One whiff of the thick two fingers of foam and you think to yourself, “Why does this IPA smell like bananas, cloves, and lemons?” 

You then quickly snap to reality. 

Brewpubs of the 90s, with their blonde, red, hefeweizen, pale ale and porter tap lists have vastly vanished across America, along with their standard menu of burgers, steak fries and chicken strips. Today, a new breed of brewpubs have taken root, places that have the same heart and soul as the brewpubs of yesteryear, but are more hubs of diversity, not only in the food and beer styles being served but the people that work and dine there.  

(More: Breweries and Brewpubs with Impressive Menus)

In Orange County, California, for example, several breweries have opened with kitchens or dedicated, self-run food trucks that serve a menu of epic chef-driven fusion bites that are just as tantalizing as the craft beers being brewed.

TAPS Brewery & Barrel Room, Tustin

TAPS is no stranger to the classic brewpub, opening its first location in 1999 and winning Mid-Size Brewpub of the Year at the 2015 Great American Beer Festival. Co-Owner Joe Manzella saw the trend of smaller breweries and evolved his business into a large format brewery with a cozy tasting room and a dedicated TAPS food truck. 

“At the original brewpub location, guests still drink beers, but dining is the focus,” Manzella says. “At the new location it’s the opposite.”

The food truck menu has everything from a Hot’Lanta chicken sandwich with house-made pickles, to beef fat fries and even a banh mi-style hot dog topped with jalapeño, cilantro and ginger-lemongrass aioli. TAPS has recently announced two locations with smaller, beer-first kitchen concepts opening in 2020.

GameCraft Brewing, Laguna Hills

When Owner Scott Cebula was looking for a craft brewery location, both the landlord and city pushed him to open with food. 

“I see breweries with kitchens as the 2.0 model,” Cebula says. “I’d rather be the first guy with brewery 2.0 than the last guy opening without a kitchen.”

Along with his game-centric tasting room, the menu is inspired by his travels and his wife Kanda’s Thai background. 

“When designing the menu, we were implicit on not requiring cutlery,” notes Scott, who offers a traditional Japanese karaage chicken served with different spice levels (like hyperspice!), barbecue carnitas sliders, and even fresh hot pretzel bits with gruyère-butter dipping sauce.

Green Cheek Beer Co. Too!, Costa Mesa

Early on, Owner and Brewer Evan Price once said, “I would absolutely love to open a British-style pub complete with shepherd’s pies.” 

When the opportunity came to take over a turnkey spot in Costa Mesa, bank loans were opened, nerves were rattled and Green Cheek’s second location turned into a reality. Although there aren’t any shepherd’s pies on the menu, their smash burger went through more research and development than they do for the hop selection on their award-winning IPAs. 

(More: Chicago Brewpubs Buck the Deep Dish Pizza Tradition)

“We did patty blends side-by-side to figure out what beef cuts we were going to grind in-house,” Price says. 

One of the hottest new menu items is their pad Thai cauliflower, which also happens to be vegan. It’s served without noodles, but still has that same peanutty-pad Thai essence with plenty of cilantro, scallions and lime squeezed on top. 

Docent Brewing, San Juan Capistrano

Pepperoni rolls are the last thing one would expect to see near the beach in California. After all, the sweet doughy roll bites stuffed with pizza-like fillings originated in West Virginia. 

“It’s cool when someone from that area comes in and sees we have mountaineer rolls,” Docent Brewing Co-Owner Brian Hendon says. 

(Find Breweries: Near Me)

Fusion kicks into high gear with a Korean-style Reuben sandwich oozing with character from house-fermented kimchi. Pair it with The Rube, Docent’s 7.5% ABV red ale that drinks like a midday Manhattan. 

Bottle Logic, Anaheim

Bottle Logic’s Epicurean 1 mobile culinary program is a rolling kitchen, a temporary alternative until their full kitchen is built. 

“We’re using it as a means of developing our brand identity and running a live test – adjusting research and development with our guests,” says in-house Chef Patrick Whittaker. 

But Whittaker hasn’t always been behind the spatula; he started in the tasting room pouring beer. It didn’t take long for the team to put his culinary degree to work on beer dinners. Expect seasonal bites, like a steaming Toshikoshi bowl with tempura shrimp, soba noodles and Japanese sweet potato. Paired with Hanamachi, Bottle Logic’s Japanese rice lager, it’s easily an industrial-area brewery experience worth having. 

