Alpine still worth a visit?

Shannon is a fucking riot. Always fun to be around.

 

Just make sure you go to the Toronado.

 

The brewery, yes indeed. The brewpub? Won't be happening on my watch.

 

I miss the road trip days down to ABC for bottles and growler fills of OG big 3's. Having a bite at the OG pub. The new Alpine is good, but not the same.

 

Felt like you won the lottery when you'd drive out to Alpine,get a couple of growlers and beg your wife to come in so you could get double the current limit of Nelson Bottles.

 

All great. You could hit abnormal on the way south after toolbox.

 

Abnormal
AleSmith
Modern Times
Pizza Port
Societe

Honorable mentions to Mother Earth and Rip Current (among others, of course, but those two just missed the top 5 for me).

 

What's pitiful is that every visit to an Alpine thread these days is just a sad exercise in nostalgia.

 

i rage every time i think about the new "tasting room" where the pub used to be. That pub was basically a historical landmark. So many awesome times there. Now its just some shitty sterile fake wood looking place

 

I do not know anything about their financials. But i'd bet they are making more money now than they were before. I am sure they are selling more beer now with their distribution. We beer nerds are just unhappy because it is not the beer we want and remember.

 

Well if anything the positive to the sale is, Alpine can focus more on the other things they brew in house and do more bottle releases of stuff like barrel aged beers.

 

Yeah, because the world needs more shit-tier accidental sours like Dark Elixir...

 

So sad. Dropped by today on my way to camp at Cuyamaca, the pub was closed (not open til 4), went to the tasting room and had a Bad Boy that was a shadow of its former incarnation. Sat at the window where the crazy, crusty old pub bar used to be, closed my eyes and imagined an OG Nelson in one hand, a pulled pork sandwich in the other.

 

Why even call it Alpine anymore? There is ZERO resemblance to the OG.

 

You know it's pretty bad when bad boy is still on the beer board for bottles which has been on sale for weeks now.

 

Because Green Flash needs some small semblance of credibility to desperately cling to.

 

Last year's batch of Bad Boy that got bottled was excellent.