A student and champion of craft beer looks back…and forward

In my 17-plus years of writing about craft beer with a focus on my hometown’s vibrant brewing companies, I have had the privilege of meeting hundreds and hundreds of incredibly passionate people as well as nth-degree students of fermentation and beer history. Many have eagerly shared what they’ve learned, not just with me, but with scores of everyday individuals. In the process, they’ve converted many a consumer to beer-fan (or even beer-nerd) status. Of them all, few have touched and won over as many, nor boasted knowledge extracted from such far-reaching subterranean depths of the ale-and-lager rabbit hole as Gene Fielden. As the managing force behind the North Park link in California’s chain of bar-equipped bottle shops, Bottlecraft, he has curated an ever-expanding inventory of craft-beer and other adult beverages. In the process, he has employed his outgoing, disarmingly friendly personality and vast mental database to expand the horizons and understanding of countless customers, many of whom have become regulars because of their interactions with Fielden. It’s impressive, as is a decade-long tenure with a single company in the famously transient hospitality industry. I’m proud to not only count Fielden as a colleague, contemporary and, to my gratitude, a contributor to this outlet, but also a friend. He’s an individual exceedingly worthy of appreciation and celebration, and come this weekend, both will be showered upon him as he celebrates his 10-year anniversary as a key member of the Bottlecraft team. In honor of that, I invited him to share memories from that lengthy span, as well as information on the special collaboration beer he had the privilege of producing with his favorite hometown brewery and the anniversary event where that commemorative creation will be tapped. Take it away, Gene!

10 Years at Bottlecraft – A Look Back

By Gene Fielden

A decade ago this week, I began working at Bottlecraft. Though a native Californian, I had been away from my home state for a dozen years and only just moved to San Diego. The city was entirely new to me, with untold vistas and an incredibly vibrant craft-beer scene. Working on the retail side of the industry in greater Boston for four years had been eye-opening in its own right – I see it as my apprenticeship in retrospect – but the sheer density and devotion of craft beer in San Diego was like watching the world come alive in Technicolor. It was not merely that there were so many breweries of such sterling quality, but also the other elements of a healthy ecosystem: beer-focused bars, yeast companies, homebrew shops and festivals. For the first time, I felt that I had caught a glimpse into the future of beer in this country, a place where independent craft beer was truly mainstream.

Bottlecraft in the fall of 2014 was still in some ways a fledgling operation. Its initial location had opened in Little Italy three years prior, directly in the flight path. It was the first place in San Diego to operate under an unusual dual-license regimen, allowing beers to be taken away or consumed on the premises. There was a small kegerator that dispensed cold pints, but most onsite guests were purchasing a can or 22-ounce bomber (remember those?) and enjoying it immediately. This approach combined the best elements of a bottle shop and a taproom all at once, and led to a sort of “choose your own adventure” proposition. 

I will never forget the first beer I had at Bottlecraft Little Italy, a frothy pint of El Segundo Mayberry IPA, poured for me by owner Brian Jensen upon the conclusion of my first training shift. It was the mid-afternoon, I was feeling excited and optimistic about my new life in San Diego, and the Mosaic hops shone as brightly as the November sun. Plans were already afoot to move the Little Italy spot into a brand-new building one block north on India and across to the western side of the street. I did a brief stint there after the December 2014 relocation, working just one day a week so as to learn the foundations of beer service. Believe it or not, I had never operated a tap prior to then! All of my experience was strictly at the retail level. This was to serve me well at what was to become my homebase and north star: Bottlecraft North Park.

