Since establishing their company in an inauspicious business park eight years ago, Green Flash Brewing Company has churned out some of San Diego’s best brews and, in the process, endeared themselves to citizens of their home community of Vista. Given this, yesterday’s annual anniversary beer festival, like their brand new Silva Stout, was a tad bittersweet.
Later this year, Green Flash will move their operation to a spot on Mira Mesa Boulevard (nearest cross-street will be Flanders…wonder what kind of beer that might spawn?) that will house their primary production brewhouse …

When planning this year’s San Diego Beer Week festivities, San Diego Brewers Guild president Adam Carbonell and his committee decided earlier on to focus on quality versus quantity. Thus, rather than commit their energies to creating a bunch of new events, they funneled the majority of their time and attention into making the most ofBeer Week’s opening and closing ceremonies.
The first of those bookend events was the San Diego Brewers Festival, which was moved to an outdoor site offering more room to move on top of other notable amenity upgrades. …

For fans of good beer, San Diego Beer Week presents so many incredible events that it can be downright exhausting charging through your breakneck 10-day beer itinerary and even tougher to remember all of those good times (heck, I can barely recall it all and I wrote it down!). But in the end, it’s worth the work and it’s all in the name of fun.
But what about the folks who spend 10 straight days running around not just a town, but one of the country’s most expansive counties, not for …

Every decent sized city has one of these spaces that have been 10 different restaurants in as many years. San Diego has a few like the little joint at 911 Hotel Circle south that’s on its ninth life as “Fuji” along with just about anything that appears at the Hyatt Aventine other than Japengo. Granted, Flemings has gained a fair toe hold there as well, and we’re hoping with we can say the same thing about Trulucks a few years from now.

The lounge at Trulucks.
Photo by Steven Persitza

The space started …

Picture it—Jerry Sanders in shades, flip-flops and an island-print shirt tapping a wooden beer cask in front a cheering crowd of 1,000-plus. That was the scene this Saturday when our mayor marched into the San Diego Brewers Guild Festival and officially christened the 2010 permutation of San Diego Beer Week. The beer in the cask he tapped was San Diego Beer Week Licorice Stout, a special limited edition beer brewed by the venerable Karl Strauss Brewing Co. to commemorate the 10-day affair.

San Diego Beer Week 2010 at Hotel Solamar.
Photo by …

Twelve-point-five percent. No, that’s not my blood alcohol content going into the seventh straight night of San Diego Beer Week. It’s the staggeringly high percentage of women afflicted by breast cancer in the US. For folks as anti-arithmetic as I am, that’s one out of every eight women. This stat was driven home during the month of October, a.k.a Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but it’s something everyone (yes, guys, even us) needs to remain vigilant about 365 days out of the year.
Helping to spread awareness into November’s San Diego Beer …

It’s always nice to get in on the ground floor of something great and I felt quite honored to be part of the first sextet to meander through Urban Solace’s inaugural Beer Walkabout. What’s a walkabout, you ask? Consider it the culinary equivalent of speed dating.
Upon arrival at the restaurant, my party and a trio of patrons thirsty for beer and hungry for chef Matt Gordon’s soul and stomach satisfying new American comfort cuisine, were ushered out of the main dining room and onto the courtyard where a U-formation of …

San Diego Beer Week isn’t all about hoisting taster after taster of fine craft beer. This 10-day affair is about exploring all aspects of the brewing industry, and that includes the physical act of brewing. If you’ve ever wondered how to homebrew but come up dry finding resources for creating liquid refreshment on the home front, Ballast Point’s line-up of Beer Week events is designed to provide the educational forum you’ve been thirsting for. Throughout Beer Week, the brewing company, which is the reigning World Beer Cup Small Brewing Company …

Last year, one of the most talked about events among San Diego Beer Week-goers was the Beer and Spicy Food Dinner held at Ba Ren Szechuan restaurant in Linda Vista. So, it was no surprise when the 2010 edition, held last night at Santee’s Sab E Lee 2 Thai restaurant, sold out. Apparently, San Diego’s beer enthusiast population has a healthy fire-eater sub-sect. Count me as part of that pack. I admit to being a brash-slash-recklessly idiotic guy who’s been known to chomp whole habañeros for no reason better than …

Red Velvet Wine Bar sommelier Kyle Showen.
Courtesy photo

It would be easy to accidentally write off Red Velvet Wine Bar, an intimate spot nestled at the base of the Q Building in Little Italy, as little more than yet another vino venue, but I’m here to tell you that it’s so much more. Even if it were strictly a wine bar, it would stand out for its selection of thoughtfully selected rarer varietals (whites include alvarino, pigato and grüner veltliner versus the typical chard-sauv blanc tag-team), but with an exceptional chef …