San Diego Breweries NOT worth your time

Green Flash, Thorn, Benchmark, and Monkey Paw are all better than Iron Fist, Karl Strauss, Amplified, and Hess (although, I may be alone in my estimation of Hess. I just don't find it to be that great. Their brewery is really cool though, and they have talent, so I imagine it will get better).

 

I would put Mother Earth above Iron Fist. Also, the Coronado production facility is quite good in my opinion. I think their Black IPA won a gold at GABF. If you are up near Oceanside, I'm a fan of Breakwater and they have good pizza's. I'm not sure why Breakwater doesn't get much love here from the SD folks.
This will be immensely helpful when plotting routes:
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202319603240403294306.0004bdf5878618ab1aef8&msa=0&dg=feature

 

Your going to get a multitude of opinions, each with reasoning as to why, or why not for whatever brewery (pros and cons) However, any brewery may have merits to any individual imho. Beer profiles, yeast, hops, malts, recipes, price, location, location, location, tasting room comfort, vibe, barrel aging focus, do they serve food, do they make a lot of hop bombs, cask ales, etc. do they play music, can I bring my wife, girl friend, dog, all of them, etc. The list could go on and on.

For my two cents (already gave a dollars worth of my point so far) only you can decide, based on a multitude of the above factors, if there "worth your time". Could also take a look at ratings here, and across a multitude of sites to get an average of opinions based on experiences at locations X, Y, Z to guide you if your looking for "majority" opinion, but I still say check them out and decide for yourself is the best way to go (if possible) Good luck, enjoy SD.

 

You've answered your own question. Even if people don't have the social stigma thing going on, they perceive Oside as being far away from everything. Once Bagby opens his place, Breakwater might actually get more traffic because of the multiple destination / trip effect.

 

+1. Skip Iron Fist.

 

They seemed to have a very vocal set of "groupies" (not necessarily here) that have quieted down as of late - I think some of them moved over to Mother Earth, and the beer-centric ones may have moved on to Rip Current.

 

Well, they had a fantastic brewer who left (or was let go) and then they were pretty bad for a while. I guess they've got another brewer now? I can't keep track of what's going on with them but I wish Kirk McHale was still brewing there instead of killing it in Wyoming. Anyway, you'll often find that if a brewery has a really good brewer and then that brewer leaves, people will care less about that brewery than they did before.

 

When I hear people talk about Iron Fist, they're always mentioning how nice the family is and how welcoming the environment is rather than praising the beer. I actually haven't heard anything about Iron Fist for a long time.

 

I suspect you are correct. We moved here from Pasadena in Oct 2012 and have been to all but 2 of the breweries off the 78 corridor- which may be somewhere near 20 by now. For a local place, Breakwater is good- DMJ IPA is respectable and they regularly sponsor beach cleanups and give free beer/pizza to folks who come help clean the beach- I think that is great. I have suggested to a few people there that Bagby will increase business at Breakwater for the same reason you suggest. There is also a new craft beer bar open 2 blocks from Stone Oceanside called Surfside taproom- went there on there 2nd week of being open and they had 20 taps= some very good stuff too. Right on PCH closer to the harbor.
There is another new one near the 76 called Legacy- haven't been there yet- my good beer friend said "meh". The Vista brewery not yet opened called Toolbox I suspect will start out rather strong- had a good talk with him about a week ago and really look forward to hitting that place up after work.

 

Toolbox could be the worst possible name for a brewery.

 

The place itself is cool and fun.. The beer is hit or miss. I've had some stuff that I really liked and some stuff that was just okay.

 

It's been a while since I've been to Iron Fist. I liked Velvet Glove.

 

Lol I bet it would take an hour or two to read that whole thread.

 

Toolbox is going to be good. There will be funky Brett beers and sours. Plus the brewer has won a bunch of awards for his English Barleywine and Wee Heavy. They also have some cool hops on contract.

 

The beer at AleSmith is very good but the brewery sucks. It is really depressing and the staff aren't very hospitable. If you just want beer, then go, but if you want beer with a good experience then don't go.

 

I never had a bad experience at AleSmith, been there several times. Friendly staff.

 

Not hospitable? Seriously?

The only thing I can figure is a personality mismatch or a really bad day. When were you there, and with whom did you interact? I've met a good number of the beer personalities in San Diego, and though I've found few that I don't like I can say without qualification that Peter Zien is the nicest proprietor in San Diego. He wouldn't tolerate employees not exhibiting that same standard.

It is just a tasting room, and there is little going on other than that, but still...

 

I have never interacted with Peter before, so I have no opinion of him (although his beer is very good). I don't know the names of the people I interacted with but I have been to AleSmith 5-6 times over the past 2 years and have been disappointed every single time. This is the only beer related place in San Diego that I have this opinion of. The people there seemed like they didn't enjoy being there and getting a pour of anything seemed like I was asking them to climb a mountain. This on top of the depressing and vacant decor in the tasting room led me to say what I said in my above comment. I will only be going to AleSmith from this day forward to pick up beer that I order online.

 

modern times and mother earth brew co !

 

...as ones to avoid? I've never been to ME's tasting room, but I've been pretty impressed by all the IPAs they've released, and I don't think you could ask for a better 4 core beers than what Modern Times has to offer.