Must Visit Breweries in San Diego

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Diggy

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My birthday is coming up just after Christmas and awesome Girlfriend just told me she is taking me down to San Diego for 3 days to go on breweries.

What do you think are the must visit small breweries in San Diego?

Thanks for the advice and wish my liver some luck surviving this trip!

Diggy
 
I just typed out a great post and my browser kille it so I'kk make this one shorter.

Some of my absolute favorites:
Pure Project
Council
Society
Second Chance
Mike Hess (the one in north park is a very cool brewery with good beer)
Monkey Paw
Coronado Brewing (the actually brewing has so much more than they bottle that I like)
The Resident (int he back of a restaurant downtown called the The Local)
Duck Foot
Longship
Reckless
Mother Earth
Belching Beaver
BNS
Booze Brothers
Cellar 3 (Green Flash's barrel aging facility)
Helms


Too many more that I can't think of I'm sure. You could split it up into regions on your days. Miramar one day (at least 15 breweries within 2-3 miles). North county another day. and then the lower half of san diego the third. If you wanna eat Karl Strauss has gotten to making some pretty tasty beers I think and they have a nice restaurants with decent food and prices. Stone I think is over rated and over priced on its food but the one in Liberty station is a very cool brewery.

Another thing you could do is go to a good beer bar. Obrien's on Convoy street has a great beer selection and always a couple taps of Russian River stuff. good bar food as well. Common theory Public House is another one close by with a lot of good local beer. Both of those are close to Society and Council (and a few others I haven't been to yet). Either way good luck and enjoy our beautiful city. It's a great place to drink. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Cheers,
JT
 
Thanks for the great list Jerbrew!

Optimal_pizza, we will be staying in Old Town but will Uber/Lyft all over. Like Jerbrew suggested we will probably break it into regions.

And yes, I want to go to White Labs!

Thanks!
 
Excellent plan, breaking it into regions would be the way to go.

SD's limited mass transit system actually corresponds to a pretty scenic brewery tour. There is a Coaster station in Old Town that will get you all the way up to Oceanside, down to downtown San Diego and everywhere in between as well as connect to the Sprinter which will get you into Vista. $12 for an all day pass that is good on both trains.

Here are some spots to check out and their corresponding Coaster / Sprinter stations.

Modern Times: 10 minute walk from the Old Town Coaster Station, very cool setup and excellent beer
Green Flash: 10 minute Uber from the Sorrento Valley Station, huge place with outdoor patio and a huge taplist, also includes Alpine Beers which is a nice bonus. From Green Flash you can get to all of the more inland breweries (Alesmith, Societe, Ballast Point, etc)
Pizza Port and Culture Brewing: 2 minute walk from the Solana Beach station. Pizza port is good spot for their wide selection of beers as well as their excellent pizza. Culture is smaller but worth a shot if you have some time to kill.

The Oceanside stop has bunch of places you can go: Stone, Bagby, Breakwater, 101 Tap House but I wouldn't count those as must-stops. If you're in the area and want a good tap list with good food, look up LTH.

The Sprinter train will get you to downtown Vista which offers Mother Earth, Belching Beaver and Wavelength. A 10 minute Uber from downtown Vista will get you to the Vista business park area which offers Booze Bros, Aztec, Latitude 33, Iron Fist, etc. Out of those I'd recommend Booze Bros, one of the coolest spaces to have a beer as well as a good variety on tap.

Enjoy your trip! You won't be far from good beer no matter where you are in SD.
 
I would head into North park (my stomping grounds) for an afternoon. There is a lot in a small area. While there I would hit up the following in this order.

Thorn street brewery
Modern times tasting room (if you aren't planning on going to the modern times brewery in point loma)
Hess brewing company (I still drool every time I walk through the cat walk over the brewery into their tasting room)
Fall brewing Co

There are more breweries in North Park (belching beaver, The homebrewer tasting room, barn brewery, the pour house, San Diego beer Co), but these are my favorites.

Additionally there are some great beer bars here too. Toronado and tiger tiger are 2 that you could easily throw into the mix. They both have lots of options. I believe toronado has more taps and bottle selection over tiger tiger.

There are a lot of other great breweries in San Diego, but you can pack a lot into one afternoon if you stick in North Park.
 
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