Finally. You could start many of my posts with that. Like this one. Finally, I visited King Harbor brewing in Redondo Beach.
Despite being landlocked, this nautically themed tasting room (even our server had anchor earrings), is a nice and open space to try the current offerings from this few months old brewery. Their beer line-up is growing as they do but as of this writing, you could get a full flight of 5 tasters with two being variants of a regular beer. We started with the Quest which is a rotating pale ale featuring a single hop. This day brought El Dorado but Hallertauer Blanch and Hull Melon are in the future and would be highly recommended way to sample these new hops on the market. I enjoyed the beer more than I think I like the hop which finishes a little too dry for me.
Next was a pineapple version of that same beer and though I was trepidatious about it considering how sweet pineapple can be, this really worked and was my favorite of the group. Maybe the use of actual pineapple and not juice was the trick. But the hops and the fruit really worked well together. At this point, I was hoping that the positive streak would continue and though I enjoyed their take on the saison with lemon verbena, it lacked a more pronounced Belgian kick that I have come to expect. Solid though and again the ingredients were there but not overpowering which indicates a light and balanced hand at the brewing controls which bodes well.
Then it was onto the darker pair of beers. Abels Brown is a java bomb and a good one at that. Almost too heavy but then you look at the ABV and it is really low. In fact, none of the beers were over 5.5%. We also tried the vanilla version of Abel which was a little sweet but still worked.
All in all, for such a young brewery, King Harbor seems ahead of other breweries in their age bracket that still seem to be finding their footing. I would heartily suggest adding it to a Torrance tour for comparison and I believe you will agree.
