Good News and Bad News for San Diego. (I mean other than the 10 Barrel expansion into town.)
Bad – Manzanita or Twisted Manzanita has fallen and will be no more. I had a couple of their beers and was impressed enough by them but the crowded market had me tasting other breweries from the area and that must have happened on a larger scale and they were squeezed out. They had gone through multiple names and contract brewed but anytime that a head brewer leaves and isn’t replaced, is not a good sign.
Good – But, Toolbox Brewing seems to be moving forward and expanding into Los Angeles where they will be distributed now so we can get Bog Sauce and Purple Drink.
What do these two pieces of news mean? To San Diego it will have one set of ramifications but to those of us in L.A. it means that more beer is headed our way and that we need to be incrementally more judgemental. Not in a “you’re not fit for our town way” but more discerning. Taste the beers and find out which ones make the beers that you like. Maybe SD Brewery # 1 makes sours that you like and # 2 makes Session beers that you prefer. Find the strengths and notice the weaknesses.
L.A. beer needs to improve not just for the sake of improvement and not just in the beer quality sense. Our beer will need to stand up in San Francisco and San Diego and any other San ____ around. But business sense needs to improve too. That means money and distribution and marketing need to be managed.
As time passes the lessons from both of these San Diego breweries will need to be first bullet-pointed and then learned. We don’t hear too much news of closings but we should listen to that news along with the good of expanded distribution.
I have had mint beers. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to know that it is one of those ingredients that is hard to get the balance “just right”. I have had fake-y flavored beers that had more Andes green stuff taste than actual refreshing mint.