Our visit to San Diego included a few run-ins with Stone Brewing. A huge and prominent craft brewing operation based in southern California, their strong presence in the area is obvious from the start, there's a tap room right there in the airport. Visiting their HQ/primary brewery in Escondido, about 30 minutes north of downtown San Diego, was on my short list of places to see while we were out there. With this post I want to look briefly at the brewery and their flagship beer, Stone IPA. Yes, they have all kinds of other delicious beers too, many with fun variations, but this is the one it's all about in my opinion.
Stone Brewing was founded in San Marcos (also in San Diego County), CA in 1996 and a year later, celebrating the brewery's first anniversary, Stone IPA was released. In this beer Stone created one of the first modern India Pale Ales that took over the craft beer market starting about a decade later. Here's a fun article going through the history of the IPA, though it stops in 2016 before the haze craze is in full effect. Some other early IPAs included: Harpoon (MA) in 1993, Brooklyn (NY) 'East' in 1995, Bells (MI) 'Two Hearted' in 1993, Goose Island (IL) in 1997 and Lagunitas (CA) in 1993. (Another favorite of mine, Dogfish Head '60 Minute,' came out in 2003.) Though styles differed coast to coast and these beers weren't pushing the limits quite like what we see today, this was a revolutionary movement where forward-thinking breweries created a brand new hop-centric style of beer. I will always most associate the crisp, clean, more hoppy and bitter, west-coast IPA (i.e. Stone, Lagunitas, etc) as the truest form of the style, but there's quite a bit of debate on the matter and that's only my opinion. But that opinion is why I want to talk about Stone.
With their IPA and another, more aggressive, beer called 'Arrogant Bastard Ale,' (also released in 1997) Stone really took off with a reputation for fantastic hoppy brews. They've also had their cool art style centering on gargoyles since the very beginning. In 2006 they moved to their now HQ brewery in Escondido, which includes a restaurant and large (one acre) beer garden attached. In 2013 they opened a second location with a considerably larger garden area in Liberty Station, a large integrated commercial center that reminded me of east coast public market buildings (e.g. Lancaster, PA Central Market or Toronto's St. Lawrence Market). In 2016 another brewery opened all the way over in Richmond, VA, where we visited years back when it was relatively new. What's kind of amazing to me is that each of these three spots are actual large operations to make beer, not just taprooms/restaurants. (They do have those too, in Oceanside, Pasadena, DT San Diego and at the airport.) They've expanded this way instead of just growing in one place and I find that pretty cool. In 2020/2021 they were the 9th largest craft brewery in the country by volume. Interestingly, I did not know this when I started writing, they've since, in 2022, been acquired by a Japanese beer maker, Sapporo Breweries, and will no longer appear such lists. I'm certainly curious what will happen next.
We did make it to Escondido, just my wife and I and our kids, and, while I would've loved to spend a little more time there, it was still a very enjoyable experience. When I hear the term 'beer garden' I think of a roped off area at a fairground or a bunch of tables outside a brewery in an industrial park. That's not what's going on at Stone. The Escondido location is indeed in an industrial part of town but the seating area outside is an actual garden, more like a bamboo forest. Almost everywhere is shaded due to the trees but there are table umbrellas too for anything that slips through. There was even a koi pond, a fascinating aspect to our boys. It is considerably nicer than any other beer garden I've been to, and the food (Mexican/Asian/American fare) and beer (a huge tap list) were both tremendous too. This, or the bigger version at Liberty Station, are definitely worth the visit.
One of the takeaways from our trip is a reminder of how much I like this brewery. I've never once regretted grabbing something from them at the liquor store and I'll likely be doing that more often now. More than ever these days I'm happy to take home something I know I like over something new, weird and local. As an aside I am loving the apparent renaissance of the west coast style, there are a lot more than there used to be in the recent past, so that's good at least. But it's also hard to beat a classic as good as Stone IPA. Give me one anytime.
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