Do you have an exciting brewery in your neck of the woods that has bites? Let us know!

The post Brewpub 2.0: Small Kitchens Redefine a New Breed of California Brewpubs appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

We know this because Jeff’s Portola Coffee has been used in 13 Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup-winning coffee beers since 2010. Portola Coffee beers have nabbed 21 medals in total including the San Diego International Beer Festival competition and California Craft Brewers Cup by collaborating with four breweries: Pizza Port, Beachwood BBQ & Brewing, Tustin Brewing, and Gamecraft Brewing–all local breweries to Portola Coffee in sunny Southern California.

I sat down with Jeff and some award-winning craft brewers that use his beans to see what makes a great coffee beer.

(VOTE NOW: Great American Beer Bars 2020)

Q: How does one craft a great coffee beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Just like a brewer wouldn’t just order hops off of a shelf, they shouldn’t do that for coffee. The key is to strategize. A brewer is very good at sourcing their grains, their yeast, their hops, but most of them don’t know coffee…they may drink it, but they may not understand the chemistry, solubility, extraction efficiency–or how beer is a solvent and what it’s doing to pull the flavors out to create what they want. It’s not just a great brewer and a great coffee roaster coming together, because there’s already a lot of that going on out there. It’s always a conversation with me.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: I have a very cerebral understanding of his signature flavor profile. There’s a thread that runs through all his coffees, which is primarily an intense fruitiness and his roast profiles create sustained flavors when they’re in beer. Irrespective of beer style, I treat everything as an ingredient, and treat nothing as an additive. So, with a beer like Mocha Machine, which has done really well in competition, the base beer doesn’t exist as some other beer on its own. If you tried it without coffee, it might come across as some weird doppelbock. It’s super fruit-forward with restrained roast as the coffee brings roast, it brings bitterness, it brings a different type of acidity to the finished product.

(READ: American Brewers Fall for Spicy Amburana Wood)

Q: Why so many medals in competition?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: I’m 100 percent convinced that a significant factor in our success is based on sourcing quality beans. We source coffees that are unique, rare, and some have never been exported to the U.S. before. We go through great lengths to hand-select our coffees because they taste amazing. So if you’re not starting with quality coffee, forget an award. The same way a brewer is selecting the finest hops and malts, coffee’s also up there.

Q: How are hops similar, or different, from coffee in a beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: What makes both great are their volatile aromatics. Most of what we taste is what we smell, so both hoppy beer and coffee beers should be consumed fresh as they’re both subject to oxidation. Both are agricultural products and can change from year to year as well, which can pose different problems for the brewer or roaster to adjust their process for consistency. Coffee is different from hops as I’m not just delivering green beans to the brewer. I have a very specific roasting technique just for coffee beers.

Q: How big of a role does the origin of coffee play in a beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Origin doesn’t play as big of a role, to be honest. Like someone may say they love Guatemalan coffee, where I can appreciate that, they essentially just had a good Guatemalan coffee… There’s nothing about that country that will make it categorically better than a Costa Rican or Ethiopian coffee. It all has to do with the varietal selection, the health of the trees, the microclimate, the processing, all that stuff is really what makes that bean what it is.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: Mocha Machine has medaled with three different coffee origins–not only that, three different continents. It’s kind of like medaling with the same hop varietals grown in Washington, Oregon, or Idaho. As long as you know what characteristics you’re going for, you can achieve predictable results.

(READ: Musings on Utopias)

Q: What’s the best way to introduce coffee in beer?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Cold steeped grounds post-fermentation prior to carbonation is the best. We’ve done it every way…we’ve pulled shots of espresso, added cold brew, in the whirlpool, and you just don’t get the intensity of flavor as cold steeped grounds.

