Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

Socialize

Pizza Port Acquires Stone Brewery in San Marcos

By


Pizza Port, with three locations in the San Diego area, have acquired the old Stone Brewing Co. production brewery in San Marcos. A press release should be forthcoming, but Pro Brewer and others began reporting the rumor a couple of days ago.

Tomme Arthur
Director of Brewery Operations

I spoke with Pizza Port’s Director of Brewery Operations, Tomme Arthur, this morning and he confirmed the news. He was already onsite and brewing. So it’s official. It lools like bottled Pizza Port beer should become more widely available in the near future which is good news for beer lovers everywhere.

Stone Brewing moved to a new larger facility late last year in nearby Escondido, and negotations had been ongoing between the two breweries. The Beer Yard, a Pennsylvania distributor where Tomme Arthur recently visited reported that he told them the following.

Two distinct lines will be produced and bottled at the 30-barrel brewhouse. Port Brewing will produce draft and bottled versions of Pizza Port’s core beers while The Lost Abbey will do bottle-only versions of “Belgian-inspired ales.”

The first beers from the new brewery are expected to be released in California by March and in Arizona by summer.

Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine Delayed

By

Stone Brewing, formerly of San Marcos but now in their new facility in nearby Escondido, California, have announced a slight delay in the release date for Old Guardian Barley Wine. Instead of Januar 31, the seasonal beer will now be available on February 27.

Stone gave the following aditional information regarding the change in release date:

We originally announced that the 2006 Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine would come out on January 30th, however that has changed! Seems that a new brewery kinda got in the way…The 2006 Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine will now hit shelves on Monday, February 27th so change those calendars!

Your tastebuds are counting on you to check the Stone website and memorize the distribution list so you can treat them to yet another Stone Special Release. This beer is one to age in your cellar, beer ‘fridge, or someplace cool (50ish), upright, and dark.

Don’t forget about the Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine Specialty Glasses. The wallop of malt character matched with a Stone-esque amount of hops immediately tells you the Old Guardian is no standard barley wine. The Specialty Glass designed for it is equally distinctive, with a sharp angular profile that immediately tells you that this too is no standard goblet. You have no excuses to drink it out of anything else.

Always worth waiting for, Stone’s Old Guardian has consistently been one of the best bottled barleywine-style ales available.

This has been previously announced, but the 10th Anniversary Celebration has been scheduled for September 9. I still haven’t made it to one of these brouhahas yet, but perhaps this year ….

Stone also sent the following press release regarding the 10th Anniversary Party:

Are you an early riser, or an afternoon type of person? Since you’re all invited to the Stone 10th Anniversary Celebration & Invitational Beer Festival on Saturday, September 9th you need to start deciding now which session you’ll be attending. Here’s why: for this year’s event we are breaking the event into two different sessions (like last year).

Our annual event will once again be benefiting some very Worthy, local charities: the Boys & Girls Club of San Marcos, Palomar Family YMCA, the Surfrider Foundation, and Fight ALD!

Since this is our 10-year bash, we are planning on having the most guest breweries we’ve ever had, tons of great food, homebrewed sodas, and lots, lots more.

O’Brien’s Pub Celebrates 12th Anniversary

By

I got the following from Tom Nickel, iconoclastic owner of O’Briens Pub in San Diego and award-winning brewer at Oggi’s Pizza & Brewing:

O’Brien’s Pub is celebrating 12 amazing years as San Diego’s premier beer bar and you are all invited to the more than week long party. Jim O’Brien founded the pub in January of 1994 before there was Stone, AleSmith or Ballast Point. The pub served as a first account for Pizza Port, Oggi’s, AleSmith, Alpine and many other local breweries. It was also the first place in San Diego to serve Blind Pig IPA and Russian River. The pub has been an integral part of the good beer scene in San Diego. A big Thank You to everyone for creating such a great pub and beer community. Lindsey and I are thrilled to have been a part of the pub’s success for the last three years and we look forward to many more. The beer community in San Diego just keeps getting stronger and the beer just keeps getting better.

The anniversary specials begin tonight and continue through the end of the month.