San Diego craft brewing scene well worth a trip

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It wasn’t clear which was more like an actual cupcake: the blond ale in my hand or the purple-haired woman with the sweet demeanor and sugary-white teeth who poured it. In the end, it was the beer at 2Kids Brewing, a frosty pint that tasted amazingly like what I bake my 6-year-old daughter for her birthdays.

How do they make beer taste like dessert?

It’s the type of question you ask a lot as you taste your way through San Diego’s continuously evolving beer culture.

My earliest beer memories of San Diego, those younger years when you have to learn to like the taste of beer at all, were of Mexican beers like Pacifico and Corona. In the two decades that followed, San Diego has quietly transformed itself from a friendly beach town best known for its great weather and family-friendly theme parks to one of the country’s craft brew capitals, with more than 100 breweries from Coronado to the Julian Mountains.

Is it possible to better understand San Diego through its ales, pilsners and stouts? It’s a question worth answering. Down to the dregs.

Surprising history

It’s easy to believe that San Diego’s beer culture started with Karl Strauss Brewing Co., the first business to reintroduce handcrafted beers to San Diego after brew pubs were banned during Prohibition.

However, the first commercial brewing operation in San Diego began in 1868 when Conrad Doblier started the San Diego Brewery. The San Diego Brewing Co. opened in 1897 and produced 140,000 barrels annually, 700 times what Doblier had done.

Prohibition started in 1920, and during this time beer-making exploded across the border in Tijuana. San Diegans were still able to drink beer as long as they crossed the border. To keep up with the rise in tourist demand, Compañia Cervecera Azteca (Aztec Brewing Co.) and Cervecería Mexicali (Mexicali Brewery) modernized quickly and business quadrupled, according to San Diego History Center’s article “Bottle & Kegged: San Diego’s Craft Brew Culture.”

But it was a combination of favorable legislation in 1978 that legalized home brewing in California, additional legislation in 1982 that legalized the brew pub, and the ingenuity of San Diego craft brew pioneers such as Karl Strauss, Pizza Port and Stone Brewery that paved the way for other craft brewers.

Today, those names can be found on top beer awards and brewery lists around the country, as can Ballast Point, Green Flash and Coronado Brewing Co.

Personal beer trail

Finding places to sample San Diego craft beer isn’t particularly difficult. There are pubs and brewers, big and small, throughout San Diego County’s tourist zones, from the Stone Brewing Co. location at Terminal 2 of San Diego International Airport to the Zoo Brew in the Lost Forest at the San Diego Zoo.

According to the San Diego Beer Guild Map, the three liveliest areas are along what is now known as the Craft Corridor, where 30th Street connects North Park and South Park; Miramar (15 miles north of the Gaslamp); and on either side of Highway 78 in North County, also known as “The HOPS Highway,” which stretches 60 miles between Oceanside and Julian.

(If you can’t make it to San Diego’s annual prom of beer events, San Diego Beer Week, held the second week in November, sign up for a customizable brewery tour, take your own walking tour on 30th Street, or research breweries from the downloadable San Diego’s Craft Beer Map and Guide available on the San Diego Brewers Guild website.)

Craft beer-loving friends Craig Costanzo and Mark Grennan, owners of the Beverage Factory, offered to show me around, starting with Miramar and some nano-breweries that felt more like a garage than your typical brew pub.

When closed, the garage doors could easily be mistaken for a storage unit or a digital printing shop, but in reality they are the work spaces of liquid artisans. Visitors who tap into a few pints get an intimate look at what sets San Diego apart in the next phase of the craft brew craze.

Nano-breweries are small operations that brew on a system that’s three barrels or less per batch (about 93 gallons). Oftentimes these are home brewers who are taking it to the next level, but still keeping it a hobby. Others might be putting in 80-hour workweeks with the hopes of growing a sustainable business. Either way, locals and out-of-town beer enthusiasts are paying attention and trying the latest in this increasingly artistic showdown.

In addition to 2Kids Brewing, Costanzo and Grennan took me to another favorite nano-brewery in Miramar, Intergalactic Brewing, a whimsical brewery and tasting room that is serious about making good beer, but that also puts a premium on having fun — hence the alien skull and the Chewbacca mascot.

The owners at Intergalactic found a great way to keep their audience involved and coming back with their nod to “Star Trek” fans — “red shirt” beers. When a beer comes into the lineup as a probationary red shirt, if it doesn’t get sales or love from Intergalactic’s fan base, it’ll suffer a quick death the way many crew members wearing red shirts did in the original “Star Trek” series.

