It was while working for Woodruff Brewing in Knoxville, Tennessee, that Dave Ohmer discovered his affinity for brewing, but it was far from the only passion that was sparked there. It’s also where he met his wife, Niki, who went on to become a healthcare recruiter while Dave forged forward in the brewing industry. After Woodruff, he took the head-brewer reins at nearby Saw Works Brewing before being hired by Whole Foods to open the country’s first-ever brewery sited inside a grocery store at one of the company’s Houston locations in 2014. Ohmer remained with Whole Foods for five years before moving on to help New Orleans-based Urban South Brewery open its Houston brewpub, working as both its head brewer and general manager. It was a high-profile position at a much-anticipated business. Despite the fact the brewpub opened just a few weeks before the onset of COVID closures, it had a profitable first year and every member of Ohmer’s staff was able to remain employed. Still, that tumultuous period reshaped the Ohmers’ perspective and plans.
“If 2020 taught my wife and me anything, you have to seek out the things you care most about, because who knows what could happen tomorrow. Seek adventure, seek memories, seek the things that make you happy,” says Dave.
For the Ohmers, that not only meant going into business for themselves but moving halfway across the country to pound down stakes in the locale where the idea for their work-in-process, Seek Beer Co., was born, San Diego’s North Park community.
“The idea for Seek started the first time I visited Eppig Brewing’s original location and learned about the opportunities with the Brewery Igniter setup. We have been traveling to San Diego for several years and visiting breweries. As Seek became more of a reality, some of those visits had a little more focus on what those breweries are doing and what’s working well for them with San Diego craft-beer enthusiasts,” says Dave. “We love North Park, and it was important to us to have our brewery in the same neighborhood that we wanted to live in. The Igniter suite provides us the opportunity to be in a heavy retail and entertainment area that has a steady stream of craft-beer fans visiting it, making it a great area for a taproom-focused brewery.”
Brewery Igniter is a lease-to-brew model established by local developer H.G. Fenton in 2015. Construction of an initial pair of brewery suites in Miramar was followed in 2017 by conversion of an El Cajon Boulevard gentleman’s club into a manufacturing facility split into a trio of tasting-room-equipped manufacturing facilities. That complex, CRAFT by Brewery Igniter, has served as the starting point for the aforementioned Eppig, Pariah Brewing and hard-kombucha producer JuneShine. It is currently home to Pariah (which established its headquarters in Baltimore, Maryland, last year), a satellite spot for Barrio Logan-based Attitude Brewing, and now, Seek.
Niki will handle financial, marketing, human resources and administrative functions of the business in addition to her healthcare-recruiting work, while Dave will be responsible for brewing and day-to-day operations. In taking over the 1,800-square-foot suite (500 square feet of which is taken up by the tasting room), he inherits the 10-barrel brewhouse and quintet of 20-barrel fermenters that helped build Eppig into one of San Diego County’s most popular beermaking operations, allowing the company to move to a much larger facility in Vista in 2019.
That setup will allow for production of up to 1,600 barrels annually. The Ohmers’ goal is to brew and sell 600 barrels of beer in the company’s first year and, hopefully, increase production by an additional 200 barrels the following year. A small canning line was recently purchased to allow for customer to-go sales and distribution of packaged product to local off-premise accounts.
When asked about the beers he intends to produce under the Seek label, Dave says to expect several lagers, a full range of IPAs, a sour program that will explore a full range of rotating fruits, and the occasional stout or porter. There will be no core beers. Instead, Seek will offer a steady stream of new releases, following a model that has proven successful for other local breweries, including Miramar Brewery Igniter tenant Pure Project Brewing.
Though Dave is coming from Urban South, which in just six years has grown to become Louisiana’s second-largest brewing company with more than 20,000 barrels produced in 2021, he’s not focused on building Seek into a similarly massive operation. “We are not placing a lot of restrictions on what Seek might evolve into, but our goal is to be a great brewery and taproom for the people living in and visiting North Park.”
Seek Beer Co. is located at 3052 El Cajon Boulevard, Suite C, at CRAFT by Brewery Igniter in North Park