Q: What about the dreaded green bell pepper off flavor that’s common in coffee beers?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: We adjusted our roast profile based on that flaw. Not only that, we have a separate roast curve for coffee beers in general from our standard roast profile for drinking coffee. The reason we did that was to adjust for the bell pepper issue. We’ve developed a curve that we’ve successfully volatilized whatever compound caused it. Nobody knows what causes it. Here’s the thing, green bell pepper notes are time-dependent because we certainly didn’t taste it when the beer was a couple of months old. There’s something happening over time, and we don’t know that it’s oxidation…it may not be. If we’re going to be scientific about it, it may not even be the coffee that causes the flavor, but rather something with the coffee compounds that are causing the conversion of that flavor in the beer. We don’t know.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: We did have an older batch of Tovarish Stout that trended toward that green bell pepper after a couple months, which was fine early on. So Jeff created this new roast profile that still captured all the signature profiles we were looking for, but he was able to drive off all that raw green vegetable characteristic. So if you were to grab a year-old coffee beer of ours now, it might not be as dynamic of a beer due to age, but it won’t have that green bell pepper note.

(READ: The Lighter, Brighter Side of Coffee Beers)

Q: What’s that moment like when you’re tasting a finished beer for the first time with your coffee in it?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: I’m always breaking it down. I’m OCD and always striving to be the best, but of course, I enjoy it, but I’m analytical about it. If it’s not as good as I’d hoped I’m bummed. If I know a beer that I’ve collabbed on gets submitted to competition and it doesn’t win, we’ll get together and change it up. Like Tustin’s Portola Breakfast Stout is probably on its fourth or fifth year and it just started winning. That beer is a culmination of tweaking, where one year we got close to winning, so adjustments were made.

Jerrod Larsen, Tustin Brewing: I just let Jeff do whatever with my beers. It’s a true collaboration where I hand him the base beer and he’ll taste it and decide what needs to happen on the coffee side. I do the beer I want and he does the coffee side. It’s great. Early on I wasn’t getting anything at GABF for a few years, but we started adding dosing with more coffee and that’s what tipped Portola Breakfast Stout over the edge.

Julian Shrago, Beachwood Brewing: When Jeff tastes one of our beers with his coffee, he’s able to dig out the full expression of his coffee in the beer.

Q: Aside from porters and stouts, what are some other beers that marry well with coffee?

Jeff Duggan, Portola: Name a beer style and I think we’ve done it. Recently we did something new with Eagle Rock in LA with a hazy coffee IPA; I introduced a method we’ve never used before. Firstly, I didn’t want coffee to dominate with typical coffee flavors, so in this case, I wanted to pull off the things that come off the quickest and easiest, and that’s the coffee acids. So we did whole bean introduced on the hot side in the whirlpool, and we pre-soaked the beans with hot water so when we went to dump it in, we wanted the beans to give everything they have on contact. It turned out great!

With so much pure soul-awakening coffee aromatics bursting out of Jeff’s Portola Coffee beer collaborations, there’s a case to be made that coffee beers are basically breakfast IPAs. Sure, coffee beers will never overtake the IPA in popularity, but if you’re ever jet-lagged around Orange County, California, there’s a solid cuppa beer waiting to jolt whatever ails you.

The post The Mad Scientist Behind Dozens of Medal-Winning Coffee Beers appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

Brewery list and info at firkfest.com

Event produced by @ocbeerblog, a CraftBeer.com contributor.

2018 Brewery Lineup Asylum Brewing Barley Forge Beachwood BBQ & Brewing Bootleggers Brewery Bottle Logic Brewing Chapman Crafted Beer El Segundo Brewing Co Figueroa Mountain Firestone Walker Good Beer Co Gunwhale Ales Inland Wharf Brewing LA Ale Works Left Coast Brewing Lost Winds Brewing MacLeod Mikkeller San Diego Modern Times Noble Ale Works Pizza Port Brewing riip beer co Smog City Stereo Brewing TAPS Towne Park The Bruery / Terreux Tustin Brewing Co Unsung Brewing Green Cheek Yorkshire Square Verdugo West Th3ee Punk Ales

The post Anaheim’s Tiki Cask Beer Festival Set for March 24 appeared first on CraftBeer.com.

A trip to this West Coast beer city and the sprawling county surrounding it can be hard to plan because there are so many options. As someone who visits multiple times a year, here are some tips to create the perfect San Diego beercation.

(MORE: Uinta Brewing Company Launches Beer Honoring the National Parks)

Start Planning Around a Marquis Event

Since San Diego’s weather is freakishly nice year round, it’s easy to plan a trip during the offseason. With SD Beer Week happening in early November, one could easily skip this entire post and show up with bag in hand, have a crazy fun week, and somehow mysteriously end up in Tijuana jail a few days later, complete with a new hop nugget tattoo on your lower back. The week is brimming with elaborate pairing dinners, tap takeovers, and a guild festival that, just like San Diego, is difficult to try everything.

