When upscale eatery The Cork and Craft debuted in Rancho Bernardo in 2014, along with it came the community’s first-ever brewery, Abnormal Beer Co. The sister operation to its parent company’s Abnormal Wine Co., the beermaking op was headed by gregarious Karl Strauss Brewing vet Derek Gallanosa, who used his adeptness for suds-manufacturing and social-media to quickly build a faithful following for the brand. When he moved to Northern California in 2017, he set Abnormal up with his replacement, Florida transplant Nyle Molina, who maintained the brewery’s mix of traditional and modern styles during his four years with the company. In April, Molina departed to pursue his own lager-house concept Pivovar West Brewing, which cleared the way for Abnormal’s current head brewer Jason Martin to come aboard.
Martin joins the RB interest after three years at North Park’s Fall Brewing, which was preceded by several years at Vista-based Mother Earth Brew Co., where he started as a keg washer before climbing the ladder to become a supervising brewer. But his brewing experience and passion for beer date back to the early 2000s when he and several friends worked together to hone their fermentation skills on a recreational level.
“One of our members worked as a busser at Pizza Port’s Carlsbad brewpub and was constantly pestering [Director of Brewpub Operations] Jeff Bagby for direction with our homebrews. And I’m glad he did. Thanks to him, we got to brew some of Jeff’s award-winning recipes after he scaled them down for us,” says Martin. “My first industry job was at Pizza Port Carlsbad, working on the restaurant side as the floor manager, security and bar back, basically doing anything I could to get my foot in the brewery door. My goal was to work on the brewery side with Jeff, but that did not go as planned as he quit before I could transfer to the brew side.”
Even with his idol and recipe contributor twice-removed gone to start his own passion project, Oceanside’s Bagby Beer Co., Martin continued to pursue his ultimate goal of becoming a professional brewer and took the aforementioned position with Mother Earth. While he enjoyed his time there and, thanks in large part to a love of punk rock and clean lagers, also loved working for Fall, so far his current place of employment is feeling better suited to him than any of its predecessors.
“Abnormal has been a great fit for me, being that I’m abnormal myself. I’m a big guy at six-foot-six, and though I’m almost 40 years old, I still go to punk-rock shows and thrash around,” says Martin. He says he’s been a fan of Abnormal’s beers since the first time he tasted one, so he respects the recipes and the history that were forged ahead of his arrival. That said, he looks forward to putting his stamp on the brand. “Now that I’ve gotten a bit more comfortable in the brewery, we will be putting out two-to-four new beers each month, while bringing back some of the fan favorites. Also, we are working on a bi-monthly, rotational lager series that will see a crushable lager hitting shelves in time for the Fourth of July.”
Also on deck for the business is…a deck. Construction on The Cork and Craft’s outdoor deck will be completed by the end of June. That structure will feature a private garden, complete with market lights, heaters and a shaded screen cover. Though conceived of as a matter of necessity in the COVID-19 era, owner Matt DeLoach says, much like his well-adjusted head brewer, his eatery’s outdoor experience is here to stay.
Abnormal Beer Co. is located inside The Cork & Craft restaurant at 16990 Via Tazon in Rancho Bernardo