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San Diego Beer Week is coming…

sdbw-logo-whiteI’ve been in the beer business in San Diego since 1996. During this time, our city has gone from relative beer obscurity to bonafide beer destination status. Last month the editors and publishers of Men’s Journal even went so far as to name San Diego the # 1 beer related city in the country (without apologies to Portland, OR). Two years ago, Philadelphia, PA (another great beer city) launched Philly Beer Week and with it a host imitations. There’s now beer weeks in cities all across this country including Detroit and Saint Louis.

Well, San Diego is about to join the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery party as next Friday November 6th San Diego Beer Week (technically 9 great days of beer drinking and celebrating) begins. As of right now, there are over 160 events scheduled during the week we’re doing our part to support the 9 day party. In case you haven’t been paying attention to our Lost Abbey Calendar of events, here’s what we’ll be doing to celebrate the week.

Friday November 6th you can catch us at The Neighborhood in Downtown San Diego featuring a tapas style menu with 4 Lost Abbey paired beers. On Saturday the 7th of November we’re hosting our favorite event of the year our annual Barrel Aged Beer Party at The Lost Abbey. At this time, tickets are completely sold out (sorry about the tease). But. we’re sure some of you already purchased tickets and are counting down the days like us. Veritas 006 will be released that evening and word on the street is the beer will taste an awful lot like the Sangre DC that we poured at the Stone Anniversary party in August.

Sunday finds us dividing and conquering. I’ll be heading to Phil’s BBQ in the Sports Arena area for an event with Jim Crute and the gang from Lightning Brewery. I LOVE Phil’s BBQ and am excited as many of my childhood friends may even make an appearance. We may even have a Brian Arthur sighting as well. Monkey and Monkey Rodriguez will be venturing across the great blue bridge that spans our bay and heading for the historic Hotel Del Coronado for an event featuring beers from Coronado Brewing, Ballast Point as well as Lost Abbey. Look for Cuvee de Tomme, Inferno and Carnevale to all be on display in Coronado.

On Monday, I have agreed to something called the Tomme Arthur Experience at Stone. I guess this means that I’ll be there telling you about 20 of the best beers you can’t buy on a regular basis. We’ve got a cask of Bourbon Santa’s Little Helper (held from this summer’s Christmas in July release) as well as some other great things. Veritas 006 will be on draft in a redux of the Anniversary Party. We anticipate 8 draft beers (4 Port and 4 Abbey) along with the cask and some 12 other bottled beers. I’m excited. Hopefully I’ll be able to live up the hype of having a whole night dedicated to my “experience?”

Tuesday finds me checking into a hospital for Detox and hydration therapy. I’ll check out for lunch and hopefully grab a pint or two with Vinnie and Rob Tod who are doing an event at Stone. I’ll point the car for the coast and drop down into La Jolla for dinner at Trattoria Acqua. Can you say weight gain this week? Man I’m going to need some new pants. 5 courses of amazing food and Lost Abbey beers are on the agenda. Trattoria Acqua now features a bunch of our beer on their menu and Michael and Victoria McGeath have been gracious enough to keep us in stock.

Wednesday we’re going back to double dipping for the night. To start the night off, we’ll be stuffing our bellies at The Ritual Tavern on 30th Street. It promises to be an amazing meal and I know that we’re serving Mussels with Duck Duck Gooze, there’s also Gift of the Magi 2008, Red Barn and Inferno on the menu. We’ll spill out of The Ritual Tavern and head across the street to Toronado for a late night cap from 10-12. Ian and I haven’t worked out the details but he called me from a Cable Car the other day to say hi.

Thursday promises to bring one of the best events for us this week. We’ve partnered up with Christian Graves of J Six fame (Downtown) and we’re going to launch the inaugural Lost Abbey Art Show. This will run from 7-9 PM and feature 15 original pieces of art that we commisioned Sean Dominguez to produce for our Lost Abbey Labels. We recently got all 15 pieces back from the framers and they look amazing! Our photographer John Schulz will also be on hand displaying some of the print ads he’s created for us since we opened our doors.

Christian’s Culinary team will be working the room with passed appetizers. Our brewery staff will be on hand to sample all 15 beers that match the original art pieces. We’ve never seen an event like this done before and are incredibly jazzed about it to say the least. $20 to sample the beers, view the art and you’ll even get to keep The Lost Abbey stemware glass from the evening. If there was one event to put on the list for this week for me, it would be this one.

Friday and Saturday, I’m taking a break. I’ll need it for sure. We’ll end the week in a bang celebrating with two last events. In the early afternoon, you’ll find us out at the Chef and Beer event taking place at Qualcomm’s Headquarters in La Jolla. I’ll drop down from there across to Kearny Mesa where Tom Nickel and I will direct about 40 people through one of the last events of San Diego Beer Week. A chance to taste some of the most incredibly rare and sought after beers we have produced in our 3 plus years of business is what’s slated. I love the O’Brien’s events like this especially when Chef Vince gets involved…

Sunday night officially ends San Diego Beer Week. It’s going to kick my ass. That’s for sure. Monday will find me back at the brewery bright and early as we begin demolotion of our cold box in preparation for a new tasting bar area. Stay tuned for more details about this in my next blog. Be sure to view the calendar on our website which lists websites and more details for each event. Some of these are bound to sell out so don’t delay!

