The Bottom Shelf

San Diego Real Ale Festival Summary

Better late than never, right? On June 9, Greg and I drove down to Carlsbad, California, to attend the 9th Annual San Diego Real Ale Festival which was held at the Pizza Port brewery. The festival was actually held on the concrete patio behind the brewery. A large tent was set up, and forty five taps were lined along a couple of walls behind a chain of folding tables.

When we walked in, we paid twenty five bucks, and we got a commemorative pint glass and ten tickets, each of which was good for a five ounce taster. That was already a pleasant surprise, as we had been told we would initially be getting eight tasting tickets. The pint glasses were marked with two lines, one designating five ounces, the other designating ten. We just walked up to the folding tables, handed our glass to the bartender with a tasting ticket, and asked for a particular beer. We got our partially filled pint glass back, and we were good to go.

On our way into the festival, we met a group of really cool people with whom we proceeded to share a table and drink beers the rest of the evening. One member of this group was Joe Armstrong, who happened to have driven down from Glendale, not too far from where I am in Pasadena. Joe brought some friends from the Los Angeles area with him, and he had some other friends from Chicago fly in for the festival. These are seriously devoted beer fans and great people with whom to enjoy a drink.

Like I said above, there were forty five beers on tap at the festival. Most of these beers were either IPAs or pale ales. There were also some ESBs, some brown ales, some porters, and some stouts. I started out the day with the Seabright Sienna Brown, which is an English brown ale at 4.8% alcohol by volume. It was a dark amber color with a medium-thick white head, and it had a strongly grainy, malty nose. The beer basically tasted like mash before introducing the yeast and letting it ferment. There was very little carbonation, and the grain dominated. It wasn’t a bad beer, but I had never tasted a beer that seemed to have fermented so little.

Greg started with the Firestone Walker Bourbon Barrel Imperial Oatmeal Stout. Quite a name. Greg wasn’t kidding around; this was the strongest ale at the festival at 13.0%. It was very dark black with a thin, tan head. It had a dark cholocate and coffee nose, with a similar taste. The taste was more smoked than the nose let on. One of my favorite quotes about this one was from one of Joe’s friends. He said, “You can put this on waffles.” You probably could.

Our next round of beers were Pizza Ports. I had the Great American Brown, and Greg had the Doheny. The Great American Brown was light-to-medium amber with no head, just a white rim around the glass. It had a woody, bourbon-like nose with a hoppy finish. I can easily say this was the hoppiest brown ale I have had, which seems to be one of the primary contrasts between American browns and non-American browns. The Doheny was a translucent orange, again with no head and just a thin white rim around the glass. Greg seemed to like it. I remember it being very hoppy, which was definitely the theme of the festival.

I moved on to the Lightning American Amber Ale. Like the Doheny, it was translucent orange in color, but the Lightning was a little darker. It had a medium white head with a malty nose and a slightly hoppy finish. Greg had the Oggi’s Torrey Pines IPA. It continued the translucent orange theme, but it was darker still. It had a floral, hoppy nose with a dry, bitter finish. Right up Greg’s alley.

I next had the Russian River O.V.L. Stout, which was one of the two winners of the evening for me. It is classified as a dry Irish stout and stood at 4.0%, the weakest beer at the festival. It was opaque black with a thick, foamy tan head. It had a malty, coffee nose, but the first few sips I noticed it just didn’t finish “right”. It was light and crisp and finished more like a hefeweizen. We ran into Mark, the lead brewer at Craftsman here in Pasadena, and he mentioned that he found it to be a very easy drinking stout. That’s probably a better way to describe it. I really enjoyed it.

The other big winner I had was the Rock Bottom Black Seal Stout, another dry Irish stout. This one was 4.5% alcohol by volume, and it was also opaque black. It had a malty aroma and was smoother than the O.V.L. It reminded me a lot of Guinness Draught, but it seemed to do everything Guinness was trying to do, but just a little bit better. Without a doubt, the two dry Irish stouts knocked my socks off. If I ever come across either of them again, I will definitely be partaking in another taste. The picture to the left is Greg and I drinking our “double order” (ten ounces) stouts very late that night. We were not surprisingly showing the effects of many hours of beer drinking by that point. I forgot who was drinking what. I’m in the white striped shirt.

Greg and I continued drinking for a solid seven hours on Friday afternoon. The festival started at 4:00pm, and we left the festival just after 11:00pm that night. That night, we stayed at the Scandia Motel in Carlsbad, which was between half a mile and one mile from the brewery. We knew we were in good hands when we saw the Scandia advertising “Color TV” on their sign outside the motel. We’re talking amenities here, people. But seriously, the motel room was clean enough for our liking, and it was big. No complaints there.

All in all, it was a very good festival. I found it to be slightly too IPA/pale ale oriented for my tastes, but there were plenty of ESBs, brown ales, porters, and stouts that I enjoyed. Between the two of us, we ended up going through twenty four tasters, each of us having only spent the initial twenty five dollars. I will definitely be planning to go back next year.

For those who may be interested, I scanned the brochure we got when we entered the festival into a PDF document.