Tag Archives: Pale Ale

Kilowatt Brewing Company – Kearny Mesa Area

June 27, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Walking distance from Council and quite close to Societe is a new brewery called Kilowatt that is focusing on adding flavors to their beers outside the traditional hop, malt, and yeast flavors. This means fruit added to some beers and other flavors added to stouts, including chocolate, nuts, and spices that you see on occasion. They have a fairly large space for a new place and are brewing some solid beers for a young brewery.

I tasted 10 different beers when I stopped by though I didn’t get to try everything because the IPA was not available (too many beers on tap to include) and some were better to just try the flavored versions (the blonde and brown ale were skipped in favor of the flavored ones). The photography was a bit difficult because they have an interesting light up bar that changes colors so I tried to get photos of the tasters while the color was white.

Kilowatt First Set of Tasters — First set of tasters

First set of tasters I tried the strawberry blonde (made with frozen strawberries added), the kilowatt pale, mango pale (with frozen mango added), and angry amber. Second set I went with the cinnamon hazelnut brown, coconut chai porter, chocolate macadamia stout, and one eyed willie stout. I ended with the Obliquity double IPA and Dr. Rudis double IPA.

The strawberry blonde was a nice subtle strawberry flavor with a mild amount of sweetness. I would have preferred it to be more intense like the mango pale. The Kilowatt Pale was quite mellow to me and didn’t really let the hops or the malts really shine through because of the lower alcohol content. It makes a nice background for the mango pale though, which was one of my favorites. The mango was so intense it was almost like mango juice with those delicious Mexican mangos. The angry amber was a solid amber ale with a lot of dark fruit flavor at the front and a nice balanced flavor with a pretty mild hop bite.

The cinnamon hazelnut brown had a lot of intense cinnamon at the beginning but it mellowed out over time and especially tasted mellow compared to the rest of the dark beers on tap. The coconut chai porter had a nice ginger bite at the front but later mellows out to a smooth coconut with mild spice. The chocolate macadamia stout has a smooth chocolate flavor that becomes creamy when you add the macadamia. I found it to be quite balanced and delicious. Comparatively, the one eyed willie stout was too acidic and dry and lacking in the roasty character I look for in a stout.

Finally I tried the double IPAs. The Obliquity seemed to be a bit too malty for my tastes though it could have also been the blend of hops that I wasn’t a huge fan of. It seemed to be more on the balanced side of things with lots of earthy, dank hops and a strong bitterness. The malts didn’t really seem to fit with the hops to me so much either. Comparatively, the Dr. Rudis double IPA was more on the tropical fruit/juicy melon side of things and much lighter on the malts, which was more what I prefer to have in a double IPA.

Kilowatt Brewing 07 — Love those hop lamps!

Overall, I thought Kilowatt was doing some great stuff when I stopped in. The addition of fruits and other things really gives them unique flavors in a crowded market and their tasting room is large enough to accommodate a good group. I will have to come back soon to try their single IPA but a lot of what I tasted was very nice and will likely bring me back to try some more at a future time.

Top 3
Mango Pale
Chocolate Macadamia Stout
Coconut Chai Porter

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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Division 23 Brewing – Miramar Road

June 13, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Division 23 is one of the newest breweries in the Miramar area. They opened officially on May 16, 2015 and have been pouring beer on Saturday and Sunday for a few weeks now. Like Intergalactic brewing they are hiding in the back of an industrial complex but they do a good job of giving you signs to send you to the right place. Like most breweries you enter through the back entrance where deliveries would normally drop off. (Hint: If you see typical glass doors like an office building you need to go around the back.) It is quite close to the new Ballast Point restaurant and the newly opened Reckless Brewing.

Division 23 Brewing 01 — This is what the front entrance looks like.

When I came by on June 6, 2015 they had 8 beers on tap with an interesting variety of styles that are likely to satisfy everyone. They had a lager, hefeweizen, saison, English style pale, berliner weiss, coffee stout, and two IPAs when I visited. Along with the berliner weiss they offer the traditional fruit syrups to add to your own beers to cut down on the sour flavors and give it a more interesting flavor. Eventually they plan to make some of their own syrups as well.

I started with a taster of the berliner weiss (with raspberry syrup), the lager, and the hefeweizen. The base berliner weiss was not too tart, good and middle ground for that. When adding the syrup it really helps balance it out. Some people ended up trying four different flavors of this beer. The lager was nice and smooth with a nice sweet creamy flavor. The hefweizen was more fruity than usual and lacked the typical spices that are often added. I wasn’t a huge fan of this but it was popular with people around me.

