Saturday's Triple Marathon

A few buddies and I scheduled a short trip down to San Diego mainly so we could visit Stone and watch "Airplane" which they were showing as their "Late Night Movie in the Gardens" feature. I also wanted to leave early in the day so I could stop by Port Brewing for a while. Since my friend Steve and I didn't have to work we left around noon and arrived at Port around 2. I would have had no problem spending the entire day there, but unfortunately their tasting bar/alter hours are only from 12-5 on Saturdays. We arrived down there to what seemed like a bunch of local regulars, which was a bit uncomfortable at first, though the man serving our beer was very hospitable. We started with a sampler of the Lost Abbey beers. A great touch to this place are the cups of malted barley sitting on the bar for people to munch on. After a bit we kind of weaved our way into things at the bar and ended up meeting some really fun people. Though I knew that Beer Sage and Beer Molly frequent Port Brewing, I wasn't expecting to see them there, but towards the end of the day was able to introduce myself. A brief conversation with them led to a recommendation that we go to a local pub called Churchill's before we head over to Stone. We met another couple friends, Pat and Pete, there who had just driven down after they got off work. Churchill's was a really good move as it enabled us to fill up our stomachs for a little cheaper price than at Stone. The beef dip sandwich rivaled Philippe's, the downtown LA landmark, and was a great recommendation by Beer Molly and Churchill's owner Ivan. At Churchill's I had a Deschutes Twilight Ale (pictured right) which I really wanted to like because they are one of my favorite breweries, but the taste of this one just didn't sit with me.

We eventually got over to Stone by about 8pm. A couple new beers to me that I had were a Sierra Nevada Torpedo Ale and Bear Republic Racer X (pictured left). Both very good beers and highly recommended. One interesting thing to note was that we ordered an Avery The Beast which none of us could really tolerate. It tasted like sugar, maple syrup, and molasses dissolved in water. The movie started at 10:30 so we took our tailgate chairs out to the lawn. Pat fell asleep about 5 minutes into the movie, but other than that we and a bunch of other people on the lawn enjoyed it. Still have a couple growlers of Ruination and Double Bastard to get through now.