Council Brewing Release Thread

yet over the last year and a few months they've released many terrible tasting things in kegs.

 

The last batch of Gavel Drop I tried tasted like pure fresh sliced green onions. Yuck.

 

Not to mention the long delay in addressing the infected BA Pirate's Breakfast. Glad they made the right call in this case, but I'm not sure they should be getting awards for their willingness to hold back flawed beer yet...

 

I was in town for work & grabbed a couple bottles of Nicene & was eyeing the bottles of Beatitude. But after having a pour of the Raspberry, which was dead flat, no way. I've never had so much trouble getting through a 10 oz. pour of 3.8% beer.

 

Nobody was crowning them beer saints. With how much we collectively complain about flat beers, infections, etc I was merely praising a brewery doing the right thing in this specific instance.

 

Bully Pulpit IPA - Can Release

You asked and we listened! Bully Pulpit IPA cans are coming your way! We are offering two methods to secure your Bully cans via Brown Paper Tickets (10/19/2016 at 7pm) and our tasting room (10/20/2016 2pm). We're doing it this way to help make sure our out-of-town patrons have an opportunity to purchase cans, reduce lines at the tasting room, and ensure our local regulars can also secure some cans. Full release details are available here on Brown Paper Tickets.
See you tomorrow for the Release Party!

 

This is their best IPA. Looking forward to purchasing some cans

 

Closing.

Farwell from Council Brewing Company


6 1/2 years ago, Liz and myself, Curtis, began plotting a course to open our own brewery. Just over 5 years ago we signed our first lease on what became our Kearny Mesa brewery and tasting room. We were blessed with enough customers to expand our brewery several times over these 5 years. There have been many ups and downs over the years including many long days to build our business.
We entered 2018 knowing that it would be a make it or break it year for Council. We were excited when we opened our Santee brewery and tasting room and had hope for our future. However, we had many significant cost increases this year (freight, labor, rent, utilities, etc) and much lower tasting room/distribution sales due to over-saturation of the brewery market, we began taking heavy losses part way through the year. As a result, we’ve had too long of a stretch of declining sales that we can’t sustain any longer.
Liz and I have always committed to being honest, ethical business owners. We committed to our employees that they would always be paid and that we always pay our bills. This meant that for the first couple years, we completely drained our life savings. We slowly rebuilt our savings the last couple years only to go back to not paying ourselves or reducing our already meager salary.
We have no regrets starting and operating our brewery. We've had so many great times with our wonderful customers. One event I'll miss in particular is Talk Like a Pirate Day (aka "Pirate's Breakfast Day") and just enjoying our flagship west coast IPA, Bully Pulpit. We'll miss hanging out with our regulars, meeting first time visitors to Council, meeting fans from around the world, collaboration brews, and traveling for beer.
We would like to thank each and everyone of you reading this for the part you’ve played in the Council story. We will miss sharing our beer with you and seeing how Council beer has strengthened friendships and helped others.

-Curtis & Liz Chism

 

Sucks

 

Interesting looking back over this thread (started in 2015)- there was a lot of action for the first couple months, then a couple posts a year later, then no thread activity for more than two years.

 

Bummer they won't be around any longer. I was not too crazy about them, but they did occasionally pump out a good wild ale. Some of their other beers were mediocre though, or just plain bad. I can't remember the name but I had a pint of some hazy IPA from them a while back and it was awful (and hardly "hazy"). Regardless, with them gone and Toolbox, the sour scene in San Diego will be lacking.

 

They had some great fruited sours. Bummed

 

If there was a moment that pushed me over the edge from being "person who drinks a lot of Sculpin" to a "beer advocate and homebrewer", it was a really, really good conversation me and a buddy had in the original tasting room with Liz about brewing and beer. Lots of samples, lots of interesting thoughts about brewing, amounting to a great customer experience. I am really sad to hear that they won't be around any more.

 

I actually liked most of their beers, even their IPA’s. If I could have found them easier in LAinwould have Thad them more often. Kind of bummed a good brewery is closing and some crappy ones are still open. Also, I missed that toolbox had closed.

 

Had a few of their bottles back in the day. Not my cup of tea. But hey...I tried. Maybe they should of taken Monks route and do a bunch of hazy ipa’s?

 

Their clean beers made a leap in quality once they moved from plastic to stainless temp controlled fermenters. The sour beers were always my favorites from what they produced. Some of the better dark wild ales were made by them.

 

Shame. Santee taproom was walking distance for me. Back to Burning Beard as my only real option out in East County.

 

I wasn’t familiar with them back when this thread saw regular activity, but we started getting canned distro from them in Phoenix maybe a year or so ago, which was coincidentally very soon after I first visited their Kearny Mesa taproom. I was really impressed with both my visit and the quality of their beers. I have since had a couple of their hazy IPAs that were just “good,” and one that was below average, but mostly their stuff rivaled the best that I can get locally. I especially thought “Into the Blind” was excellent.

They will be missed. I picked up a couple of cans yesterday in honor of their closing, and will eagerly awaiting the final shipment we’re supposed to be getting. It’s a real shame to see that they couldn’t make it when so many “mediocre at best” places seem to be thriving.

 

I can’t believe I missed the email in my inbox yesterday morning with the announcement. Their Beatitude series was what got my wife and I to make a mandatory visit to the taproom whenever we were in San Diego. Just sucks there’s one less option down there now.

 

Yeah, the sour options have decreased significantly. Besides Modern Times and Lost Abbey, what other good sour breweries are there in SD now?