If November doesn’t jive with your turkey, some other events to plan around include The Mission Valley Craft Beer & Food Festival (April), Modern Times Festival of Dankness (or Funk!) (August), and SD Rhythm & Brews (May). A personal favorite is the Brewbies fest which takes place in North San Diego at Bagby Brewing (February); the event that is adored by industry and reachable by train.

Brewery anniversary parties are also great to plan a trip around. Stone Brewing’s anniversary, which falls in August, is overflowing with rarities from within their cellar and guest breweries tend to bring their black tie beers to help celebrate.

(MORE: 9 Weird Brewery Names and the Stories Behind Them)

San Diego Beercation: Where to Stay

North Park is a great neighborhood all on its own, with 30th Street being the central hub of great beer bars, brunch spots and stellar breweries. The historic LaFayette Hotel is situated amongst all this, and is a great jumping off point with easy access to the downtown gaslamp district, beaches, the zoo and other brewery hotspots. The hotel was built in 1946, yet still maintains its poolside bungalow charm. Nothing is more relaxing than cracking a brewery-fresh crowler in a chaise lounge next to their Olympic-sized pool, only to have an impromptu poolside bottle share with traveling room-neighbors from abroad.

So, with your marquis event and a place to stay, what else are you going to do? Grab a free West Coaster Magazine (basically everywhere beer is poured and in your hotel) and get your fingers dirty with newsprint until something catches your eye. The beer map and directory is in the back, which is your guide to what is fresh and in season.

Starting your day in North Park is poised with possibility. Brunch at nearby Small Bar for $15 includes a full breakfast with a choice of beer (Pliny the Elder on draft, anyone?), a foot tall bloody mary, or even a local favorite michelada (beer bloody mary). Give your morning yawns a kick in the pants and put some money in their juke box, which is filled with all Bowie you can handle.

Bellies full, a stroll down 30th street is always filled with fun and photo ops. The juxtaposition of urban art, yoga mat-carrying locals and beer touristas makes for a sense of belonging. Stop in a store called ‘Simply Local’ to grab some seriously cool beer art by local artist Rudy aka “Craft Beerd.” and grab his $9 deck of San Diego Brewery playing cards to keep you busy while brewery hopping. While checking out, you must buy some local nuts made by North Park Nuttery. They’re created with locally-made beer, and shockingly taste like the beer they’re made of.

A couple doors down, Bottlecraft is the only bottle shop you need to stop in; be sure to stock up with treats to take home.

Whether or not you’re craving beer or coffee, Modern Times Flavordome has you covered. House-roasted coffee and 16 taps of beer, including Black House, their eye-opening coffee stout with house-roasted beans. Mike Hess Brewery and Fall Brewery make up my other must-visit breweries in the area, each with their own pint-worthy charm and incredible neighborhood vibes.

Within 3.5 miles of 30th street are four of the area’s best beer bars. For an epic trip, start at Blind Lady Alehouse, move to Tiger Tiger!, then Toronado San Diego, finishing with a quick #2 city bus ride to Hamilton’s Tavern in South Park. Lunch, and lots of water, is recommended at any of these places.

(MORE BEERCATIONS: Los Angeles | Charleston, South Carolina)

How to Get Around

In San Diego, it’s surprisingly easy to reach the best beer spots without driving yourself. I find a combination of bike rental, Uber, train and trolley are all fast, inexpensive and safe to reach most places. For all others, I reluctantly suggest a brewery tour. Although some might like the fast-paced big-bus tourist lifestyle, I prefer to mosey at my own pace and set things up in advance.

One service I highly recommend is the HotShots Brewery Tour group, which shuttles you around in a swank smaller-sized retired fire battalion wagon. Local beer, food and knowledge is dropped on their friendly experience, complete with phone chargers and plug-in stereo jack to jam out to your own tunes while stuck in traffic. Only drawback? No potty on board.

To Escondido, or Escondidon’t? Take the Hop Highway!

