San Diego: The Lost Abbey found and other tales from the Southland

The Brew Crew (at Stone)

Our company retreat ran Wednesday through Friday this past week, in San Diego. This was incredibly fortunate for me, since it meant that I could visit SD with free airfare and free accommodations. As this was something I had wanted to do for a long time, I was psyched.

I stayed through the weekend on my own dime so that I could have more time in the city. It’s a good thing I did, because I never made it out to any of my intended beer venues on Wednesday or Thursday. You could say it was the sun, or the surf, or possibly the staying up until 5:00am partying with my co-workers because this was my last week at work before my final day this Thursday – but for whatever reason, I never made it off the hotel property those first two days.

Gardens at Stone

I’d like to think we did a good job of making up for it on Friday. We drove up to North County and went to Stone, Pizza Port Carlsbad, and Lost Abbey. The group consisted of me and four of my co-workers: Mitra, Bryan, David, and John.

We were all stunned by how gorgeous the “Stone World Bistro & Garden” was. I mean, the name sounds a little pompous, and I heard at least one other beerophile later that day describe it as the ‘Golden Palace’, but it lives up to every inch of its aspirations. It’s covered with beautiful stone, native plants, and flowing water all over the place. As we were leaving, someone in the group commented that it’s the kind of place where people have their weddings, like historic mansions or vineyards. That got me thinking, as far as venues go, this really wouldn’t be a bad choice… if I were getting married any time this decade.

Bathrooms at Stone

Both the beer and the food menus were extensive and expensive ($12 – $17 for a lunch item, e.g. salad or sandwich). But as they point out on the menu, they are using a lot of local and artisanal ingredient and such. That doesn’t make it any cheaper, but it does mean you’re getting something special for what you’re spending. Just know in advance that this is lunch at dinner prices. I got the spinach salad with dried cranberries, walnuts, crispy pancetta, and goat cheese, with port cranberry vinaigrette. Other items that looked really good were the BBQ duck tacos, and the BLT bruschetta sandwich.

Stone beer sampler

The service was fantastic! Our waitress was so friendly and cheerful and really seemed to look out for us. She suggested at one point that two of us share a large salad instead of each getting a smaller one, since we’d get more salad and pay less that way. You know someone’s on your side if they’ll give you tips like this.

There were 34 beers on the draft list when we arrived, 10 of which were made by Stone. The beers ran from $4.00 – $6.50, though since the pours were only 12 oz (except for strong ales which were 8 oz), these really reflect prices of about $5.33 to $8.66 per pint. Almost everything was available in a 4 oz taster pour (that’s a large taster!) which started as low as $1.00 a pour for the Stone beers. So… if you want to try a lot of beers (and who doesn’t?) and want to save some cash, I think the tasters are the way to go.

When we arrived, the menu was heavy on sour beers, which are 25% off every Sunday right now (I think this lasts through the summer). I’ll give the full beer list at the end of this post.

I noticed not one, but two, Berliner Weisse on their menu, so I decided to try those since I love sour beers and had never been able to sample one of these before. I got a taster size pour of the Craftsman Berliner Weisse and Bryan got a full glass of the Bruery Hottenroth Berliner Weisse.

Bryan's 'Still life with beer'

Mitra wanted something refreshing and not too hoppy, so I suggested a Saison, which probably reflects my own biases and preferences at the moment. She ordered the Deschutes Saison de la Bond.

John wanted to try the Stone brews, so he got a sampler set of the Stone Pale Ale, Smoked Porter, IPA, and Arrogant Bastard, which were a bargain at 4 oz. each and dollar a piece.

David wasn’t feeling well, which he swore all morning long was food poisoning, but which I really suspect was just a hangover, given that (A) we all drank a lot the night before, David included, and (B) we all ate the same burritos the night before and no one else got sick. In any case, he didn’t yet feel up to beer drinking.

When the beers arrived, I just sampled the first three, since I’ve had the Stone brews before, and know that I can find them up here at lots of places. And, to this moment, I’m still confused about what I drank.

My Craftsman Berliner Weisse was not sour at all. Isn’t this a hallmark of the style? I’ve gone back since to the BJCP guidelines to check myself, and there it is in black and white, “Aroma: A sharply sour, somewhat acidic character is dominant…. Flavor: Clean lactic sourness dominates and can be quite strong…. Comments: Mixed with Pils to counter the substantial sourness.” So, you can see why I was expecting something at least as sour as the Flanders beers and Gueuzes I’ve tried. Yet, what I encountered was a spicy soft wheat note that was the most prominent characteristic of the aroma and flavor. There was no banana-y character, but there were some herbal-type spices, which reminded me more of a Witbier than a Hefeweizen. It was a pale straw color, slightly hazy, with no head, which was likely just the result of the pour which was all the way up to the rim of the glass. I was a little disappointed, considering that I was in the mood for a sour beer, and a bit confused, and then I tried Mitra’s beer, which only added to my confusion…

