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Tasting Room

Bottle Logic – Orange County California

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Quite close to Noble Ale Works and still not far from The Bruery is a brewery I hadn’t heard much about called Bottle Logic. I got a certain feel similar to the experimentation present in Beachwood Brewing. They give you a nice preview of things that are currently fermenting so that you can have an idea of what is coming next. When I stopped by I ordered a flight of most of their core beers and a few others. Some of the beers were quite impressive though others were merely good.

Bottle Logic Brewing

I started with a flight of the Tattered Prince French style saison, the Lagerithm dark lager, Recursion IPA, milk stout, Berliner Weisse with peach and hibiscus, and the baltic porter. I finished off with a taster of the Double Actuator double IPA and Imperial Coffee Stout.

Bottle Logic Brewing First Flight
First flight of tasters.

Starting things off the Tattered Prince I really enjoyed the tropical fruit and belgian yeast flavors mixing with the various spices that are typical in a Saison. It packs a good punch at 7.3%. This beer recently won a few medals and I can see why. I almost left with a bottle. Next came the dark lager. It was a solid beer with some light coffee flavors and roasted malts. It would be very refreshing but I was hoping for something closer to a Czech style black lager. It was more of an amber lager.

Bottle Logic Brewing Last two tasters.
Last two tasters.

The Recursion IPA was a solid juicy/melon IPA with some strong bitterness and mild herbal notes. As I got through the taster the herbal aftertaste became a bit much for me. The milk stout was very smooth and had plenty of roasted malt flavors. Everything was more silky because it was poured on nitro. The Berliner Weisse was refreshing and not too tart. The peach and hibiscus blended together nicely giving it a very light pink color. This was listed as a refreshing summer beer and I agree it was.

Bottle Logic Brewing Beer List
Beer list when I visited.

The baltic porter was also quite nice, and a bit more flavorful than the milk stout. It had some smooth chocolate flavor and light booze that blended nicely with a subtle hazelnut flavor. The imperial coffee stout was not much stronger than the porter but it had a very strong coffee flavor that was quite nutty. This was my favorite dark beer of the bunch. Finally the Double Actuator double IPA was a powerful IPA with citrus, tropical fruit, and melon and just the right amount of malts to balance it out. This one was also quite delicious and my favorite of the two IPAs.

Bottle Logic Brewing Indoor shot
Nice wide open area to sip your beers in the back.

Bottle Logic has a fairly large tasting room with seating in the area with the bar and additional seating in the back by the fermenters. When I visited on a Sunday afternoon they had a food truck on site and I expect they have food trucks fairly regularly.

Top 3 beers
Tattered Prince French style saison,
Double Actuator double IPA and the
imperial coffee stout

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

The Bruery Revisited

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Back when I first visited The Bruery I indicated that they made some solid sours but didn’t try any of them. At that time I wasn’t interested in sours and wouldn’t have tried them if you paid me. Now that I have grown to appreciate sour and brett beers I stopped by The Bruery recently when I was in town and got to try some of their new offerings. For a look at some of the core beers and my general overview you can check out my original post.

For this visit I made sure to try as many of the specialty beers as I could. For my taster flight I tried the Golden Orchard Belgian with Brett, Sour in the Rye, Tripel Tonnellerie, So Happens It’s Tuesday bourbon barrel aged imperial stout, and Floyd D’Rue, a rum barrel aged imperial porter.

Flight of tasters.
Flight of tasters.

The Golden Orchard immediately grabbed me with the delicious sweet and fruity flavors mixing tropical fruit with the Belgian spice. I picked up a bottle of this when I left because I was so impressed. The brett yeast added almost zero funk and instead enhanced the delicious fruity flavors. Next came the Sour in the Rye, an oak aged sour rye ale. I really enjoyed the combination of mild tart with dark fruit and caramel. Everything was mellowed out nicely by the oak barrel. This one is also available in bottles, though they were a bit more expensive than I wanted to spend. The price is pretty typical for sours though.

The Bruery Revisit Round 1 02

Next came the Tripel Tonnellerie, an oak fermented Belgian Tripel. This was a tasty tripel with nice mild caramel flavors coming from the oak. If they hadn’t had the next beer on tap I might have ordered more of this. I was glad to see So Happens It’s Tuesday on tap, a popular bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. Bottles of this beer are limited to reserve club members so other than trading or going to a bottle share this is the only way to taste it. The beer was thick and sweet with caramel flavors and sweet bourbon. It was so delicious that I barely got a taste before my husband finished the 2oz taster. We ended up ordering a 10 ounce pour of it to share before leaving and savored every drop. Thankfully my husband didn’t have much to drink and could drive me after that powerful beer.

Enjoying some So Happens It's Tuesday.
Enjoying some So Happens It’s Tuesday.

This visit ended with the Floyd D’Rue, a rum barrel aged porter coming in at an impressive 14.7%. With a beer this strong I wasn’t surprised that it was pretty boozy. The flavors of various spices from the spiced rum barrel dominated, especially cinnamon and cloves. Compared to the previous beer I wasn’t very interested in ordering more but I did enjoy experiencing something aged in rum barrels.

The tasting room was packed as expected!
The tasting room was packed as expected!

There were a few other tarts available on tap that I tried a few days later but I didn’t end up taking notes. I do remember really enjoying the flavors of the Oude Tart (2013) flanders red ale and the Rueuze (2014) Gueuze. Both of these were available as a special for Earth Day with some of the proceeds from each sale going to various charities. Visiting The Bruery ready to enjoy the beers they are known for leads to a much more enjoyable experience, though it still tends to be so crowded in the evenings on the weekend that you have a hard time finding a place to set your taster flight.

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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