Monday, July 16, 2012

San Diego, Day 2

What's with this "Books" crap? I ain't here to learn! I hear ya, but this is just Alpine, California's version of an Albuquerque strip mall, bookended by Alpine Beer Company! Get schooled by beer, not books; that's my motto. The left side is home to Alpine's restaurant and plenty of beers on tap. For $10, we got to start the day with a sampling of six 5 oz. beers of our choice. Got to try Duet (Simcoe and Amarillo IPA), Chez Monieux (sour with cherries), Captain Stout, Odin's Raven (Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout), Pure Hoppiness (DIPA), and Nelson (IPA with Nelson Sauvin hops, and my favorite).

The right side of Alpine's operation housed fermenters and barrels and a tasting area/t-shirt sales area/growler filling station. We drove the person at the counter crazy while trying to decide what varieties of bottles we wanted to get, "Two Duet, four Nelson...no, wait! Three Nelson, three Pure Hoppiness..., no, I want a hamburger, I want a milkshake. I want a hot dog..." While we didn't get nothing and like it, we left without any growlers, as just the empty glass is $10. I didn't want to pay $10 for a standard screw-top growler, no matter how good the beer is. The place is still awesome, though.

After
Afterwards, we drove down to Escondido and stopped in at Holiday Wine Cellar. Just look at that sign! Can you imagine the John Williams symphony going through my head when I saw that sign?? We picked up a couple of bottles for the room at the spacious Comfort Inn (Midnight Sun Meltdown IPA and Drake's Denogginizer). Laugh at the hotel, but we had a balcony that let us watch the never ending flow of traffic to the In-N-Out drive in right next door, where we got to hear thousands think they were being unique by ordering "animal-style".

And we didn't stay in the hotel for that long, not with Stone Brewing Co. just a mile and a half up the road! A typically hectic Saturday at the Bistro greeted us, though we shunned a table in favor of seats at the outside bar and a small sampling tray. No, that picture is actually beers for a large group of guys who must have been kicked off the bus to Tijuana, as they had no idea what beers Stone had and just ordered some medium, some dark, etc. We were happy to have the Stone 10th Anniversary Ruination on tap, then went back to the room and finished off some more beers there.
We had an appointment to get "wild" on Sunday morning at 10.


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