Ale Street News Online

However, this wasn’t always the case. San Diego’s ascendancy in the brewing world is a relatively recent occurrence.

“In the early days, it was pretty tough to get a good beer in San Diego,” said Skip Virgilio, one of the founders of AleSmith. “Unless you were a Coors Light drinker, or preferred beer along those lines, there wasn’t much happening.”

Virgilio explained that in the fledgling days of the craft beer scene in San Diego, local brewers simultaneously felt inspired by and in the shadow of the beers coming out of the Pacific Northwest.

“I always had the impression,” said Virgilio, “that the Northern brewers were aided by Alice Waters’ idea to consume local products, while in San Diego we seemed to embrace the possibly less enlightened idea of ‘if it’s from another place it must be better.’”

Because of this, Virgilo said that he and his fellow brewing pioneers had to work harder for the attention of beer fans. Virgilo gives special credit to former San Diego brewer Paul Holburn for inspiring the robust hoppiness that’s come to distinguish San Diego from other regions.

“I think he was kind of on the ground floor of the push for hoppy beers that defines San Diego brewing to some extent,” said Virgilio, adding that in addition to hoppy beer styles, Belgian-style beers also got a big start in San Diego, and that these two themes continue to be dominant trends in craft brewing.

Another aspect of San Diego brewing culture that helped immeasurably is the high degree of cooperation, and the benevolent attitudes, among the members of San Diego’s brewing community.
As Pat McIlhenny, Alpine Beer Co.’s owner and brewmaster, explains, “Some of the original brewers in this community, guys like Vinnie Cilurzo, Tomme Arthur, Skip Virgilio, were instrumental in developing an attitude of friendly, helpful, cooperative assistance.”

McIlhenny sees this as a unique approach, noting that like businesses typically don’t cooperate, especially to the degree that the breweries and pubs in San Diego do.

“Everybody genuinely, genuinely cares,” said Scot Blair, owner of Hamilton’s Tavern, one of San Diego’s newer beer bars, echoing McIlhenny’s point.

“I see all the pub owners at all the brewery events,” continued Blair, “And it’s because we’re fans. It’s not just about numbers. It’s not easy having a craft beer bar. That’s why 99 percent of the bars in San Diego don’t have craft beers, because it’s difficult. Do you want to fight for limited availability? Do you want to do what it takes to rotate your handles, to make sure that there’s always something interesting on, with limited cold space? It’s not easy to do any of that, and it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, and if you don’t understand and don’t care about it, you can’t do it.”

Blair went on to point out the concentration of real ale in San Diego, noting that a number of venues are serving this style of beer that aren’t brewpubs, something you don’t commonly see. Apart from our renowned beer bars like O’Brien’s, Hamilton’s, Liars’ Club, and Pizza Port, even restaurants are outfitting their bars with beer engines.

Restaurants like The Linkery and Ritual Tavern, which embrace the locavore aesthetic, have added local craft beer and real ale to their menus, and promote them to people who have never experienced this kind of beer before, with great results, putting the lie to the notion that restaurants that only serve American and European macro lager are satisfying the demands of the public.

“Everybody likes [cask beer]”, said Jay Porter, owner of The Linkery. “The quality and the craftsmanship of the brews really shines through.”

Of course, this effort and dedication wouldn’t exist were it not for the fact that so many of our local breweries put out exceptional beer. Greg Koch, CEO and co-founder of Stone Brewing, sees the rise of craft brewing in San Diego as really coming about due to this desire more than any other factor.

“We, and that’s a collective we,” said Koch, “Have set out with the intention of making it a great community for beer. We’ve been brewing a lot of beers with the specific intention of [finding out] what kinds of amazing things we can do with no respect whatsoever paid to whether or not we think someone’s going to like it or buy it.”

There are numerous examples of this approach, especially in recent years. Stone’s anniversary IPAs, with their absurdly high IBU counts; AleSmith, Alpine, Lost Abbey, and Ballast Point’s barrel aged beers; and sour beers like Alpine’s Ichabod pumpkin ale and Ballast Point’s Hout series. Heck, even venerable San Diego brewery Karl Strauss has joined the party, releasing surprisingly good beers that would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago, including barrel-aged and sour Belgian styles.

“It’s really like a painter with a canvas,” said Koch, “You’re either trying to paint something to hang in some corporate law office, or hotel lobby, so you’re trying to paint it with a specific goal in mind of who you’re going to sell it to, or you’re going to say, ‘you know what, I’m a painter and I’m just going to paint what my muse tells me.’

“Of course, you have to be talented,” Koch continued, “I mean, you don’t have to be talented to paint, you don’t have to be talented to brew, but to paint an amazing painting and to brew an amazing beer, well it sure as hell helps.”