. This was one taster we didn’t finish. However, I heard a guy comment about just how much he loved this one before we left. So if you like smoked beers, give this one a shot. Finally, the sweet stout was the highlight of the place for me. Despite the name, this is not a sticky extra-sweet milk stout. There is just enough sweetness here to get you to notice it and the rest of the beer is full on delicious roasted flavors you expect from a good stout.

Yes the tasting room is that small.
Yes the tasting room is that small.

I don’t normally do tours when I review breweries but I happened to go back on a tour here and was shown the great brewing setup that they have going at O’Sullivan Brothers. A computer system monitors most of the process and they have a quality control lab in the back. Besides all that, the guy I spoke to mentioned that they also make a point of trying to mimic the water from different parts of the world when brewing so that an English beer has English water.

With a system that is a step above some of the new breweries with glorified home-brew setups and a clear vision I expect great things in the coming years from O’Sullivan Brothers. They also mentioned that their first Imperial Stout should be out in December. This won’t be a coffee or chocolate-forward imperial stout but just a good strong traditional imperial stout. I’m curious to see how this differentiates them from the trend of coffee and chocolate flavors in most San Diego imperial stouts.

Update 2-21-15:

I came back to O’Sullivan Brothers in February of 2015 to try their newer stronger stout. They call it Old Shillelagh Triple Stout Porter. The beer is not as full bodied as you might get from something a little higher in alcohol but it has some delicious toffee flavors and roasted flavors that border on coffee. I really enjoyed this new offering and look forward to what they might have in the future.

Osullivan Brothers 02

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Tasting Room

32 North Brewing, San Diego

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This post has been updated now to reflect some changes that took place in May of 2015. Update is at the bottom.

The area around Alesmith, Green Flash, and the new Ballast Point is increasingly becoming crowded. Recently added in that area is a new brewery called 32 North. The owner partnered up with a brewer who previously brewed for Karl Strauss and White Labs and opened up with a nice-looking tasting room and a solid selection of beers to start. The Karl Strauss influence is especially noticeable in the peanut butter cup porter and imperial stout, both very similar to Karl Strauss’ offerings of the same style.

32 North Brewing 01

One thing that sets this brewery apart from many of the places around the area is its operating hours. They are open every day from Noon to 10PM. For a while most breweries closed on Mondays and many also close on Tuesdays. Plus this is one of the few that remains open until 10PM. Also impressive is the lineup of beers to start. I didn’t get to try everything in my first visit but I came back the next day to try the other three. I always like to see a brewery that focuses on a few core beers.

The four core beers are a 3.8% berliner weisse, a 5.5% pale ale, a strong 7.5% IPA, and a 6% coffee milk stout. Also on tap when I visited on October 28, 2014 was a 4.5% toasted coconut English mild, 6.3% rye pale ale, a 5.5% peanut butter cup porter, and a 10.5% imperial stout.

32 North Brewing 03

The berliner weisse is an interesting light-bodied beer that is quite tart. It really isn’t my thing but I was glad to see something from a wheat beer that is a bit different than the usual. Since there has been some mention of future sours in the works, I expect this would be the basis for those sours. The pale ale is quite tasty with a lot of peach and citrus flavors going on. It is lightly malty, which sets it apart from many of the malt bomb pale ales around.

Left to right, Coconut Mild, Berliner Weisse, Pale Ale.
Left to right, Coconut Mild, Berliner Weisse, Pale Ale.

The rye pale ale was a little strange tasting to me. It had plenty of the rye flavors but the hops used didn’t seem to mix properly, giving it a really herbal flavor. There is some room to tweak this one, maybe with a different type of hops. Especially when comparing this to something like Aurora from Modern Times there is a way to go. The IPA was solidly flavorful and bitter. It boasted plenty of tropical fruit and citrus and a powerful bitterness. This is a great start and a solid beer to have as a core.

Left to right, imperial stout, peanut butter cup porter, rye pale, IPA.
Left to right, imperial stout, peanut butter cup porter, rye pale, IPA.

The peanut butter cup porter was very similar to the Karl Strauss one and had a good mix of nutty flavors and sweetness. The milk stout had some solid coffee flavors and a little more sweetness than I typically prefer but that is balanced by some roasted malt flavors. I would personally prefer a little more pronounced coffee but then I did try it after the imperial stout, mostly because I didn’t realize the milk stout had coffee in it until I chatted with the bartender. The toasted coconut mild was especially tasty on nitro. The mild underlying beer takes on the flavor of the coconut really nicely, giving it a strong lightly sweet coconut taste.