The Deschutes Saison was extremely sour. It was a very cloudy orange color (so far saison like) and incredibly tart, on the order of biting into a lemon. It made me think of the New Belgium Foedre #3, though I liked the Deschutes better because (A) though it was more sour than most sour beers I’ve had, and close in range to the Foedre it was not quite as bitingly acidic as that one, and (B) the carbonation was not as fizzy. The Foedre had reminded me of Pop Rocks, and though I would call this carbonation fuzzy, with lots of tiny clinging bubbles, it was not like the tiny, sharp, stinging bubbles of the Foedre.

So, here was my first thought… these totally got mixed up, right? The only thing that gives me pause is the color of the beers. But surely this can’t be right? An un-tart Berliner Weisse? A saison that you could practically make pickles with? I asked the waitress if we had heard her wrong when she set them down, but she said “nope!” and then went back to check the taps, returning to confirm that these were in fact the right beers. Huh.

So, Mitra and I traded, so that we each ended up with something a little closer to what we originally thought we had ordered.

The Bruery Hottenroth Berliner Weisse was more similar to the Craftsman, another reason to believe the beers were not actually mixed up, but also not as sour as I expected. I think maybe my expectations just weren’t what they ought to have been. It was golden, a few shades darker than the Craftsman, and clear, while the Craftsman was slightly hazy. It was less highly aromatic than the Craftman, with a less defined wheat aroma. It did have more tartness though, which is to say, I couldn’t pick up tartness at all in the Craftsman, but got a bit here. It was quenching, but my least favorite of the three.

Guest Beers at Pizza Port Carlsbad

We finally pulled ourselves away from the gardens to head on our way. The logical next stop would have been The Lost Abbey, since it’s only a couple exits down the highway (at the old Stone brewery). However, they didn’t open until 4:00pm, and since it was only 3:20pm, we went all the way to Pizza Port Carlsbad. This is a much more casual place, with surfboards on the walls and hanging from the ceiling, picnic tables inside, and a counter for ordering (what else?) pizza. We were mostly full, so we didn’t get any pizza, but we did get a soft ‘portzel’ and some ‘beer buddies’. The portzel is a steal! It’s a full size soft pretzel baked with ‘wholegrain beer crust’, which I assume means that some of the spent malt goes into it. It also comes with a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes, feta, garlic, basil, and oregano. All this, and it costs… $1.00! The beer buddies were also amazing. They were the same beer crust, brushed with garlic butter and served with ranch or marinara.

House beers at Pizza Port Carlsbad

The group wanted to go in on a pitcher, so we went with the Black Lie IPA, which was good, but which I now regret because it is one of the very few Pizza Port beers I’ve tried before. If I were doing it again, I might have gotten the State Beach Blonde (I know, you’re shocked, I never order Blondes, but this one was brewed with sage – more on sage later), or the None-The-Weisser Weizenbock. In all, there were about 40 taps to choose from, of which about 14 were in-house brews.

Pitchers went for $14.75 for a regular beer and $19.75 for a special or strong beer. The Black Lie was 8.3%, so it was supposed to go for $19.75. However, no one charged me when I ordered, or asked for a credit card to start a tab. When we got up to go, we almost forgot we hadn’t paid. I went up to the counter and asked to pay, and the guy was so pleased that we were honest that he knocked $5 and gave it to us for the $14.75 price.

Pizza Port Carlsbad

I just had a few sips, since I was driving, and have no notes from the tasting, but I’m sure John and Bryan would remember the beer. It wasn’t until we were back in the car that we realized that the two of them basically drank the pitcher on their own. Dave still wasn’t feeling well and Mitra had only had about a half glass. At 8.3%, that’s a big pitcher to share.

We headed onward to our last stop, and at first I thought that maybe I should postpone it until the next day. I really didn’t want to do this since I was looking forward to The Lost Abbey more than any other brewery on the trip. But, with Mitra and Dave nodding off in the backseat of the car, it seemed like the group was losing steam. Luckily, we were able to revive them right as we arrived. Not fast enough though, since we couldn’t beat a group from San Diego Brewery Tours who parked at the same time to the door. This was a group of about 10 guys who seemed a little rowdy and a little drunk, though not too much of either. It didn’t seem to matter though, since they served us right away, even though the bar was full.

The Crew at Lost Abbey

I was surprised when I got there to see Tomme Arthur right there, just wandering in and out, saying hi. I guess it’s because this is a tasting bar attached to (more like, in) a brewery, rather than brewpub, but still, I was pretty excited. I didn’t go up to say hi right away. I had this irrational fear that it wasn’t him, but maybe a brother or someone who looked just like him, and that I’d offend him and embarrass myself. This always happens to me around people I look up to. I definitely had a bad case of this at the Five Guys dinner, and I was getting it again now.