Division 23 Tasters 01 — First set of tasters

Some bold people near me decided to try four different flavors of the Berliner Weiss.

Next I got tasters of the English Pale Ale, Saison, and Coffee Stout. The English Pale was very interesting with a lot of fruity apricot flavors going on and some nice caramel malts in the background. It was very balanced and smooth. The saison was good with mostly fruity flavors coming through. It lacked the typical pepper flavors that you sometimes see in a saison. The coffee stout was my favorite of all of them. Made with Kona coffee, it was very smooth and had a nice forward coffee flavor that really hit the spot.

Division 23 tasters 02 — Second set of tasters.

I ended with the two IPAs. The Bitter Foreman IPA had an interesting combination of lemon and pine flavors with a solid bready malt background. The Freight Damage IPA was a bit stronger in alcohol and had more of a light malt bill with more fruit and tropical flavors going on. Neither one was what I would consider west coast style but they were both solid. I preferred the freight damage just slightly, though it was just tapped when I visited so it was super fresh.

Division 23 IPA tasters — Tasters of the IPAs

Overall I think Division 23 is off to a good start. They have a solid lineup and will be keeping the two IPAs, the stout, and the berliner weiss on tap as core beers. They may end up doing some versions of the berliner weiss witih fruit additions at some point as well, which would be very nice. They have a great setup inside with plenty of bar stools at the bar and other seating inside plus games to play and popcorn popping.

Top 3:
Coffee stout
English Pale Ale
Berliner Weiss

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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Brewery/Restaurant

Beachwood BBQ – Long Beach California

March 21, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

I visited Beachwood bbq for the first time on Sunday March 1st after driving 30 minutes north of John Wayne Airport where I landed coming back from a trip. I had heard such good things both about the food and the beers that I had to make the trip. What I found was some very tasty food and a great selection of house beers that were quite flavorful. There are actually two locations, one in Long Beach and one in Seal Beach. I’m told that the Long Beach location is easier to park and that the Seal Beach location has better guest taps.

I tasted a lot of IPAs there because they have a good reputation for getting the flavors right. I also tasted a few saisons and a really delicious stout. From what I have been told very few of these beers are regularly available because they like to experiment with new things regularly. However, with such good beers in the range I tasted that day I have no doubt that future beers will be delicious as well.

My first flight started with the Alpha Bomb pale ale, the Thrill Seeker IPA, the FV8 IPA and the American stout. The alpha bomb pale was very tasty showcasing the typical West Coast style flavors perfectly. The beer had lots of citrus and kept the malt lower than the typical pale. Then I moved on to the thrill seeker that was a very enjoyable IPA showcasing some really bright mandarin orange flavor. I might have ordered a pint if I wasn’t tasting so many beers.

Next came the FV8 IPA. Though this one was tasty, the floral hops just couldn’t stand up to the previous delicious citrus beers. Still it was very smooth and well made. According to the description these beers starting with FV are the first batch to come out of various fermentation tanks. This one being the first brew out of tank number 8. To end the flight I had the American stout. It was good and smoky with a nice thick body showcasing plenty of good caramel and toffee flavors. My husband was with me and ordered a pint of this stout. Stouts and porters are all he likes.

Beachwood Brewing 10 — My second flight of the day. Two saisons are the lighter colored beers.

For the second flight I added a few saisons and went for the stronger IPAs. I tasted the Rose Royce saison, Un Atout saison, Ultra Hop 2000, and Hop Ninja. The Rose Royce saison was a flavorful saison with good amount of pepper and spice sticking to the traditional flavors. In comparison the Un Atout saison had much more citrus. I enjoyed the departure from the traditional style here because the citrus went nicely with the beer.

The Ultra hop 2000 was a perfectly balanced and delicious west coast style ipa with plenty of grapefruit and citrus. It had a solid amount of bitterness as well. This one as well I would have ordered a pint if I wasn’t doing so many tasters. I really savored every sip of this taster. In comparison the Hop Ninja was a bit disappointing. Without the sweetness I wouldn’t know it was stronger than ultra hop. While not as bitter it had many flavors reminiscent of the Enjoy By IPA from stone but didn’t quite make it. I would almost suggest placing this one before the hop 2000 on the flight. I was also not a fan of the malts used and thought the hops didn’t balance out the malts enough.

Overall, this is a brewery that hop heads in the area should absolutely visit. Besides their stellar collection of house beers, they have plenty of guest beers as well. Food wise, I was very impressed by the smokehouse burger, though at half a pound you should split it with someone else. My husband really enjoyed his kale side and the sweet potato fries. The brisket was OK but I have had better elsewhere including San Diego bbq joints.

