Few brewers are as tightly interwoven into the fabric of San Diego’s craft-beer scene as Lee Chase. Growing up a teenage skate punk in Ramona, Chase was anti-establishment in all ways. So, when he came across a book that not only provided instructions on how to homebrew, but the qualifying statement, “because corporate beer sucks”, he was instantly intrigued. After testing out of high school two years early, he began making his own beer, later taking a cue (and some financial assistance) from his older brother, Scott, who suggested he enroll in the Master Brewers Program at UC Davis. Upon completion, he returned home and took a job at a since-closed microbrewery and brew-your-own facility in Kearny Mesa called Brewer’s Union. It was there he brewed his first “pro beer” and met his next bosses, Greg Koch and Steve Wagner, the co-founders of Stone Brewing.
In just its first year in business and based at its original San Marcos industrial-suite HQ, Stone was much smaller than it is today (it was the ninth-largest craft brewing company in the country in 2020). Lee worked there part-time while also holding down jobs at Pizza Port‘s Solana Beach brewpub and local yeast company, White Labs. When full-time positions became available at all three simultaneously, he went with Stone because of the synergy he felt working with Wagner, the company’s original brewmaster. Chase served as Stone’s head brewer from 1996 to 2006, when he left to go into business for himself. It was a bold move, but the operations he launched in 2009, Automatic Brewing Co. and the Normal Heights bar and restaurant it operated out of, Blind Lady Ale House (BLAH), went on to spawn a pair of sister eateries—North Park’s Tiger! Tiger! Tavern and Panama 66 at Balboa Park—elevating him to an even more respected and iconic member of the beer community.
Were there a San Diego brewer hall of fame, Chase would be a first-ballot inductee. He has countless friends and fans, not only in the brewing world, but also the hospitality industry. Which makes it all the more surprising that, soon, he’ll be surrendering his big-fish status to pick up and move to Lisbon, Portugal, and take a job at a brewery he’s never seen and knows very little about. To understand it requires a step back to before the pandemic.
At the beginning of 2020, Chase, his wife Jenniffer, and their business partners, Jeff Motch and Clea Hantman, were in the planning stages to expand BLAH. Automatic’s brewing system is well known for being an unorthodox example of wile and DIY gumption. Described by some as “jerry-rigged”, the fact such a brewhouse has pumped out regularly high-quality beer for more than a decade is awe-inspiring and another reason Chase has earned such respect from his contemporaries. That system’s makeshift nature stems from the need to make it fit into its pizzeria environs.
“It’s hard to grow someplace when you’ve already had to shoe-horn a brewery in,” says Chase. “So, we were moving in the direction of maybe moving the brewery to another location so it wouldn’t have to be so duct-taped together to fit in that space.”
Then came COVID. BLAH still needed every bit of space possible, not for expansion but to store to-go boxes and other supplies for its suddenly takeout-only model. Chase moved his brewery and cellar setup out, freeing up room as well as parking spaces behind the venue. There was no need for brewing equipment or fermenters. Automatic’s batch sizes were too small for canning runs, and there wasn’t enough demand in the market for kegged beer. So, Chase’s unique brewhouse was put in mothballs, where it remains.
As the pandemic dragged on, uncertainty about the future not only lingered but intensified. Following their decision to permanently close Tiger! Tiger! last September, it became clear to the pair of married partners that they would need to come up with a way to split the remaining businesses. Because the future was so uncertain, it seemed it would be simplest for the Chases to take over Automatic Brewing, with Motch and Hantman retaining control of BLAH and Panama 66. In October, after much discussion, the quartet decided that Motch and Hantman would assume complete ownership of the restaurants, ending the Chase’s involvement and severing the business’ brewing arm.
It’s an outcome Chase says he is fine with, though it did leave him pondering his future in the midst of a pandemic. Any other time, he would have gotten right back to brewing, but he had strong feelings about that. “I didn’t want to dive back into the brewing business during COVID. I also didn’t want to create new competition for the breweries that have survived this pandemic,” says Chase. “In a slim market like this, a new business is the wrong type of competition and I really want to see these breweries that fought so hard make it.”
It was only a matter of days before the same brother who’d ushered Chase to UC Davis steered him toward another new possibility. That elder sibling had long talked of retiring in Portugal, and upon hearing of Chase’s exit from the restaurants, started hinting he and his wife should move there, too. One day, he forwarded Chase a job posting from Dois Corvos, a six-year-old Lisbon brewery that was looking for a head brewer, along with the tag, “just sayin’.”
After reviewing it, Chase consulted a friend, Troels Prahl, the managing partner in charge of White Labs’ operation in Copenhagen, Denmark. “I asked him about the company, and he said ‘it’s like the best or second-best brewery in Portugal,’” says Chase. “Then I asked him, more importantly, if he thought it would be a good fit for me and for them. He said he did and when I told him I thought I was interested, he set up a call between me and the owner.”
After one phone call and a similarly positive reference for Chase from Prahl, Dois Corvos owner Scott Steffens worked up a contract and the Chases began the process of pulling up stakes, moving from the home they’d inhabited for 20 years and leaving behind a quarter-century of beery memories. It turned out to be a long process. Chase signed the contract for his new job last October, but it’s taken over six months for his visa to come through. It arrived last week and in seven short days the Chases will fly across the Atlantic to their new home.
When asked what size brewing system he’ll be working with at Dois Corvos, Chase says he’s not sure. It’s not too big, but not too small, either; probably around 20 barrels by his best guesstimate. As far as the types of beers he plans on brewing, he doesn’t know, but he’s excited his new employer has a stock of 400 oak barrels (red wine, Port, madeira, spirits). He’s also stoked that they brew styles he likes, including a pilsner, Belgian-style witbier, West Coast IPAs and fruited mixed-culture beers.
“I’m excited not to know everything, to go there and be engaged, see how they do things and adjust to it,” says Chase. “I can help with quality and designing efficiencies, but if I thought I knew it all, I’d be an idiot.”
Dois Corvos regularly sends small quantities of its beers to premier bars and bottle shops across Europe. Those shipments keep the brewery top-of-mind when organizers of large, popular European beer festivals put together their invitee lists. Chase is excited about the prospect of representing Dois Corvos around the continent.
At the same time as he’s preparing for life as a gadabout brewer ambassador, he acknowledges how much he cherishes the relationships he and his wife have forged in San Diego and says he is certain they will be back to see family and friends. So it’s not the end, but it certainly is a most interesting next chapter.