In my last column, I chronicled the first part of my beer journey during a recent week in San Diego. Here’s the exciting conclusion!
Around the halfway point in my journey, I found I was walking more from place to place: If my destination was within a mile, I’d walk. The reasons for this were many—the weather was gorgeous; there are the obvious health reasons; and it allowed me to justify the things I was to consume after said walks.
One of these long walks occurred one evening after more half-pints at Burgeon at the Arbor in Little Italy. I wanted to check up on Lost Abbey Brewing after an announcement that their brewery taproom in San Marcos (the original location of Stone Brewing) would no longer be a Lost Abbey location. This made me curious about the state of their beers and their downtown location called The Church, a mere 1.2 miles away from Burgeon.
After a brisk walk in the cool night—past Petco Park, where people were pouring out from that evening’s Padres game—I found The Church. The location was an actual Mexican Presbyterian church built in 1906, relocated and renovated in 2015. Behind the taps are two imported Italian religious statues and a unique stained-glass window featuring Lost Abbey’s Celtic cross logo. In the middle are two long communal wooden tables flanked by booths with benches resembling pews. I’ve recently enjoyed a few nice lagers from them, but I was wondering how the “old hits” were tasting. My eyes lit up when I spotted Carnevale, their saison fermented with Brettanomyces yeast. This 8% alcohol by volume beer is very dry, with hints of tropical fruit, baking spice and a malt backbone with a nice, biscuit character. This was a weirdly nice accompaniment to the Mexicali-style hot dog I ordered from the stand in the patio area. My fears of Lost Abbey’s quality slipping were entirely unfounded, thankfully.
One of the biggest surprises didn’t involve beer at all. I am a gamer from way back, and I deeply miss the days of arcades like the one that used to be in the Palm Desert Town Center. (Anyone else have nostalgia for Yellow Brick Road?) Arcades now often have machines that give you tickets and resemble kiddie casinos more than a place to drop in tokens and enjoy. Aero Club Bar was a gem that looked unpolished from the frontage road beside Interstate 5 in Little Italy, but inside was a dark, “divey” bar that featured pool tables, air hockey and an arcade room with a dozen pinball machines, and eight or so cabinets of varied games. I fell in love. On top of that, they had an impressive liquor selection. This was nice, because their tap list was relatively mediocre. I settled on a pour of E.H. Taylor Rye, loaded up a card to play games in the next room, and commenced gaming. Some highlights include the 60th Anniversary James Bond pinball machine, which had the feel of the older, mechanical machines; a dual-seater Mario Kart cabinet; a Golden Axe II cabinet, a traditional beat-em-up game that makes meeting new people incredibly easy if they join in on one of the four sets of controls; and a cabinet that contained hundreds of games one could call up, from ’70s arcade classics to ’90s Super Nintendo and Super Famicom titles. The latter machine is where I found Gladiator and Arkanoid, two incredibly nostalgic titles I would play at the convenience store down the road when I was a young lad in Yonkers, N.Y. During the two nights I was there, I played until my wrists and forearms were sore, and enjoyed pints of Golden State’s Mighty Dry cider. I will definitely go back when I can.
On my final evening in San Diego, my good friend James and I walked down University Avenue in North Park from his house to a meeting that was set up with Lara Worm, owner of Bivouac Ciderworks. They reached out to me when they read my recent column on ciders—but I was going to visit anyway, because of how good the two ciders I tried were. Lara was an excellent host, allowing us to try all the incredible ciders on tap as well as some brandy cocktails; feeding us some delicious chicken schnitzel and a really nice meatball dish; and giving us a tour of the 5,000-plus-square-foot cider house being built, complete with an open drinking space, walk-up coffee bar, larger tank space in back, tasting bar, guest kitchen and speakeasy for the aforementioned cocktails. James and I were impressed, not only because of the incredible quality of the ciders (Lara emphasized how she is battling the common misconception that ciders are sickly sweet—dry ciders are indeed best!), but because of her interesting background as a former U.S. assistant attorney in Washington, D.C., and San Diego before she opened Bivouac. We then bade Lara farewell and walked down to Rip Current Brewing‘s taproom for a nightcap pint of their bock.
I returned, slowly, to the desert the next day, first stopping to hike at the Blue Sky Ecological Preserve, nestled in between Lake Poway and Lake Ramona, and then at Burgeon Beer Company’s main location in Carlsbad, to stock up on some of my favorite beers for myself and friends.
I felt very sad to leave, as I usually do, but I was glad to be home with my new experiences to keep me company. San Diego is a never-ending place of interest and wonder to me, and I hope to move there one day. But at the moment, I am home—and home isn’t that bad.