The North Park outpost had opened in March of 2013 as a retail shop, with space in the back for a food partner. Luckily for all, Venissimo Cheese had joined that area in August of 2014, a few scant months before my arrival. I was elevated to the managerial level in April 2015, just in time for our serving license to go active. That four-tap kegerator at the original Little Italy spot joined us behind the counter, to be expanded soon thereafter for a custom 12-line system. For those reading this who are familiar with our current setup – with wine and spirits comprising close to half our business – the following figures from back when I joined up may surprise you:

• 98% beer to-go
• 1.5% wine to-go
• 0.5% cider to-go

Recall that at this time there was no such thing as hard seltzer or even hard kombucha. These categories of drinks have so effortlessly integrated themselves into the market so as to seem longstanding, but in fact, they only arose fewer than 10 years ago. 

From those two initial shops, Bottlecraft has grown to six locations – Oceanside and Liberty Public Market in Point Loma’s Liberty Station development here in San Diego County, and two more in the California cities of Long Beach and San Luis Obispo. With each new opening, it is as though a hitherto unknown branch of the family has materialized for our annual reunion, as we gain new colleagues. It is a wonderful feeling to be a part of a firm that is expanding, for it implies a certain amount of confidence in our industry. Our sister wine shop Vino Carta – which is happily ensconced at the original Bottlecraft address where I first tasted El Segundo – has done a great deal to expand our knowledge and palates as well. The final piece of the puzzle was the enormous realm of distilled spirits, but that fell into place upon securing a retail license in early 2020. Each layer of the drinks world has inexorably revealed itself to us over the years, which has been crucial for maintaining our curiosity and sense of novelty.

Some career paths require a good deal of credentialing – attend the right universities, obtain the necessary degrees, pass the requisite exams and only thereafter seek out your position in the world. It is a wonderful fact of our métier in the beer industry (and beverage service, in general) that none of that is really necessary. A passion and knowledge for the subject matter, coupled with an instinct towards hospitality, can take you a very long way indeed. 

A quick glance at my CV would make it seem that I really ought to be an archivist or records manager, for I spent years working in both the public and private sectors at the National Archives in Washington DC, followed by a stint in Boston overseeing a warehouse full of documents. But running a beer shop at the retail level is in a way transmuting that past experience, having allowed me to curate a selection of drinkable adventures. To be a buyer for an establishment is a great privilege, for it allows you to put your stamp on the space around you. The contents of Bottlecraft North Park represent my tastes and those of the neighborhood, and we could not be luckier that our regulars are knowledgeable, inquisitive and omnivorous.

So what is Bottlecraft North Park to me? It is a workshop, an office and a sanctuary. I get some of my best thinking done in the early morning hours, before we open our doors for the day. It is the best commute I have ever had in life, just a 12-minute bike-ride from my home in University Heights. I consider our calling as that of a matchmaker – we want to link up our customers with the beer they are looking for, whether or not they have heard of it before setting foot inside the shop. During the bewildering early weeks of the COVID pandemic, many people stopped by not only to stock up on drinks, but also just to talk, to try to make sense of things. We were considered “essential” and never closed for even a single day. In that time of turmoil, we were an island of stability.

Also in 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the inception of San Diego Beer News (SDBN), the outlet’s founder, Brandon Hernández, asked if I would contribute a weekly column of beer recommendations as a representative of Bottlecraft. The resulting feature (which is a part of SDBN’s Thursday What’s Tapping posts and weekly email newsletter) has brought a newfound measure of meaning to my working life. The format is straightforward: three beers, usually new arrivals at the shop, with storytelling for each. It has allowed me to tap into the creative impulse of the written word and it’s always a thrill whenever a newcomer informs me that they are a dedicated reader. I am profoundly grateful to both Brandon and our readers for their support and encouragement.

