The Indie Beer Show

Eppig Brewing & Oktoberfest Preview

Eppig Brewing is in the middle of an extremely long hitting streak and will be the first company to successfully leave the Brewery Igniter program! With a new 30 BBL production facility nearing completion in Vista, the Oktoberfest season almost upon us, and their third anniversary on the horizon, we thought it was a great time to sit down with Nathan and Clayton, both co-founding brewers and have a discussion about all things Eppig! They have garnered notoriety for their lagers but I’m a fan of their entire portfolio of well executed beers.

We dip into the history of the name of their brewery, discuss the Oktoberfest celebrations, get an update on their new location and some possible timelines for debuting in North County, and have a blast hanging out with two seriously authentic brewers that genuinely love their craft.

This would be a great episode to listen to while visiting their Waterfront Biergarten, just saying. Hit the play button and enjoy!

** Heads up! We’ll be taking a week off next week. Don’t worry, we’ll be back the following Monday with some interviews from the CCBA conference and festival in Long Beach!**

Thorn Brewing: Mission Hills

Did you know that Thorn Brewing (mid sentence shout out to Thorn for using a .beer address, like us!) recently opened a new tasting room in Mission Hills? Well they did and it’s a really cool place to hang out, have a tasty beverage and play a little skeeball.

We linked up with Tom and Jay from Thorn to have a great discussion about all the things currently going on and enjoy the amenities of the newest addition to their family. They now have 3 locations for your indie beer needs, the OG spot on Thorn St., the newer production facility in Barrio Logan, and the aforementioned new spot in Mission Hills.

I hope you have a Relay IPA, Hopster Pot, or any other delicious Thorn beer in your hand as you hit the play button!

San Diego Beer History: A Live Panel

We often discuss many aspects of San Diego beer history on TIBS!, but to hear it directly from integral members of the industry and those documenting it live was truly a special occasion! August 14th, at Latchkey Brewing, located in the original Mission Brewery Plaza, that was built in 1913, we were honored to host 50+ people for a night of learning and fun!

We began The Show with Matt West, Co-founder of Latchkey Brewing, to discuss what attracted them to the location and some of the difficulties improving a historical structure.

Then we take a deep dive into the history of San Diego beer, starting in the 1800s and working our way up to some current trends. We have amassed a super star panel for your listening pleasure; Judith Downie, Curator of the Brewchive™ at Cal State San Marcos, Bruce Glassman, Long-time editor, writer, and publisher who has been covering the San Diego beer scene for nearly a decade and is a team partner working on creating the Museum of Beer , Sheldon Kaplan, beer author and producer of Suds County, Gina Marsaglia – Co-Founder of Pizza Port, and Chris Cramer, CEO & Co-founder of Karl Strauss.

With roughly 100 years of cumulative San Diego beer knowledge, the panel offers you many insights to the what lead to and is currently driving the gigantic success of the SD beer industry.

Get comfortable, grab a Red Trolley or a Swami’s IPA to honor our panel, and hit the play button!

White Labs, Beer Vocabulary 101

Beyond being one of the preeminent yeast manufactures in the country, San Diego’s own, White Labs has an entire educational training series to help your brewery’s staff increase their knowledge. Their classes cover a wide variety of beer and yeast topics that will develop anyone’s proficiency in the wonderful beverage we call indie beer!

In this episode, we sit down with Erik Fowler, Education & Engagement Manager, to take a toe dip into the pool of beer vocabulary.

We also discuss some of what makes White Labs’ tasting room so unique, they take the same base beer and ferment it with different yeasts so you can taste the significant differences presented by using distinct strains.

Have a fresh indie beer ready and hit that play button!

BNS Brewing and Distilling Co

Sometimes when revisiting a brewery we haven’t been to recently we find their beer quality has improved. This is certainly the case with BNS Brewing and Distilling Co. Not only that, they have a great community following, the tasting room was packed for Taco Tuesday!

A first for TIBS!, we got to taste through an entire flight of GABF medal winning beers!

Get comfortable and hit the play button friends!

Juice Maze from The Original 40 wins The 7th Annual Sore Eye Cup!

On Saturday, August 10th, at The Rabbit Hole, The Indie Beer Show crowned a new champion of The Sore Eye Cup! Congratulations to The Original 40 for bringing home the victory with Juice Maze! Many members of The Original 40’s team were present to receive The Cup!

Juice Maze is the first hazy IPA to win The Sore Eye Cup, it comes in at 7% ABV and is double dry hopped with Citra, Simcoe, and Mosaic. IPAs have now taken home the trophy 2 years in a row!