32 North Brewing 06

The Imperial Stout is very similar to the fantastic Karl Strauss Imperial Stout sporting plenty of coffee and chocolate flavors. 32 North uses fresh roasted local coffee from Dark Horse Coffee Roasters in both the imperial stout and the milk stout, and it tastes great.

With a spacious amount of seating inside and a good set of core beers, 32 North is off to a great start and seems poised for great things. The initial lineup seems to indicate a recognition of the demand in the local market where a solid IPA and solid imperial stout are both essential.

Update May 23, 2015:

I hadn’t visited 32 North in a while so I thought I would drop in to see how they are doing and I was surprised by the lack of core beers on tap and the number of sours available. I had dropped by previously to try some of their fruit flavored berliner weisse beers before but found that they were way too tart for me before. This time when I dropped in the tap list was pretty sparse but they had a Black Currant Berliner Weisse, a Passion Fruit American Sour, and a key lime gose.

Tap list on 5/23/15.
Tap list on 5/23/15.

I got a taster of each of the three sours on tap to see how they were. I started with the Black Currant Landfall, which was my favorite of the three. It had a nice blend of sweet and sour with a bit of citrus tart flavor and sweeter berry. The Key Lime Gose was pretty much like drinking limeaid. It was interesting for sure but surprisingly not very tart and mildly sweet. Finally the passion fruit had a nice wild flavor going with a mild passion fruit flavor and very little tart going on. I think both the key lime and passion fruit could be a bit more tart while the black currant was the right balance.

Left to right, blackcurrant, key lime, passion fruit.
Left to right, blackcurrant, key lime, passion fruit.

As for how regularly we will see the core beers around, it seems that they are doing smaller batches now and many of them don’t stay on very long. Hopefully these sours will continue to become a main thing for them because it is nice to have someone so close by doing sours.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Beer Education

Be Careful Where You Buy IPA and How You Store it

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I got excited about IPAs because of the flavors that hops bring to a brew. More recently I started to notice the difference freshness makes and how quickly the hop flavors fade. Thanks in part to Stone releasing their Enjoy By IPA series, which expects people to drink the beer within a month of release, general beer drinkers are starting to understand how important freshness is. Follow the Enjoy By link for Stone’s explanation of this. But simply having bottles at home that are fresh is only half the battle. You also have to store those beers properly to avoid losing those hop flavors.

I am not going to go on about specific temperatures but I will simply keep things as simple as possible. Refrigerating your IPAs once you get them home in a bottle (like I know you would with a growler) ensures that your beer tastes as good as it did when you brought it home when you open it the following week. This is only half of the battle though. The other part is making sure that you purchase your beers from a shop that stores their beers properly, or go direct to the source.

There are a lot of steps a beer takes from when it leaves the brewery until you find it at your local shop. Thankfully a lot of the big breweries in San Diego that bottle their beers distribute through Stone. Stone takes the necessary steps to ensure that until they drop the beer off at the next step it is properly refrigerated. Read about how Stone explains it on their distribution site. However, you don’t always know how properly the beer was stored by a particular company before putting it on the shelves.

Sometimes finding beers from certain breweries in a shop is a good indication that the shop stores the beers properly. Russian River is known for being very strict about how their beers are kept both during shipping and once on display. Alpine is also strict so if you can find beer from either brewery at a bottle shop you know that they store the beers properly. Alpine has a list of places where you can find their beers on their website. One thing to look for is coolers that don’t have bright fluorescent lights on the beers.

More recently though, I’ve found that it is worth going direct to any local brewery and buying the beer from the source. That way you are guaranteed that the beer you are buying is as fresh as possible and stored properly. Stone has a few smaller tasting rooms where you can buy bottles without trying to park at one of their big restaurants. But for beers from out of state or out of county proper storage makes all the difference and helps ensure that you enjoy the beers as they were meant to be tasted.

In summary, make sure that you keep your IPAs away from sunlight and/or fluorescent lights and that you store them in a cool place. You should notice the difference right away. Because some of the things I discuss here is based on discussions I had on Facebook with fellow beer friends, if something here is inaccurate, please let me know in the comments. If you think I am making a big deal about something that is not very important, also let me know.

