Last year, my wife and I spent Christmas at the wonderful Inn at the Mission in San Juan Capistrano. This year, I went back for a beer and cocktail trip just before the big holiday with my beer buddy Richard to see a different side and visit new places.
Starting in Oceanside where within a ten minute drive you can find SouthO, Heritage, and two or three others that I didn’t note but my stop was Bagby Beer Co. which was great on two counts.
First, the beer list is long and super diverse and as would be expected from multiple medal wins, supremely solid across the board. (plus they had a cool list of holiday cocktails and slushies). I had Apres Surf, a super low ABV coastal ale that had fragrant pear notes, Brugges Cruise an OK wintry Belgian Strong, Worker Bee a reliable honey ale and my winner, WEYEsbeer a hefe collaboration with Bierstadt Lagerhaus.
The second count is that there is only an alleyway separating you from the Oceanside Bottlecraft location with cans and bottles to go and an impressive beer list. If there was a hotel next door, it would be a trifecta.
Despite a pair of false starts due to out of date, straight up false hours of operation info, we also hit up Delahunt Brewing in Dana Point and another D brewery, Docent Brewing in south San Juan Capistrano.
I am partial to the latter because of their grilled cheese and tomato soup combo and excellent barrel-aged beers but the two half pours of IPAs that I got at Delahunt were quite good.
Praise the traffic gods who cleared the path and thanks to Pizza Port – San Clemente for being an excellent Plan B of pizza goodness.