Located at 3117 University Ave. San Diego, CA 92104, this new tenant of North Park is the youngest brewery to ever win! They just added brunch, which I highly recommend.

A big thank you to Tim Stahl for taking photographs during the event; all of the images in this article are form him!

For all those that attended, thank you!

Let me express my extreme gratitude for those that donated food or funds to our Mama’s Kitchen food drive, we received 5 barrels of food and more than $650!

Thank you to The Rabbit Hole for being terrific hosts of the party!

The biggest thank you goes to our title sponsor, TapCraft Draught, thank you again for making this event possible!

One final, and gigantic, congratulations to The Original 40 Brewing Company! You have all the glory and prestige The Indie Beer Show can bestow upon an amazing indie brewery for one entire year!

Sore Eye Cup

Thr3e Punk Ales 2nd Anniversary Preview

Call them punks, call them the spark that started an indie beer invasion of 3rd Avenue in Chula Vista, or call them some of the nicest people in #sdbeer; it really doesn’t matter because all of that is true!

Thr3e Punk Ales is celebrating the completion of their 2nd year in business with a month long party! Check out their events page in FB, they will be updating it with all the options to get your celebrating in before it all ends.

As you can see from the kill shot, we had a great night hanging out with one of the punks! Hit the play button and hear all about them!

Border X Brewing

Border X does things in a unique way, and we respect that here at TIBS! They focus on flavor profiles that other breweries wouldn’t consider. I’m here to tell you that their beer quality is also steadily improving, give them a visit if you haven’t lately!

We had a great discussion about their current state of affairs, got to enjoy several of their beers, and really enjoyed The Show! Enough reading, hit the play button!

7th Annual Sore Eye Cup Finalists!

San Diego, you have chosen the 10 finalist beer for the 7th Annual Sore Eye Cup! This year, our finalists (in no particular order) are:

Clever Kiwi by Burgeon
Vice Pink Guava by Wild Barrel
My Trusty Llama by 13 Point
Dawn of the Deft by Deft
Hopcondido by Escondido
Dankness Visible by Burning Beard
Juice Maze by The Original 40
Five Finger Discount by 2 Kids
Needle in the Hey by Thr3e Punk Ales
Smylex by Pariah

Make sure you come to the announcement party on August 10th, at noon, at The Rabbit Hole.

A giant shout out to the returning Sore Eye Cup sponsor, Tap Craft! Remember to contact Tap Craft for all your draft system supply, installation, and maintenance needs!

Setting the industry standard for all beverage draught systems, TapCraft is Draughting Quality Beverages.

Best Of San Diego Collaboration Beers

San Diego Magazine is an institution here in our hometown, discussing local issues and topics since 1948, yes, you read that right. One of their biggest events each year is the Best of San Diego Party! The Best of San Diego Party presented by Valley View Casino & Hotel is the ultimate summer celebration. The event brings together the top local restaurants, breweries, wineries, distilleries and businesses as featured in San Diego Magazine‘s Best Restaurants and Best of San Diego issues.

Guests can expect unlimited bites and sips from more than 100 vendors along with live bands and entertainment, interactive art installations, lounges, aerialist acrobats, fire performers, pop-up shops, dancing and more. Get your tickets to this amazing event here.

On this show, we are joined by the Digital Media Director of SD Mag, David Martin, who you will recognize as the former producer of TIBS!

We also have Larry from Fall and Mark from Coronado on to discuss something amazing, San Diego Magazine has made 3 Best Of San Diego collaboration beers to celebrate this year’s Best Of! We can’t remember the last time there was a 3 brewery collaboration for an event, hit us up if you do.

I straight up ripped the images of the cans from Instagram, so, it the image quality doesn’t stand up to your screen resolution, you know who to blame.

It was really cool to have David back for another episode, we had a blast discussing the collaborations and some other fun things about his life, including his current albums recordings.

All that’s well and good Brian, but where can I get the beers? Well, you can get Eppig’s at Eppig right now, here’s where you can get the rest: The big collective public debut will be on July 19 when Coronado introduces the three canned beers—with can design spearheaded by Fall’s Dave Lively—at a special event hosted at the tasting room in Bay Park. On July 20, Fall will be pouring the Watermelon Berliner Weisse at its North Park tasting room. All three beers will be poured at San Diego Magazine’s Best of San Diego party on August 16 at Liberty Station. Cans of all three varieties will be released to retail outlets throughout San Diego on July 19.

Grab yourself a favorite #sdbeer, or if it’s after 7/19, a Best of San Diego Beer and hit the play button!