Lazy brewer / Adventures in San Diego
My imperial stout still languishes in secondary. I swear I will bottle it, some day, and brew again.
Life has been with beer lately, as usual. Jen and I went to the Bear Republic beer dinner a couple weeks ago, then we took off for Reno, where no beer was had, but I lost a whopping $35 after having first won an entire $5. Fortunately, fellow Beercrafter Susie had brought along a bottle of Laphroig, which was comforting, along with the Three Philosophers. Both were last second additions to our luggage, and both were great to have along with us. Not a lot of fancypantsedness in Reno. At least, not much that I could afford.
Not long after that, Tuesday the 22nd, Jen and I took off for that horrible Hollywood-ruined debacle known as Comic-con, in San Diego. We drove from Oakland to Carlsbad Tuesday night. We’d been planning to drive to around the Grapevine then get a hotel, but we were making good time, and so continued on. Our hotel was about three blocks from Pizza Port, but we showed up around 10:00, which is just after they stopped serving food. And we’d been driving nonstop for about six hours, so that wasn’t going to cut it. The next morning we got up bright and early, found a couple trashy ’80s genre books from the Paperback Exchange across the street (an awesome bookstore of the type I thought had died out completely by the late ’90s), by which time 11:00 had rolled around and Pizza Port had opened, so we walked across the street and got some Beer Buddies and I had a Black Lie IPA. I’m a sucker for dumb jokes, and however it’s meant to be taken, a black IPA just seems funny to me, so I couldn’t avoid it. Also, it was delicious.
After Pizza Port, we moved on to the Stone Bistro, which has a longer title involving gardens, but I don’t remember it and I don’t care to look it up. I saw a lot of bitching and moaning about Stone’s restaurant on Yelp, something about bad attitudues and high prices with mediocre food, but I’ve found that advice from Yelp should be treated like a bit of spilled salt - grab a bit, regard it with hostility, then throw it behind you and forget about it. This was no exception. The grain of truth lies with the high prices - $5.00 for their own beers - but the food was priced appropriately for its deliciousness, and it was interesting. Stone had just put on their sour beer festival, so there were 21(!!) sour beers on tap, but they’d also recently started pouring their new Chocolate/Oatmeal Stout and, better yet, the Cali Belgique. I started off with the Cali Belgique, and fell in love. Similar to one of the West Coast-inspired Belgian beers that have been popping up, but from the other direction. Delicious and fresh. The stout was another great treat. Unfortunately, we had to check in to our hotel in San Diego, so that was the last beer I had at Stone.
The Comic-con was a muddle. We were both pretty broke, but found a decent chain pub called the Yardhouse that has about 90 beers on tap, and half priced appetizers during happy hour. We ate there most nights during Comic-con, revelling in sub-$20 meals that included a few beers for me and one or two for Jen.
I don’t remember if I mentioned that Comic-con isn’t so fun. It’s grown to take up at least three times the space it did when we started going, back in 1999, but I’m almost positive there’s about half the number of comics-related goings-on. I don’t count Hollywood versions of superhero comics in comics-related goings-on, because I’m being a jerk. Even with that, though, toys seem to be a bigger focus than comics. It’s a craven, horrible mess, and fuck it. So we left Saturday morning, after hanging around for about an hour at the con.
On our way north from San Diego, we hit Lost Abbey, and I picked up my bottles of the latest Patron Sinners release, a beer for which brewer Tomme Arthur refused to offer any description. The beers on tap were delicious - I had an Amazing Grace (I think that’s the name) and their new whit to name a couple - and they had some bottles for sale, including a Saison brewed together with a Belgian brewer whose name escapes me and Inferno, Lost Abbey’s strong golden. I bought a bottle of each, and regret having only purchased one bottle of Inferno (the strong golden). The saison still sits in the fridge. I don’t want to use up all my special beers.
After Lost Abbey, we hit Stone and I tried a sour - Eric’s Ale, from New Belgium. As I needed to drive at least most of the way home afterward, that was the only beer I had at Stone. We then made our way home, up through the traffic of LA and the heat of the Central Valley, finally to the cool, golden hills of home.