In the meantime, I tasted the line-up and it was all so damn good!  My two favorites were the last two (no surprise there), and it made me so happy that every beer I drank was better than the one before it. These last two were Lost and Found, a Belgian Dubbel, and Judgment Day, a Belgian Strong Dark. Both are brewed with raisins, but the Dubbel is 8.0% and a clear slightly red toned medium brown hue, while the Strong Dark is 10.5% and a dark black-brown, too deep to see through. The L&F was caramel-y, with hints of banana. The JD was toasty, with obvious raisin-y flavor, and a port-like taste on the finish, like chocolate covered cherries. I loved it! It had the roastiness of a Porter or Stout, but balanced with the sweetness and fruitiness of a Dubbel. The alcohol comes through, but in a pleasant, comforting way. This is what a great Strong Dark is all about. I’d love to serve this with a dessert sometime, or with anything anytime.

I stopped by the Pizza Port Carlsbad Bottle Shop on my way back to LA to catch my flight to San Francisco, and had to get a bottle of the Judgment Day. Of course, while I was there, I also ended up getting a bottle of Lost and Found (so delicious as well), of Inferno (Lost Abbey Belgian Strong Golden Ale), and of AleSmith Wee Heavy. It’s a good thing I met Ryan (who works at the Bottle Shop) in the Pizza Port tasting bar, because I hadn’t even noticed the Bottle Shop when we first went to PP and I forgot to buy both the beer and the work shirt I wanted from Lost Abbey as we were leaving. At least in the end I was able to get the bottles.

The man, the myth, the legend (center)

As we wrapped up our tasting, I got up the nerve to talk to Tomme. As I think back on it now, I have no idea what he said or what I said, because I was so nervous it was all I could do to keep talking. My friends knew a funny scene when they saw one (I don’t think they’d call me the shy type – hell, I don’t think anyone has ever called me anything other loud mouthed) and snapped a photo, which only made me more shy.

Afterwards, it was time for our tour. We had been told to ask Sage (“the guy in the bananas shirt”) for a tour, and it was only after someone explained to me that he and the woman who had been serving our beer were Sage and Molly from My Beer Pix that this hit me. Of course! Check out their site if you get a chance – they have a unique beer blog in that it’s 90% photos. During the World Beer Cup, it was my lifeline into a conference that I would have loved to have been attending.

My friends had already fallen for Molly at the bar. I believe one of them said, “I love her! She’s great – Forget the beer, I’d come back just for her!” Sage was also hilarious as he showed us around, one great quote being, “If you like what we put up on My Beer Pix, you should see the stuff we can’t put on there – there’s at least as many of those photos.” John’s an engineer, so he had some great questions during the tour. I’m sure they’re mostly used to “What do you have in there right now?”-type questions, but with John it was, “So how many PSIs can that thing handle?” And, “The barrel room must get hot if the fermentation reaction is still going on and producing all that heat, right?” Ah, physics. The Barrel Room is quite a sight, though. They have all kinds of stuff in there and it looked like there were more barrels than at anyone else’s place that I’ve seen before, even though they have 3/4 of their barrels in a room we didn’t visit.

That was it for Friday! We had to head home before I got tempted to go back for more Judgment Day. That evening, it was out in the Gaslamp District by popular request of all of my co-workers who were still around. I’ve discovered that the Gaslamp is San Diego’s equivalent of the Marina in SF, but with even less class. It’s all the frat boys and party girls you can handle, but with bigger, faker boobs and blonder, bleachier hair. Never again.

On Saturday, I meant to go ‘round some of the bars during the day, but that plan was scuttled when I lay down for a nap at noon and woke up at 10pm! I guess that’s what happens after staying up until 4:00 or 5:00am the last three nights after flying in on a red-eye from Tokyo the night before all that. Ah, well, it cut my options short, but I think it was probably my body’s way of protesting what I was putting it through.

Since I was staying out in the boonies (Thanks a lot Starwood for warning me…), I had two choices: Jump in my car to drive to Toronado SD and Hamilton’s, or take a long walk (1.3 miles alone at 10pm) or short cab ride over to O’Brien’s. My interest in avoiding drunk driving (and, really actually, in drinking) won out and I hopped in cab to O’Brien’s.

The place was surprisingly empty for a Saturday night, but the bar was almost full, so I took the one seat remaining. I love coming to beer bars alone, since I often have a better chance to talk to the regulars and the bartenders, and get a better feel of the bar. Tonight was no exception, and in fact, conversation started up quicker than usual even, almost as soon as I sat down. The two men to my right, Dale & Chris, explained that this is their regular spot, and that it’s empty late on weekend nights because it’s more of an after-work bar. Fair enough.

