With so much local beer news to report, it’s time for another installment of Beer Briefs, our quick-hit coverage of happenings within (and in this case, quite far from) San Diego County’s craft-brewing scene.
Ballast Point Brewing ownership confirms that the 29-year-old company has entered into an alternating-proprietorship agreement at Gordon Biersch’s brewing and packaging facility in San Jose. Located in the city’s Japantown neighborhood, the roughly 110,000-square-foot location is where the 27-year-old craft beer pioneer’s production center. The facility also offers contract-brewing and co-packing services, which will allow Ballast Point to expand its network of brewers that are helping them produce large-scale batches of beer following the company’s exit from its former headquarters in Miramar, which is now the domain of non-alcoholic beer company Athletic Brewing (though Ballast Point still operates a bar and restaurant at that location).
Last month, El Cid Brewing held its final service…or so its owners believed. But after some developments inspired them to rethink the business while they continue their search for a buyer, they have decided to continue operation at their North Park location, but under a new identity with a different concept. Dubbed Der Achme Industrial Smoothing, it’s now a speakeasy where visitors will be able to order beers similar to those brewed under the El Cid flag, plus some soon-to-debut hard-seltzer-based takes on popular cocktails, all within a repainted, reimagined tasting room. The speakeasy’s hours of operation will be 5 to 9 p.m on Thursdays, 5 to 10 p.m. on Fridays, noon to 10 p.m. on Saturdays and 3 to 8 p.m. on Sundays.
When a company called Mac Daddy Beer Co. took a gold medal in the German-style Bock category for its self-titled doppelbock at this year’s San Diego County Fair Craft Brew Competition, numerous readers wrote in to inquire about the identity of this largely unknown enterprise. Though a bit of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a sixtel, this tiny operation has been producing extremely small batches of beer for the past two or three years. Based in a domestic dwelling in Escondido that has no tasting room (though its owner-slash-brewmaster has been in search of a suitable commercial space for years), its kegs are doled out to a small array of North County retail accounts on an unpredictable basis.