There’s an app for that

Turning to technology, I found TapHunter, an iOS smartphone app that allows you to search for beers and breweries, and points you to restaurants and bars pouring them. (It can even tell you how far away you are from the beer of your choice.)

I looked up my husband’s favorite local beer, Cali’ Creamin’ by Mother Earth, and Taphunter said Mother Earth has a taproom and a retail store for brewers attached 15 minutes down the HOPS Highway from where we live in Carlsbad.

In the store were at least 70 grains organized on the floor, and yeast from White Labs was in the refrigerator. Brewing kits were at the front, recipe books on the counter. As I’d experienced at other nano-breweries, Chris Barry, the bearded young man wearing a store shirt that said “Love Your Mother,” was happy to talk about beer making and business.

The craft beer community in San Diego tends to be pretty friendly, he said. “It’s competitive, but at the same time everyone likes to collaborate. We give out recipes for all our beers. You can go home and replicate it. It won’t be exact because you’ll be on a different system, but it’ll be similar, and it gives amateur brewers a start.”

Barry said some of his inspiration comes from younger brewers who are “setting the bar” in terms of experimental brews.

“One local brewer that’s going in a different direction is Toolbox. He’s doing a lot of wild fermentation that would happen traditionally way back when before they isolated certain yeast cells,” he said. “He’s got some great sour stuff going on and barrel-aged beer, too.”

A dessert ... beer?

Cali’ Creamin’ is a vanilla cream ale. Another mind-bending flavored San Diego beer is the Peanut Butter Milk Stout by Belching Beaver Brewery. The flavors of them both took me back to the cupcake beer and how I almost didn’t try it.

I had stood at the 2Kids counter transfixed by the server’s purple hair. There was no clear path to choosing the right beer to drink with names like Get Lucky, Fo Drizzle and Hulk Smash. The chalkboard at 2Kids Brewing was organized into 12 choices, and my eyes glazed as I tried to read all the data that went with them, from alcohol percentages to pricing — and even more numbers I couldn’t make sense of at all.

The simple word “Cupcake” finally fell out of my mouth as my gaze scrolled down the board and onto the woman in front of me, who on second glance resembled a cupcake herself. Sam Dufau was half of the husband-and-wife home-brewing team at 2Kids Brewing, known for their unusual styles and “sessional” beers, another name for beers with low alcohol counts.

I almost changed my mind on my order, but was glad I didn’t when the first sip of the Blonde Ale actually tasted like a cupcake. Sam said she made a small batch for her cousin’s birthday party, but it became such a big seller they decided to keep it on the menu.

Maybe it’s a San Diego thing: There is no wrong way to explore the beer scene, no wrong way to approach the art and science of making new brews and, apparently, it’s OK to make a beer taste like dessert.

Why? Because they can.

Jen Leo is a freelance writer in Carlsbad (San Diego County). E-mail: travel@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JenLeo

If you go

GETTING THERE

Southwest, United and Virgin America fly nonstop to San Diego. If you are exploring breweries all over the county, a rental car would be handy. Uber and Lyft operate in San Diego.

WHERE TO STAY

Springhill Suites San Diego Oceanside: 110 N. Myers St., Oceanside; (760) 722-1003; www.marriott.com. A stylish and friendly all-suite hotel near the beach, convenient for accessing the HOPS Highway in North County. Rates for a standard studio start at $149 per night after May 1.

Paradise Point: 1404 Vacation Road, San Diego; (858) 274-4630; www.paradisepoint.com. A bayfront resort on a 44-acre island close to downtown. Its restaurant, Tidal, has a short but well-curated list of local craft beers. Watch for the hotel’s “brew-cation” package during Beer Week. Rates start at $175 per night with AAA after May 1 but can skyrocket during summer.

WHERE TO EAT

Blind Lady Ale House: 3416 Adams Ave., San Diego; (619) 255-2491. http://blindlady.blogspot.com.

Craft & Commerce: 675 W. Beech St., San Diego; (619) 269-2202. www.craft-commerce.com.

Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens: 2816 Historic Decatur Road No. 116, San Diego; (619) 269-2100. www.stonelibertystation.com.

MORE INFORMATION

San Diego Brewers Guild: www.sandiegobrewersguild.org.

West Coaster: www.westcoastersd.com.

Brewery Tours of San Diego: www.brewerytoursofsandiego.com.

Official San Diego tourism site: www.sandiego.org.