Beer of the Week: Just the Two of Us

While it’s somewhat rare to see brewing-industry professionals find success in glorious San Diego then move to another locale, it does happen sometimes. Sure, it leaves natives like me scratching our heads and cursing the outrageous prices of housing, utilities, gas and just about everything else in America’s Finest City, but we move on, accepting such losses but never forgetting what’s been lost. That’s how myself and numerous others in the local beerosphere feel about JC Hill, the entrepreneur who, along with his partner Alex Pierson, started Amplified Aleworks out of the back of their Pacific Beach restaurant Cali Kebab. It was a quick hit with beachgoers and beer fans alike, but it wasn’t enough to keep Hill in San Diego. Just a couple of years in, he moved to Monterey (to be fair, he was from the Bay Area to begin with) and teamed with his father to open a brewpub called Alvarado Street Brewery, which has gone on to become one of the most buzzed about beer operations in all of California. Thankfully, Hill has maintained ties with members of the San Diego brewing industry, such as Societe Brewing owner Douglas Constantiner, who enlisted his long-lost beer bud’s brewing team to create this week’s featured beer, Just the Two of Us. An IPA hopped with Mosaic, Nectaron and hot experimental varietal HBC 586, it smells of sweet citrus, pineapple and passionfruit, and offers up a juice-to-pith tangerine experience on the taste buds segueing to a bone-dry finish with almost zero aftertaste. It’s a San Diego-style IPA through and through and, perhaps, a small yet pertinent reminder of what Hill left behind.

I’ve known JC since Amplified Ale Works and Cali Kebab opened, and we have been close friends since then. Obviously, when JC went on to start Alvarado Street we always talked about doing a collab together, but due to COVID and other obstacles the timing wasn’t right…until now. The Alvarado and Societe teams spent a good amount of time coming up with an IPA that reflects both the boundaries that they are pushing and the new-traditional focus of Societe. What the consumer gets is 7.2% (alcohol-by-volume) West Coast IPA with some New World fruit character and a touch of underlying ‘dankness’ from the addition of Nectaron hops. Mosaic and HBC586 Cryo are also used to give it a punchy, citrusy, tropical roundness.”

Douglas Constantiner, Owner & CEO, Societe Brewing