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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Toolbox Brewing Company – Vista – The Brewery That Showed Me How Delicious Brett Can Be.

February 27, 2015 Paul McGuire 1 Comment

POST UPDATE: This post was written almost a year ago now and there was a big change towards the end of 2015 that resulted in a change of brewers at Toolbox. More updated information is available on my new post Toolbox Revisited.

To the uninitiated you might think that having a bunch of brett beers (short for brettanomyces, a wild yeast that brings out some interesting flavors in beers) would mean pointlessly tart and funky brews. I certainly fell into that trap when I first heard that most of their beers were moving over into the brett family. Thankfully, as others have so nicely told me, my ignorance has proved incorrect and the resulting beers are delicious.

I don’t fully understand the things that make brett a favorite among certain sectors of the craft beer fans. But from what I got to taste today at Toolbox, they are doing a great job getting the right flavors from it for each beer such that it enhances the already delicious flavors. Yes there are some tart beers here and some of them might not be your thing right away but they are still very tasty and complex in just the right way. And they might be what turns you into a tart lover.

Toolbox isn’t the easiest brewery to find either, hidden away in a tech park that I happened to pull into just as I was beginning to wonder if I had passed it. Luckily for me I turned at the right time and Google informed me that it was in that very parking lot. Like most locations of breweries you wouldn’t guess when you pull in that this is the sort of place to encounter a brewery, but as soon as you see the food truck outside you know you are in the right place.

Tart and sour beers are becoming a bit of an obsession to a small portion of the craft beer community in San Diego where complexity and quality of flavor trumps bitter hop bombs. In San Diego these beers are mostly limited to Council Brewing, which has built up a following around its flavored varieties of the tart saison, Lost Abbey, with its sours and farmhouse ales, and more recently Toolbox and Latitude 33.

I split my tasting at Toolbox into two sets of 4 tasters. Sadly, they don’t have a discount for having multiple tasters so you can easily spend $18 before tip on 8 tasters. But after you taste the beers you aren’t going to mind because all of them are high quality even if some might not be for you. The first round included the IPA, pale ale, saison, and milk stout.

I started with the IPA and immediately I was overwhelmed with an intense grapefruit flavor that I assume was enhanced by the brett yeast. The beer was mildly tart and got close to being too mouth-puckering but it overall resembled a typical west coast style IPA and did so nicely. Next came the pale ale and it also had a mild tartness to it but combined with more of a pineapple flavor. This combined with a nice light sweetness made this a very solid pale ale. This didn’t have any of the typical dark malt colors or flavors you usually see from the style.

The saison was quite an impressive version boasting great amounts of spice and pepper with a good balance among everything. The addition of the brett made it a bit more harsh than the Lost Abbey saison but it still was nicely balanced and very tasty. The milk stout was so deliciously roasty that I would have sworn it had coffee added. Turns out it has none so I was all the more impressed. Despite being a milk stout it was not overly sweet as some can be and would satisfy those dark beer fans who accompany friends to toolbox.

My next flight included the Tart X, the sweet baby trey (a farmhouse ale with brett) and My Cousin Strawberry and Purple Drink, two fruit flavored beers. Purple drink was a boysenberry beer. Tart X took a while to get used to, being much more tart than anything I had in the first flight. After adjusting a little bit I found the lemon flavors to be quite nice and actually enjoyed it.

Next came sweet baby trey, which was my absolute favorite of the day. This famhouse ale mostly came at me with sweetness though nothing overpowering or cloying. It had a nice spice flavor that reminded me of Belgian yeast and overall was the most delicious of the bunch.

Next came my cousin strawberry, a beer that had just the right combination of strawberry and kiwi with a very mild tart flavor. The color of the beer was very interesting as well, almost a light pink. The purple drink was a nice dark purple color and was mildly tart as well. This one was based on the saison and had plenty of good berry flavor. Fruit beers being what they are most of these are smaller batch and so the flavors available might be different when you visit the brewery.

Some may have seen me call Toolbox bold for moving their beers to mostly brett. I can safely say that the beers were all very well-made and balanced. I was also glad to hear that there is another even more traditional west coast style IPA in the pipeline as well, which should satisfy some who don’t like what I got to try. Having now tried the beers available at Toolbox I can say that they made the right decision and the complexity of flavors helps them stand out.

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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Valley Center Brewing – Complex Beers Worth the Drive

February 20, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

If driving to Oceanside the previous weekend to visit Bagby was far, I especially was not very excited about driving all the way to Valley Center to try a brewery. Though Oceanside is right off a major highway, Valley Center is only accessible by a few smaller roads where you aren’t going to be driving very fast. Though, after tasting some of the really tasty beers, I was glad I made the trek. I visited Valley Center Brewing on February 1st 2015.