As part of this retrospective, I was asked to note some memorable happenings and developments from the past decade. There are so many moments of joy and triumph to reflect upon. I will remark upon three that exemplify my time at Bottlecraft thus far:

1. Meet Your Brewing Heroes

Part of my remit is co-hosting beer-and-cheese classes on a monthly basis. These are enormously fun to conceptualize around a theme, come up with suitable pairings with our partners at Venissimo and guide our guests through the lineup. Back in 2018, we welcomed the esteemed Tilo Jänichen of the Ritterguts brewery to the shop to showcase his variegated line of Gose beers, a regional specialty of one corner of Saxony in eastern Germany. This had immense personal meaning to me as I lived in Leipzig – the wellspring of Gose – directly after college, teaching English during the week and busking with my viola in front of Bach’s church on weekends. Tilo spoke excellent English but that of his companion was more limited, so I interpreted for her over the course of the evening. After the class, we took them to Toronado San Diego for celebratory beers. It is thanks to Herr Jänichen and precious few others that this historic link to the past was not severed altogether. Where else but Bottlecraft could we have put on an event spotlighting this occluded facet of beer culture?

2. A Worldwide Toast

For those who are familiar with the world of Belgian beer, Brasserie Cantillon needs no introduction. The family-owned operation in the Anderlecht district of Brussels is the sole remaining producer of traditional spontaneously fermented lambic within the capital city’s limits. The recurring Zwanze Day festival selects fewer than a hundred venues in the entire world to play host, pouring a singular new recipe as well as a rogue’s gallery of other Cantillon beers. Apart from the general atmosphere of jollity and being among the like-minded, there is a simultaneous worldwide toast, synchronized with Cantillon owner and Brewmaster Jean van Roy and affiliates in Brussels. I had attended Zwanze Day repeatedly in the march of time but never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would find myself working one. Yet Bottlecraft was chosen for the April 2024 occasion, and I was asked to lead the local toast! I can think of no higher honor in our corner of the beer world. Under the aegis of Ian Cutler, my counterpart at the Little Italy location, the event went off flawlessly. 

3. By the Light of the Moon

Moonlight Brewing in Santa Rosa has quietly made some of the finest lagers in California since opening all the way back in 1992. Until just last year, however, their beers were not to be found outside of the northern part of the state. I have been drinking Moonlight for well on two decades now, albeit initially on draft only at various locations around my native Bay Area. I have enormously fond memories of enjoying their flagship black lager, Death & Taxes, at the (sadly now shuttered) Beer Revolution in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Cans debuted a few years back at reputable retailers, but Moonlight’s distribution remained within a relatively confined geographic area. It was, thus, a moment of professional pride to place the first Moonlight order in Southern California last April – a whole pallet! Since then, we have received monthly drops from Moonlight and played our part in the local beer ecosystem to share their wonderful wares with the denizens of San Diego. A through-line can be drawn from this development straight to the collaborative beer being released this week:

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Ian was hired at Bottlecraft on the exact same day a decade ago. We are, thus, workplace fraternal twins in a sense! Even more strangely, we had been living in the same corner of Somerville, Massachusetts, and working at beer establishments a short distance away from one another, yet had never officially met prior to us both relocating to San Diego. We asked Moonlight if we might commission a beer to mark this serendipitous coincidence, and to our great delight, they assented. 

We emailed back and forth with Moonlight President Barry Bricker and Head Brewer Zac Greenwood, touching upon every single aspect of the envisioned beer – malt, hops, water quality and so forth. The resulting lager is “Fratelli”, an Italian-style Pilsner that’s essentially a dry-hopped German Pilsner with Bavarian-derived Noble hops. Ian and I flew up to Santa Rosa in early October for the brew-day and had an absolute blast meeting the entire Moonlight crew (including owner Brian Hunt!), who could not have been more hospitable and generous. Joining them for dinner at Russian River Brewing‘s original downtown brewpub was another highlight. And we made sure to visit the gleaming Russian River facility in nearby Windsor the following day before flying back down.

Please join us back at the place where it all began, Bottlecraft Little Italy, on Saturday, November 23 at 2 p.m. to mark the official release of Fratelli. Ian and I will both be on hand. This is a culmination of a decade of our time at Bottlecraft, and yet this is by no means anywhere near the end of the story…

Bottlecraft is located at 2252 India Street in downtown San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood