The wife and I were in the San Diego area top attend a friends wedding last weekend and anyone who knows me would fully expect us to make a few side trips as Southern California is one of the Craftbeer hotspots in the country. We flew to LA and drove the remaining 100 miles or so, and strangely enough, our route took us right past Lost Abbey and Stone.
I had never been to either and had only seen pictures of Stones (relatively) new place in Escondido, where we planned to have lunch. Lost Abbey, is it is just a “tasting room” would be first.
Lost Abbey is an offshoot of Port Brewing which has a few sites in SoCal. It is kind of Port’s more experimental wing where most of what they produce are Belgian styles and barrel aged beers.
Essentially it was there brewery and aging “warehouse” as workers were pressure washing the floors around us and steel racks of oak barrels were everywhere. tucked in one of the front corners just inside a overhead garage door was the “tasting room”. A “L” shaped bar that sat about 15 or so with barrels to sit on with a sack of grain on each to make them the appropriate height.
As you can see, there are quite a few to choose from. A couple were out but for 1$ you can get a 4oz sample of any that are on tap and they had bottles of several others. Includeing the exquisite “Angels Share”. I am ashamedto say, I did not pick one up as I was on a pretty tight budget and that little beauty is 15$ for a 375ml…thats a touch over 12oz !
So, while my wife waited in the car in the parking lot reading her book, I managed to take care of 4 samplers n the 20 minutes or so I felt I was alloted When asked I said, give me something that you are pretty proud of right now. The “High Tide” fresh hop IPA fit this bill apparently and it was very nice.
A hazy orange and big pine slightly grassy hop aroma and flavor. The others I tried were the “Hop 15” an IPA that has 15 additions of hops during the boil. That works out to about every 4-5 minutes, somebody is dumping a few pounds of hops into it. Red Barn is a Saison and it was light, and I thought had some Hefeweizen flavors in it, and “Devotion”, a Belgian that was clear golden with a perfect dense white head. It was pretty light and the Belgian yeast flavors were subtle and soft.
I would have liked to pick up a T-Shirt or hat but for 3$ the logo sample glass was good enough and I headed out. It would be nice to stop by again sometime when I have a little more time.
