Mini Beercation - Day #1

Having my first real time off in many months, Megan and I decided to head down to San Diego for a little mini vacation.  The goal was two fold: do some great hiking and get a sneak a peek at San Diego's rapidly growing beer scene.

If you've never taken one, beer vacations probably sound like a lot of fun.  Well that's not altogether untrue, however, I have learned that day after day of tasting different styles and strengths of beers can really make you feel awful.  At the World Cup in 2006, I learned this the hard way in Munich; two weeks of drinking beer all day and watching soccer was an unparalleled experience, but so was the way I felt afterwards.  If you don't understand what I'm talking about, then here's a visual explanation.

Too much of this...

this...

and this...

can make you feel like this...

this...

and occasionally will have you looking like this...

Because of this lesson learned, I never plan my vacation exclusively around drinking beer and instead try to balance it out with plenty of walking and exercise so that the highlight of your vacationing doesn't actually become drinking.  That's just a little reasoning behind why I'm not declaring this as an all out "Beer Vacation." Now onto the good stuff.

We didn't do too much planning before we left and luckily, we didn't need to; right across from our hotel in La Jolla was a Karl Strauss pub house.  I'm not a huge Karl Strauss fan, but with the Laker game about to go on and being in walking distance, it was hard to pass up.

For food we ordered a beer battered sausage plate and a mac and cheese; neither were really worth mentioning.  However, let's talk beer.  As you probably know by now, I find it difficult to write full reviews when I'm out and about, so for this beercation, I simply jotted down a few notes here and there as I tried different brews.  I have to thank our really wonderful bartender.  She gave us free tasters of almost every single beer on the menu, which really is what made this possible.

First up was the Tower 10 IPA.  I believe you can actually find this beer in most Albertsons nowadays.  It's a decent IPA, but nothing to write home about.  It's about on par with New Belgium's Ranger Redhook's Long Hammer.  Next up was the Pintail pale ale, a very nice seasonal with good balance and that we both found to be very refreshing.  At 5.3% it was very drinkable and was probably the winner on the day.  After that we sampled the Minden Maibock, their May seasonal, which I found to be overpowered by apple flavor that really took away from the overall drinking experience.  I was pretty excited to try their Reef Break Red since it was a May and November seasonal.  This wasn't too bad a beer, but had a very high alcohol percentage, which, when mixed with the caramel flavor, scored very low on the drinkability chart.  Also, this big front end made the finish completely invisible, which just didn't work for me in an American red style ale.  The Belgian Stranger was perhaps a brew unique to that brewhouse since I couldn't find it anywhere on their site.  All I wrote is, "all the worst parts of a Saison with a hop finish."  Guess that sums that up.  Lastly, we had the Endless Summer Light.  This was a light pilsner that got much too fruity just before it finished with incredible crispness; it reminded me a lot of a champagne.

So rather than dump all these travels into one post, I've decided to break them up over three.  This should make for a bit of an easier reading experience, I know there's a lot of non-beer related news that you all have to get to as well.  Next week... Pizza Port Solano Beach!  Here's a preview,