Younger, Pizza Port, and Tales Of A Garage Session

Before we get to this week's garage session shenanigans, the week started out with a bang on Wednesday night when Stone put Pliny the Younger on tap. I drove up that evening to imbibe and stumbled outta there after 5 glasses (only 8oz pours) and managed to get home somehow. Better judgment will prevail next time, I promise. The Baltimore Beer Guy's dad was snowed in trying to get back to Maryland and was staying with BBG's brother (who lives in San Diego), so they happened to be out on the beer trail at that time, at Oggi's, and met me up at Stone to share some Younger. I must publicly thank them for their generosity in buying me rounds of Younger, and I am now in debt of what I would call a large package of Pliny the Elder and other goodies which will eventually make their way out to Baltimore to ring in the spring days. Younger was phenomenal, although I can't say it tasted as good as I've known it the last couple years. Maybe I put it on a pedestal.


On Friday night my friend Pete the mad Greek Anagnostopoulos met me in Escondido at Stone for some beers. I had a Vertical Epic 09.09.09 which, while being a solid beer, doesn't really excite me much. Tastes like a porter. Nice. Next up was Avery DuganA which I must give high compliments to. This is a sweet beer that I wouldn't want to drink a whole pint of, but in a cold 8oz pour it is very nice. Smells and tastes like fruit loops. Kinda reminded me of Bear Republic's Apex IPA, just kinda. The next morning we got up and headed to Pizza Port in Solana Beach. Perfect day for that. It was about 70 degrees out and sunny. I started off with a beer called Night IPA or something which was dubbed as Solana Beach's clone of San Clemente's El Camino IPA. It tasted quite similar and was very good. Then I had their American brown ale called One Down Brown. That was a good, somewhat hoppy brown ale.


Onto O'Brien's where I finally got to try some Port Mongo DIPA. Wow this was an aggressive beer. Bitter as hell and super hoppy. Probably the most aggressive IPA i've had in a long time. Really unbalanced (just how I like it!) with delicious juicy hops.


The night concluded with a garage session with the J's (and B + A). First up was a growler of Stone Old Guardian which had been Belgianized. It had a lot of similar qualities in terms of that Belgian yeast flavor + the hops to Green Flash Le Freak, or really any Belgian IPA for that matter. The second beer was a bourbon barrel aged Partridge in a Pear Tree from The Bruery. This was the unanimous beer of the night for everyone (I think). The bourbon just exploded from the glass (which is fine with me!) to add to an already great base beer (quad).


Since we didn't have any dead rats or broken chairs infiltrating the session by this point we pressed on. Lost Abbey's Duck Duck Gooze was mouth puckeringly sour. Tasted like that lemon bubbilicious. I don't really have the palate to describe sour beers beyond "sour" and "funky." This one was pretty much all sour to me. Loved it. Founders Backwoods Bastard was next. It was good, just don't remember anything about it, and by this point at garage sessions I've long forgotten to keep up with my tasting notes.


This was a good beer too. Super sour as usual for the Cantillon beers... I hear it's even better out of the bottle.


After this delicious Duvel the night concluded with the obligatory game of Horse, which wasn't even finished this time (meaning I'm still the reigning champ).