If you are interested in some of the science behind how light affects beer, check out this article from Mark Dredge on Pencil and Spoon as well as a more detailed article from someone in The Bruery’s lab.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Noble Ale Works, Orange County CA

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A few miles from The Bruery is Noble Ale Works, a brewery that knows how to make a fantastic IPA. My first introduction to the brewery was a double IPA that I tried down in San Diego. I immediately took notice and wanted to stop by for a visit. I didn’t make it to the brewery itself until a few weeks ago when I stopped by both The Bruery and Noble Ale Works on September 27, 2014 on my way home from LA.

Noble Ale Works 01

I tried five beers while there, Rosalita (a hibiscus infused pilsner), pale ale, Big Whig IPA, a coffee milk stout, and man’s milk. The Rosalita was not particularly impressive. There was very little hibiscus flavor and if it wasn’t pink in color you probably wouldn’t even know it was flavored. I didn’t finish this taster. The pale ale was quite impressive with a nice juicy flavor that set it apart from most piney pale ales out there.

Noble Ale Works 03

The Big Whig IPA is a powerful IPA that really shows that Noble understands the West Coast style of IPA. It has a lot of citrus flavor and a bit of resinous flavor as well to balance it out. I had this beer on tap down in Mexico pretty recently as well and every time it hits the spot. The coffee milk stout was a bit sweet and strangely light colored. It had plenty of iced coffee flavor to go nicely with the sweetness. The Man’s Milk was pretty similar with a little more syrupy sweetness going on and a lot more caramel in the flavor.

Noble Ale Works 02

Because I had already been to The Bruery and was going to dinner when I got back to San Diego I didn’t try the Galaxy Showers, a seasonal double iPA using just galaxy hops. There was another seasonal double IPA called Chinook Showers as well but I didn’t try that one either. Noble was fairly crowded as well and overall is worth a stop if you like IPAs. If you can’t make it up to the brewery look for their Big Whig IPA on tap at local beer bars.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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Tasting Room, Uncategorized

The Bruery, Orange County California

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The Bruery has been open for a few years now but I hadn’t heard of it until I went to the Beer Bloggers Conference this year in San Diego. Though they have a few year round beers, when you visit the brewery you can tell that they are really focusing on sour beers and barrel aged imperial stouts. Many of the sours and barrel aged stouts are limited releases and the bottles are a bit more expensive than usual.

The Bruery 02

Though I did taste a few barrel aged beers while I was there, I mostly focused on the core brews that sounded interesting. I was heading to Noble Ale Works (only 7 miles away) next so I couldn’t try more than a full five taster flight. A number of the interesting sounding beers were described as hoppy so I hoped that I would find something that would satisfy my hop cravings.

In total, I tried the double dry-hopped red, hoppy belgian golden, india pale lager (IPL), dubel with cacao nibs and vanilla, and a bourbon barrel aged stout with cherry and vanilla.

The Bruery 03

The double dry-hopped red ale was interesting for two reasons. First, it didn’t really have much malt flavor to speak of. Second, it was mostly light bodied and taken over by floral hops. Thus, it really tasted more like a floral session IPA than anything else. It was a solid beer but I found the floral hops to be a little too overpowering leaving just a light citrus background.

The hoppy Belgian golden was a solid Belgian gold though the hops were very light, mostly serving to balance out the typical spice flavors a Belgian beer makes. The IPL was pretty disappointing overall although I have a hard time pinpointing the specific flavor that I didn’t like. Based on the description on the website, it seems the herbal flavors were a bit overpowering in this one.

The dubel was a very tasty chocolate beer and totally different than what I usually get. Rather than a thick full-bodied stout, this was a lighter bodied Belgian beer that displayed the chocolate flavors quite prominently. Finally, the bourbon barrel aged stout with cherry and vanilla was quite nice. The bourbon flavor came through nice and was balanced with a light amount of tart flavor from the cherry.

The Bruery 01

I was generally disappointed by the lack of lower alcohol dark ale offerings. Though they have a bunch of imperial stouts, there is no porter or stout anywhere near the 5% alcohol range. They also didn’t have an IPA, which it seems they were purposefully avoiding. Though many of the beers I tried were described as hoppy, they didn’t really satisfy my cravings. An IPL when done right would take the place of a solid IPA but the IPL here was purposefully avoiding the West Coast style of IPA. By contrast, Ballast Point makes a delicious IPL that I am a huge fan of.

If you like sours, there are a lot of options to try at The Bruery. They also seem to be doing a great job with the barrel aged imperial stouts and special limited release bottles. What they weren’t able to do is satisfy this hop-head’s cravings for the West Coast hop flavors. If you really like floral and herbal hops then you might enjoy their hoppier options a little bit. Otherwise, I suggest you head over to Noble nearby for your hop fix.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

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