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Libri Divini – September, 2009

Divine Words | Volume 1, Issue 1

In This Issue


Musings From The Director’s Chair

Greetings from Your Director of Brewery Operations.

I’m sure many of you wonder what I actually do around here. Me too. It’s kind of strange being a Director. I mean I don’t yell “Cut.” I don’t “frame scenes” in the air with my hands and I most certainly don’t hide behind the lens in a Directors Chair. Nope, what I do matters around here. I show up each and every day (except Sundays, that’s family day) and I support the brand.

What this means exactly know one knows.

Like today, I am being asked to support the Lost Abbey brand of information communication by writing this piece. Tomorrow, I will show my support as Mike and Ryan stuff body bag after body bag of Fresh Hops in the dry hopping tank. On Thursday, I’ll make some beer (it still won’t be enough brewing for me) and on Friday, I’ll settle into the bar and rehash the week with each of you.

Being a Director is still very weird to me. It’s like having Business Attention Deficit Disorder. I always have things to do but seemingly never get any of them done. But at the end of each and every day, there is always beer. So I guess, I should get used to life as a Director as long as there’s all this beer around, it can’t be that bad.

Can it?

New Faces at The Lost Abbey

One of the reasons we can now restrict Tomme’s activities to his actual job of “directing” operations (as well as company figurehead and sex symbol) here at Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, is we’ve got a couple of new folks handling our brewing operation. They actually joined us back at the beginning of the year, but we’ve all been so busy that we haven’t had time to introduce them properly. So we’re making ammends now. Allow us to introduce our new faces:

Mike Rodriguez, Head Brewer

Mike hails from Kansas City, MO where, prior to joining us, he was a brewer and cellarman for the famed Boulevard Brewing for the past six years. Before that he was head brewer at The Power Plant restaurant and brewery in Parkville, MO.

Mike’s wealth of skills and experience from his time at Boulevard is the driving factor behind our ability to scale production upward to meet the growing demand for our beers nationwide.

When he’s not running the brewhouse, Mike loves to play rugby and, in true Kansas City native style, BBQ just about anything that fits on a grill.

He also has an encyclopedic knowledge of the lines from just about every romantic comedy and action-adventure movie made in America since 1975. If you ever have a chance to drop by the brewery or see him at an appearance, buy him a beer and ask him to act out all the characters in Die Hard.

Gordon Gerski, Brewer & Bottling Line Wrangler

Like Mike, Gordon, or “Gordie” as everyone calls him, comes to us from Boulevard Brewing and The Power Plant before that.

One of Gordie’s jobs while at Boulevard was to run and maintain their bottling line, a skill that’s come in handy here at the Abbey since our shiny new bottling line is of the same make (albiet much smaller than Boulevard’s). As anyone who’s ever run a bottling line can tell you, keeping one of those Rube Goldbergian contraptions running smoothly is no simple feat, so his knowledge of which dials to turn and knobs to fiddle with (or which panel to kick) are invaluable to us.

Outside of the brewery Gordie’s an avid cyclist who enjoys climbing and decending our local mountains on a bike with ridiculously thin tires. He’s also got a very large husky named Molly who can bark her ABCs.

Brewery Updates

Beyond just new faces, we’ve also been growing our brewery like gangbusters. Earlier this year we acquired two new fermenters, Heaven and Hell, named for what had to be moved to get them into the brewhouse (See the photo album here). The aforementioned bottling line is now up and running (most of the time) which has increased our bottling capacity from a couple hundred cases a week to well over 1,000.

We also acquired several hundred more oak barrels, pushing our total to over 500, and signed a keg contract that’ll allow us to significantly increase our draft accounts across the country (read: more fresh beer for you).

As you might guess, all of the new stuff has significantly increased our storage requirements, so we also added 10,000 square feet of warehouse space to handle our rapidly growing distribution.

And in the coming months you’ll be seeing even more changes. This fall we’ll also be adding cold storage to our warehouse allowing us to move shipment-ready kegs out of the brewery, tear down the exiting coldbox, and build a brand new tasting bar complete with a fancy refrigeration unit to keep some of the rare stuff chilled and ready for tasting. So when you visit the brewery, you’ll not only be able to sample our regular fare, but you’ll also be able to experience some of our epic beers from the reserve (2006 Cuvee de Tomme anyone?).