Because I visited with a groupon, I started out with a bunch of tasters. Though I also had two full pours to look forward to, also included, since my husband, who was driving back, was only going to help me a little bit with those. I was intrigued by the selection once I noticed some styles that I don’t expect.

To start with I ordered a flight of Rusty Pail Pale Ale, Farmhouse Ale, Oaked Red Ale, Hell Hole Cayon Stout, Smoked Porter, and Evening Star Barrel Aged Stout. Later I also tried the Belgian IPA, the Coffee Stout, and the Coyote Run IPA.

First taster flight. Note how dark the beers in the back are as well.

The farmhouse ale was quite tasty, offering plenty of mild tart flavors and a little crisp fruity bite at the back end. The brewers describe this as having apple flavors. Rusty Pail pale ale was a very typical pale ale flavor like a Sierra Nevada Pale though the malts were a little less intense and didn’t overpower the hops. This one was just OK to me.

The oaked red ale was the first beer I noticed that really had some different flavors at the beginning compared to the end. Later I noticed that a lot of the other beers had flavors that changed over the course of a taster sometimes very significant. At first the red ale was too smoky but when I got closer to finishing the taster I started to notice the smoke balanced much better with the rest of the beer.

Next came the smoked porter. This was interesting because the bourbon flavor was much lighter than you typically see in San Diego bourbon aged beers, giving it an almost sour flavor. Combined with that was a light smoke flavor to balance it out. This is certainly not your typically roasty porter and my husband was not a fan.

Then I tried the Hell Hole Canyon stout. This one was so good I had to stop my husband from drinking the whole taster before I got to try it. This was also the second of my full pours later. Flavor wise, I was quite impressed by all the different things I tasted from coffee to bitter chocolate and plenty of roasty flavors. I hope this one sticks around for quite some time.

The Belgian IPA was also very tasty. At first I got a ton of spice with mild citrus hops but over time the spice seemed to mellow out, leaving me with some fantastic citrus flavors and a little bit of ripe fruit. This was later my first full pour and still very enjoyable. The Coyote Run IPA started out with a powerful ripe peach flavor with plenty of tart and as I progressed through the taster the malts became more prominent. Though I wasn’t immediately drawn into this beer it seemed to be quite popular among regular visitors. Sadly the other IPA they usually have was gone when I stopped by, perhaps due to popularity.

The coffee stout, made with local roasted Sumatra beans, was a tasty coffee beer with plenty of coffee flavor at the forefront. Though to me compared to the Hell Hole Canyon it was hard to ask for more. Finally, the bourbon barrel aged stout called Evening Star, like the smoked porter had an interesting intense tart flavor that I don’t normally find in this sort of beer. This sort of tart flavor tends to come from something aged in wine barrels.

When I asked the head brewer about these two tart aged stouts I was told that they used barrels that had already been previously used by another brewery, so they didn’t have the same intense flavor of bourbon that tends to come from first run use. I didn’t find either of the barrel aged beers to have the sorts of flavors that typically get me excited about bourbon aged beers so they aren’t for everyone.

From what I tried, I was glad I made the drive up to Valley Center. I still can taste the delicious flavors of the Hell Hole Canyon Stout and the Belgian IPA. They also had four lighter beers that I wasn’t able to try, a Kolsch, Blonde, Cream, and Summer Ale. I’m told that these were added due to local demand and since I am not a big fan of those styles I stuck to what I enjoy. At some point I may make my way back there, possibly while I am in the area for some seasonal event, so that I can try the other IPA that was not available when I stopped by.

Valley Center Brewing is also interesting because they had a few experimental beers on tap to try. I didn’t end up tasting the experimental beers while I was there either, but it sounded like there were some interesting beers available on there. If you are in the area and want to have a beer, Valley Center Brewing offers a great lineup of interesting IPAs, Stouts, and even a solid farmhouse ale. The Belgian IPA and Hell Hole Canyon both stick out as great beers that have just the right flavors.

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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San Diego Hop Addict

Tag Archives: Pale Ale

Kilowatt Brewing Company – Kearny Mesa Area

Paul McGuire

Division 23 Brewing – Miramar Road

Paul McGuire

Beachwood BBQ – Long Beach California

Paul McGuire

Toolbox Brewing Company – Vista – The Brewery That Showed Me How Delicious Brett Can Be.

Paul McGuire

Valley Center Brewing – Complex Beers Worth the Drive

Paul McGuire

Exploring San Diego's Craft Breweries