Stone Brewing Bistro & Gardens Liberty Station - San Diego, CA

The Stone Brewery at Liberty Station next to the San Diego airport is just a great upscale bier garden.  The Stone Brewery is famous in the craft beer community as a really great brewery that is well on its way to going big-time nationally and internationally mostly because of a couple of its high-dollar ales that you find in most grocery stores on the top shelf of the beer cooler.  Their "Arrogant Bastard" is a favorite of mine as is their IPA.  I'd say that it is one of the best breweries in the US.

The beer garden is pretty big.  It is probably an acre and a half outdoors and probably 4,000 s.f. indoors.  It is really beautiful inside and out.  The outdoors area is what I consider to be desert landscaping with crushed stone walkways, lots of desert grasses, waterfalls and koi ponds.  One waterfall is build into a bar.  The tables are all covered by umbrellas to protect people from the SoCal sun. 

The indoors area had a huge beer selection on tap.  Some of the beer is produced on-site and some is brewed at their Point Loma and Escondido locations.  When you first walk in there is a seating area with big glass windows that look in on the brew house.  They were not brewing while I was there.  Unfortunately, they only do brewery tours at their Escondido location.

As far has the beer goes, I had tried two.  You can read my Untappd.com beer reviews on the Sacred Druid here and my review of the Ron Pattinson/ChuckAlek/Stone Liberty Station Colonel Sykes East India Porter here.

The food was every bit as good as beer even if it is not necessarily the focus of this establishment.  I had the chicken schnitzel with spaetzle.  It was as good or better than you would get at any good German restaurant.

The service was really excellent.  The greeter dude actually gave me the big tour of their location before before I had to make the decision of where to sit.  My waiter was equally attentive and knowledgeable about the beer and food.

As awesome as the Stone Brewery is, it is not a triple-D location.  It is also not a diner, drive-in or dive in any way, shape or form.  So, huge points for location, food and drinks.  Points off just for not fitting the triple-D criteria, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  I would rate the Stone Brewery a 9.0.

2816 Historic Decatur Rd #116‎
San Diego, CA 92106
(619) 269-2100 ext. 2000
http://www.stonelibertystation.com

Hot As Hell Hefeweizen by the Little Red Chevette Brewery

Padre warned me about the banana on the nose but, I didn't believe it.  He was right. The first thing that hits you after you pour a glass of Hot as Hell Hefeweizen from the Little Red Chevette Brewing Company is the distinctive smell of bananas.  Padre explained that no bananas were actually hurt in the production of this brew.  The smell is entirely attributable to the yeast in action.

Before I get to the actual "un-capping," a bit about Padre, a long time friend and the brewmaster at LRCB.  LRCB and Padre actually hail from part New Jersey that earned it the Garden State title.  Padre enjoys his days canoeing the picturesque, cool country Kittatinny Valley lakes in search of perfect fishing spots.  He spends hours paddling the waters in an aquatic hunt for his finned prey.  But, when he is not busy giving the fish population of northern NJ heck then he is busy in his shop brewing beer from the same local pure, deep glacial lake waters, testing his chemistry and fermentation.  It's a bit of science and sorcery.  If Santa Clause is "Father Christmas" then Padre is "Father Beer."

Padre takes his beer very seriously and gave me specific instructions on how to best enjoy his brew and what to look for.  You get the sense right away that this is a heartfelt brew worthy of respect.  I couldn't think of a more worthy subject for Bill's Triple-D review in breaking with the restaurant only review tradition.

Padre's inspiration for LRCB's Hotter Than Hell Hefeweizen was the pity he took on those of us in the southern states who suffered through one of the most brutally hot summers on record in 2011.  The label on HTHH is a drawing of Texas being baked by flames in the background.  Needless to say, Padre decision to send some of the goodness to me was very welcome.

One of Padre's first instructions to me was to drink the beer from a clean glass.  The breweries in Europe usually have their own glasses or steins that they suggest you drink their beer from.  LRCB did not yet have glasses for HTHH, so I decided to use a hefewiezen glass from the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu direct from Kinzigtal in Germany's Black Forrest. 

The worst thing about HTHH is that the whole glass disappeared much too quickly.  YUM!  It was that good.  There is nothing about this beer that you "have to get used to."  It just slides down as smooth as can be.  There was a concert of tastes and yeasty smells that only could have come from high-quality ingredients, including great water.  I can't really describe all of them.  That might say more about me as a first-time beer reviewer than anything else.  The beer was light in taste but, weighty in consistency.

I enjoyed a lot of really great beers when I lived in Germany.  The Germans are not afraid of cloudy beer if it helps the taste.  The mass produced hefeweizens in the US tend to be kind of tastless because they do filter out the sediment.  Padre's HTHH reminded me a lot of the great German beers because it had the bold yeast smell and taste.  The best German hefeweizens have that banana smell, too.

Padre doesn't publish the alcohol content of his brew.  I'm no lightweight but, after just one I was feeling just fine with the world.  I honestly don't know enough about beer chemistry to say whether the alcohol content adds or subtracts to the taste and enjoyment.  Whatever it is, Padre got it right on the money.

There was one bit of advice that Padre gave me that I wasn't too sure about.  He suggested leaving the last 1/4 inch of beer with the sediment on the bottom of the bottle.  In Germany they will roll the bottle on the table in order to stir up all of the sediment into the beer.  So, that was what I was used to.  I went half way and first sampled the beer using Padre's recommendation then I poured the gunk in the bottom of the bottle into the glass and tried it.  The sediment was actually pretty good.

I'm giving Padre's Hotter Than Hell Hefeweizen a 10 out of 10 on the Triple-D scale.  If I find a better beer then I'll bust the 1 - 10 scale.  But, I have a hard time imagining that right now.

Little Red Chevette Brewing
Andover, New Jersey
http://sites.google.com/site/littleredchevettebrew/home





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