Finally, just this past week, we added a new feature to our tasting hours — food in the form of Marty and his amazing hot dog cart. Marty’s the real deal, and his authentic New York hot dogs, brats, cheesesteak sandwiches and other streetside eats are simply amazing (inexpensive too). So the next time you’re down to the brewery for a tasting, or a new beer release, make sure to grab a dog or two — you’ll be glad you did!

Third Annual Barrel Tasting Night


Here’s an event you won’t want to miss — Each year a limited number of guests are invited to join the Port Brewing family as we delve into the barrel archives to sample a few of the specialties waiting within. Barrel Tasting Night is limited to 125 lucky people who will be the first to taste craft releases aged as long as two years by brewmaster Tomme Arthur and crew.
This year is our third annual Barrel Tasting Night which will be held on Saturday, November 7 to coincide with the kickoff of San Diego Beer Week.

The event is from 7pm to 10pm and includes a number of incredibly rare beers coupled with hors d’ oeuvres and fine foods prepared by The Lost Abbey chef in residence, Vince Marsaglia.

Tickets to the event are $80 each, $150 for a couple, and are guaranteed to sell out quickly. If you’re going to be in town that week, this is definitely a “can’t miss” event.

You’ll find all the information on our website here. Tickets are available online here.

Beer Releases For Fall 2009

Here’s what on tap for release over the next few months (please note that all dates are estimates). If you’re in an area in which we distribute (click here for a map), you should see these start to hit your favorite tap rooms and store shelves in 7 to 14 days after release.

  • Sept. 1 — Panzer Pils, Imperial Pilsner
  • Sept. 18 — High Tide, Fresh Hopped IPA
  • Oct. 19 — Santa’s Little Helper, Russian Imperial Stout
  • Nov. 2 — Gift of the Magi, Holiday Golden Ale

Upcoming Events

Here’s a list of upcoming events for the next few weeks. You can always find a full list of events, appearances and releases on our website.

Click here for our full calendar of events.

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Third Annual Barrel Tasting Night

Enjoy an evening with the Port Brewing family as we delve into the barrel archives to sample a few of the specialties waiting within. Limited to 125 lucky people, guests will be the first to taste craft releases aged as long as two years by brewmaster Tomme Arthur and crew.

The Lost Abbey Barrel Archives
The Lost Abbey Barrel Archives


The Details

    What: Lost Abbey Third Annual Barrel Tasting Night

    When: Saturday, November 7, 2008 — 7pm to 10pm

    Where: Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey, San Marcos, San Diego County, CA

    How Much: $80 per each; $150 for a pair — Tickets must be purchased online here: http://store.lostabbey.com/Product102.

Strictly limited to 125 guests!

What does the night include?
Explore the vanguard of barrel-aged beers with 2008 world champion brewer and Tomme Arthur as Port Brewing and The Lost Abbey opens much-heralded barrel archive for an evening excursion into the ancient mysteries of barrel-aging beers. An intimate night exploration and discovery, the evening’s guests will treated to a one-of-a-kind experience with some of the world’s most coveted barrel-aged brews, coupled with hors d’ oeuvres and fine foods prepared by The Lost Abbey chef in residence, Vince Marsaglia.

Tickets for last year’s event sold out very quickly, so make sure to purchase tickets early.

For Tickets
Visit http://store.lostabbey.com/Product102

SOLD OUT
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Lost Abbey is “Beer Country”

CNN.com/travel has a story today on how craft beer, like wine, is now a travel destination. Lost Abbey is one of the breweries featured. From the article:

…while “all of California could be considered the state from which the innovators of craft beer came, San Diego specifically grabbed the golden ring from the merry go round and ran with it,” said Matt Simpson, a craft beer consultant.

So when you’re talking San Diego-style beer, for most beer geeks you’re talking about The Lost Abbey. “The most notable guy right now is Tomme Arthur at Lost Abbey. He was one of the early adventurous brewers in Southern California,” beer tasting expert Mosher said.

Known for Belgian-style beers and a “flavor first” philosophy, beer expert Beaumont said “they’re doing some really innovative, interesting stuff in terms of barrel aging and unusual fermentations, beyond basic brewers yeast.”

You can read the rest of the article here:
» Raise a glass to ‘beer country’ (via CNN.com)

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Cuvee de Tomme 2009

Cuvee de Tomme will release this day. This is an annual release of the barrel-aged beer.

Bottles will be available in 375ml and 750ml cork-stoppered bottles with a limit of 12 total bottles (any combination) per customer. The 375ml bottles will be $15, 750ml bottles $30.

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Photos from Lost Abbey Carnevale

Last Saturday was our annual Carnevale masquerade party. Chef Vince cooked up a storm, the band rocked the house, and the Angel’s Share and Older Viscosity on tap (along with all our regular beers) kept the evening on a good tilt. A great time was had by all.

Thanks to all those that attended, and to those that couldn’t, we hope to see you next year. In the meantime, here’s a photo slideshow of the evening’s events:

Carnevae photos