Stave and Nail has been in the works for a while. It is an offshoot of Rip Current headed by the same person who runs the sour program at Rip Current. The two spots are so close that you can easily visit both in the same visit. Though today’s visit suggests most people coming for Stave and Nail are not interested in going to Rip Current in the same trip. Most of them have likely already been there many times and so it no longer interests them.
I visited mostly to try various sour beers they had available. The beers were fairly standard for a new brewery starting out a sour program, indicating they are on the right track and should develop further given time. I started with a pink guava and raspberry beer that had a prominent guava flavor with a funky bitter finish. The peach sour was strongly tart with mild notes of white cake behind it. A second guava sour, the one released in bottles on the day of my visit, was funky and nicely balanced with a dry finish though overall quite subtle.
During my visit I also tried a few sips of their double IPA and imperial milk stout. I got the IPA for my mom to try and found it overly sweet with lots of vanilla notes and grassy hop character. The milk stout was strongly bitter with notes of molasses and lingered on the tongue in the finish. It blended nicely with the coconut flavors. I was surprised to see so many people grabbing four packs of these beers without even trying them. After tasting them, I wasn’t excited to leave with either of them. I certainly recommend you visit them for sours over IPAs or stouts.
Stave and Nail is a solid new operation and a welcome addition to San Marcos now that Toolbox has left. Given the lack of breweries in the area offering sours except Belching Beaver and a few sours at Rip Current next door it should be well received. I didn’t find the beer to be so exciting that I would suggest you take a special trip to visit them if you are in another area of San Diego. This is especially true as it seems the number of sours showing up in liquor stores from around California and surrounding states continues to increase regularly.
Known for: Come if you are interested in trying a variety of small batch barrel aged sour beers. Some of them are spontaneously fermented using locally harvested yeast. All of the sour beers had fruit added when I first visited.
Note: Stave and Nail is a small operation and as such will be only open one weekend a month initially. They are planning on releasing new beers in bottles each month.
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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