Southern California

Beer Birthday: Dr. Bill

July 30, 2011

Today is the 49th birthday of William Sysak, better known to the beer community as Dr. Bill. Dr. Bill’s massive tastings are the stuff of legends, and he’s now transported them — albeit on a smaller scale — to working at Stone Brewing’s World Bistro & Gardens. He has impeccable taste, be in in beer, [...]

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Beer Birthday: Chris White

July 1, 2011

Today is the 43rd birthday of Chris White. Chris founded the yeast company White Labs in 1995 and he’s also on the faculty of the Siebel Institute. He’s also a fixture at virtually every brewing industry and homebrewing conference. Join me in wishing Chris a very happy birthday. Chris and his brother Mike bookending Chuck, [...]

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Firestone-Walker Brewery Video

October 8, 2010

Firestone-Walker Brewing just posted a cool video shot in the brewery, with great production values and music. I’m not sure if we’ll see it anytime soon on television, even cable, but it’s better than most of the beer ads currently running.

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The Tyranny Of The Disgruntled Minority

April 30, 2010

Tomme Arthur, from the Lost Abbey, has an incredibly restrained post up about the travails created by a single individual person who went to the trouble to lodge a complaint about every beer tasting room in the San Diego area. “Apparently they were concerned that we didn’t have a GIANT BLUE “A” on our cold [...]

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Prohibition Through Taxation

April 1, 2010

Being April Fool’s Day, this might almost seem laughable, if it wasn’t so serious and obvious an attempt to bring about prohibition through taxation. (And thanks to the many people who sent me information about this, you know who you are, I appreciate it.) A San Diego couple, Kent and Josephine Whitney, have introduced a [...]

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Stone To Release Collaboration Video

January 21, 2010

Stone Brewing, at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time, will be releasing their latest video project, Stone Skips Across the Pond, a record of their collaborations with two breweries. [NOTE: the video, once released at 1:00 p.m. PST, will be available at Stone's Blog.] If you just can’t wait to see some of it, check out the [...]

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Stone To Seek Brewing Opportunity Abroad

December 22, 2009

Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, the founders of Stone Brewing after tweasing (twitter teasing) the news for weeks have announced a bold, audacious plan. After resisting sending their beer overseas, they’ve decided instead to consider opening a brewery there instead. So they’re initiating an open call from municipalities or even nations abroad to see what [...]

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Star Trek’s Engineering Deck Brewery

November 21, 2009

If you’re like me, you love what I call “brewery porn,” which is photos of brewing equipment either installed or by themselves. So when I watched the film reboot of Star Trek, I was convinced that portions of the movie — the engineering deck — were filmed inside a large brewery. Sitting in the darkened [...]

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Beer In Art #42: Cat Scott’s Paintings Of Beer On The Wall

September 6, 2009

Today I want to showcase an artist who’s painting a series of beer bottles that will eventually be nearly 100. The artist, Cat Scott, is calling the series 99 Paintings of Beer on the Wall. She’s finished a dozen so far, and here’s a familiar one, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Scott is primarily an illustrator [...]

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Dr. Bill Joins Stone

March 18, 2009

According to the Stone Blog, as of Monday, Dr. Bill Sysak has joined Stone Brewing as the Beverage Coordinator of Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens. Believe it or not, this is Dr. Bill’s first job in the beer industry, though he’s been involved in the beer world for quite some time. I profiled Dr. [...]

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The New Stone Brewery

June 16, 2007

I was down in San Diego Sunday through Tuesday for a CSBA meeting and finally had a chance to see the new Stone Brewery, along with their World Bistro & Gardens in Escondido on Monday for the very first time. The place is very impressive from top to bottom and seems very well-thought out at [...]

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Finding the Lost Abbey

June 14, 2007

As I mentioned yesterday, on Sunday I flew down to San Diego for a couple of days to attend a CSBA meeting. My first stop was to visit Tomme Arthur at Port Brewing‘s new production facility, which they bought a little over a year ago from Stone Brewing. I wanted to see what they’d done [...]

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Rosy News About Hollister Brewing

June 13, 2007

Brewer Eric Rose’s new brewpub, Hollister Brewing, in Goleta, California (just outside Santa Barbara), got a nice write-up in the L.A. Times today in their food section. Really the piece was about Santa Barbara’s beer scene and included Telegraph Brewing, Island Brewing as well as Firestone Walker (which at one point the Times referred to [...]

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Eric Rose’s Hollister Brewery Open

May 10, 2007

For eight years, Eric Rose was the head brewer at Santa Barbara Brewing. And life was good. But Eric, like many brewers, dreamed of opening his own place one day. That day was Sunday, when his Hollister Brewing opened its doors to the public for the first time. Situated in a modern strip mall setting [...]

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Southern California Distributor Shakeup

January 3, 2007

Harbor Distributing (One of five regional beer distributors owned by beverage giant Reyes Holdings) is one of the largest in Southern California, distributing throughout Los Angeles and all of Orange County. And it just got bigger. I got an anonymous tip today that Harbor bought Gate City Distributing. Effective March 1, Harbor will be taking [...]

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Karl Strauss Dies at 94

December 22, 2006

I got an e-mail today with the sad news from an old friend, Matt Jamieson, who called on me when I worked as the beer buyer for BevMo. He used to work for Karl Strauss Brewing in San Diego. Yesterday, Karl Strauss passed away in Milwaukee at age 94. Born in Germany, and a graduate [...]

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