I ordered a Craftsman Triple White Sage. This beer is genius. I’m not going to give it as ringing an endorsement as the Judgment Day or Lost and Found, but I think they hit on a really great concept. The sage pairs perfectly with the Tripel. As the bartender, Micaela, left it in front of me, I could smell the sage as soon as I grabbed it. It was a very pure, fresh sage smell, like picking up a branch of the bush, not some withered and dried old leaves from a spice cabinet. I loved the aroma, but I wondered if the beer was going to be too medicinal, if it tasted anything like the aroma. Nope! The sage was definitely tempered in the taste, not half as potent as in the smell. Instead, the apples and honey Tripel flavor rose up and met the sage. What I like about this is that it is both very much an herbal beer and very much a Tripel at the same time. The flavors are bold and pure, but neither overpowering. The sage is dry and the fruity, punchy alcohol of the Tripel is sweet, but neither one is too much when paired with the other. I would drink this again any time and had no idea until now that it was 9% ABV.

Before I was even half done though, I had another glass in front of me. Dale had ordered a bottle of the De Proef Signature and four glasses. I’ve had this twice before, once at Bar Crudo and once at home, but I never liked it as much as I liked it this time. I thought the Brett character had a crisper, lighter flavor, almost lemon-y, that I had never tasted in a wild ale before. The barnyard funk was still there, but something about it tasted like it had been corralled. I’m starting to notice a trend now though, both in the notes I’m looking at and in my ABV comments. My handwriting had started to get wonky and this beer was 8.5%. Good thing I wasn’t driving.

We shared another bottle around, after I mentioned that I was all into Saisons right now. Dale wanted to know if I liked Fantome. Like it? I love it, obviously. There was no La Dalmatienne on the bottle menu, but there was Fantome Brise BonBons. All I have written down about this one, in a barely legible scrawl is: “Lemon-orange aroma. Tart.” There you have it. As I was looking at these notes this afternoon, I was feeling guilty at the lack of detail, but as I once again note that this was an 8.0% ABV, I’m feeling pretty good that I had 3 glasses at 8-9% and was still conversational. Yeah, yeah, you all think this is no big deal. But I know I’m a total lightweight, and this was in an hour and a half, with no food since 10:00am. I’m so grateful there was no repeat, or even near-repeat, of the birthday three-beer-blackout (of course, that was a 9.5%, a 7.5%, and a 9.5% on no dinner – for which I blame Google for clearing out the taquito cart before I got there). That was a surprise I hope remains a one-time phenomenon.

My one other alcohol-related thought for the night is that somewhere during this second half of the evening, we got to talking about mead. A man down the table was drinking a bottle of mead called Viking Blood. Or at least, that’s what I saw on the bottle and thought it was called, though it seems now that this is a generic name for a half mead / half cherry juice drink, not a specific brew. I will have to email the bar to see (A) if he got it there and (B) if so, what the hell it was. I got to taste a sip and it was delicious. Absolutely delicious. I also got to thinking, since honey-cherry-wine sounds like such a wimpy drink, maybe this is another back-door for bringing people on the craft beer boat. Often mead is just the weird stepchild of craft beer, a niche-ier segment of an already niche market. But, offer tastes of mead and craft beer to your average wine cooler drinker and mead’s probably going to win out every time. Maybe we could spoil people on good mead until those wine coolers are abandoned, and then work them on over to beer? I’m going to think about this a while.

Over the course of the night, I got to hear all kinds of stories about what O’Briens is like that I would probably never have heard if I had come with a friend. All the regulars have nicknames. Chris plays in a darts league. There’s one guy who comes in every day and drinks Budweiser on the rocks in his own mug that he leaves below the counter. When the World Beer Cup was in town and O’Brien’s was packed, all the regulars got to go to the end of the bar, where there was a bartender dedicated to them, so they wouldn’t be forgotten in the crowd. I love this stuff and I loved meeting Dale, Chris, and Micaela (who will also be at GABF incidentally).

They closed at midnight, which felt early but which was probably just about right. I headed home to the lovely Four Points Sheraton for bed, even though I had only been up two hours. As usual, I had no problem falling back asleep. I think I could sleep just about anywhere now that in the last week I’ve fallen asleep: standing up in a kabuki theater, on a red-eye home from Japan with a 7-foot man in the aisle seat to my right and a kicking and crying child behind me, and for 21-straight hours from noon on Saturday to 9:00am on Sunday, minus those two hours of beer.

So that’s it… for Part I at least! I’m home now, for four days, before I hit the road again. Up next is: Helsinki, Florence, London, and finding a new job. And given that I barely even scratched the surface of San Diego, I’ll have to head back down there soon as well. So many brews… so little time.