Beer of the Week: Dieguito

From the Beer Writer: This weekend will mark the 57th edition of the country’s most-watched annual championship sporting event. It’s so big and beloved that, although I am not allowed to invoke its name for fear of trademark-related repercussions, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I love sports and this event (even if teams I root for are rarely involved), but over my years of covering the beer industry I’ve come to enjoy brewing competitions almost as much. I love crowding into a convention-center theater or tuning in to a livestream to watch as breweries are honored for producing exceptional iterations of worldly beer styles, especially when San Diego County breweries earn medals. There’s just one thing that can be frustrating, and that’s when a winning beer is super-rare or completely unavailable. It’s such a letdown to know a local brewery crafted something that exceptional that I (and others) have no way of experiencing. So I tip my hat to the brew crew at Pizza Port Brewing for taking this week’s featured beer, Dieguitos, and making it widely available in cans. A gold-medal winner at the 2022 World Beer Cup in the American-style Pilsener category, it emits enticing aromas of peach and kiwi, giving way to slightly sweet citrus-fruit flavors which are wiped clean by a crisp, minerally finish. Impressively layered and incredibly refreshing, at 5.4% alcohol-by-volume, it’s the perfect beer for a certain super-sized game named after a convex form of crockery.

From the Brewer: “Dieguito is our West Coast-hopped Pilsner with an emphasis on Simcoe in the hopping. In the brewery we’re big fans of the hoppy-pilsner style and thought it was something that we could do really well. We start with German pilsner malt, use lager yeast fermented at traditional temps. then dry-hop at the end of primary fermentation. We also use a spunding device to fully carbonate the beer naturally for a softer effect. It is then lagered for three more weeks after the dry-hop to clarify the beer and flavors.”—Sean Farrell, Director of Brewery Operations, Pizza Port Brewing