Some areas of San Diego are well out of the way, so much so that they have opened more convenient taprooms and restaurants within your travel bubble. Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens is a must for any first time San Diego beer traveler, even though their location near the airport at Liberty Station is also beautiful. The Escondido location is a place one can take their mom on Mother’s Day, a wedding party, or just a random day to chill at this destination brewery. Reservations for dining and tours is highly suggested. Protip: BYO ketchup.

With fresh gargoyle in your belly, hop along highway 78 for some incredible pockets of beer that are destinations on their own. San Marcos is a short ways away and is home to Port Brewing/ The Lost Abbey, Rip Current Brewing, and Churchill’s Pub & Grille, three San Diego landmarks. Vista is just a little bit up the road along the 76 with a brewer’s guild of its own, including Iron Fist and Belching Beaver. Just before you hit the ocean, the hop highway drops you off in scenic Oceanside, which quickly becoming a brewery hotbed on its own. Locals love Urge Gastropub & Whiskey Bank, complete with adjoining Mason Ale Works for their incredible burgers. Nearby, Bagby Brewing, ran by Jeff Bagby, is probably one of the most decorated GABF winners in history at his tenure with Pizza Port. His attention to detail with lower-ABV beers is remarkable.

Speaking of Pizza Port, Carlsbad is home to most of their operation with a brewpub, a bottle shop, and their huge canning operation in Bressi Ranch, which is a short drive away from Legoland theme park if traveling with children.

(MORE: Coolship Fever in American Brewing)

The San Diego Beer Pioneers

For every craft beer pioneer brewery in San Diego, there are usually several must-visit places around it. Set your GPS to Stone, Alesmith, Coronado, Pizza Port, Karl Strauss, and even White Labs yeast bank. Once there, it’s easy to find a few spots you have never heard of via Yelp, Untappd, or even Google Maps’ “nearby feature” on the phone app.

Operation Beeramar

Miramar is more than just a Marine base surrounded by fast food and furniture stores; it’s home to one brewery that has its own street named after it: Alesmith Brewing Company. The big brewing operation has forged the highly regarded Speedway Stout, and the three-time GABF gold medal winningest Barleywine, Ol’ Numbskull. Adding to their big beer program is a unique barrel blending experience called Anvil and Stave, which is sort of like a beer speakeasy, allowing visitors to create unique tastes on each visit. For the baseball fan, be sure to check out their Tony Gwynn museum after a sip of the bright and hoppy .394 Pale Ale, which the ball player personally put his stamp of approval on.

Alesmith’s original brewery is a short trip away, but now houses Mikkeller San Diego. Ex-Alesmith head brewer Bill Batton opted to stay with his storied brewhouse, making the transition to make the Copenhagen-based gypsy brewer’s beers. I find their freshness and vibe to be electric among San Diego’s finest, offering new takes on copycat classics.

Finishing the Beeramar trifecta, I like to visit something new while in the area. My last visit included Little Miss Brewing at only 20 days old. With a WWII bunker vibe and legit dart boards, the flight of bright and hoppy beers were the bomb, just like their logo.

Food & Nightlife During a San Diego Beercation

When beer touring, the need for food can become a necessity, but a little planning ahead can have you eating like the locals do, and hopefully squeeze in a couple fine-dining experiences into the trip. Touristy areas like Seaport Village and Old Town might be fun to shop, but the dining and beverage experience is somehow stuck in the 90’s. A couple miles from Old Town, get your burrito fix at Lucha Libre Gourmet Taco Shop. Fish tacos are also indigenous to the region and usually a safe bet on any local menu. Type “fish tacos” into Yelp, and don’t be shocked to see a few pages of 4-5 star results.

(MORE: Why You Should Drink Beer Fresh)

Little Italy offers several gastropub experiences with hip noun & verb type of names, but Craft & Commerce made me feel most at home. Their modern naturalist ambiance and surprisingly accessible menu is as tasty as it is Instagram-worthy. Plus, they have my favorite San Diego brewery on tap: Societe Brewing. If by chance you can’t make it out to their taproom, be sure to try their beer around town. You can thank me later.

As San Diego continues to solidify itself as one of the nation’s best beer spots, the thing that keeps me coming back is its ability to keep morphing into something better than it once was. It’s not just the quantity of breweries and bars that makes a place great, it’s the history, the landscape, and the passionate producers and local fans that consume beer that truly make for great beercation.

The post Beercation Destination: San Diego appeared first on CraftBeer.com.