In recent years, the majority of San Diego County’s new breweries have been smaller operations geared to servicing residents of the communities they’re sited in. But there’s a new beer interest putting the finishing touches on a brewery and tasting room in Vista and, while phase one of the project may seem to fall in line with the other small-scale ventures of its generation, it has aspirations that exceed such contemporaries. That newcomer goes by the name of WestBrew and, though it will be weeks before it debuts to the public, it already has three offshoot locations in the works.
Joshua Schreer is the owner of WestBrew as well as EvergreenCali construction company, which he’s putting to good use. In addition to a stylish North County home base, his crew is conducting renovation construction at locations in Del Mar and the East Village. The former is located at 1435 Camino Del Mar, the previous patio deck-equipped home of the Tasting Room Del Mar restaurant, while the other is at 701 Island Avenue, a Hosmer homer away from Petco Park. On top of that, Schreer just signed a letter of intent on a building at 417 South Coast Highway in Oceanside. It’s an aggressive approach, the likes of which really haven’t been seen in San Diego and is somewhat unexpected in the age of COVID-19, when so much in life has been delayed and slow-moving.
“All of our [satellite] locations will be restaurants with tasting rooms. We just hired our executive chef, Lety Gonzalez, to run our restaurant operations and she is an amazing new addition to our team,” says Schreer, who graduated SDSU’s Business of Craft Beer certificate program in 2018. He also completed most of the coursework for UCSD’s brewing program in 2019. That’s where he met WestBrew’s head brewer, Cody Gagnon, an R&D brewer at Pizza Port’s Bressi Ranch production facility. Gagnon has also worked for Mother Earth Brew Co., Black Market Brewing and Karl Strauss Brewing. Says Schreer of his hire, “He is a very gifted brewer who has demonstrated his extensive knowledge in beer and brewing science. Most importantly, he has worked extremely hard over the years, growing in his abilities at commercial breweries.”
With 28 taps to fill, Gagnon will definitely get a chance to employ his vocational skills. The first WestBrew beers to grace the cold box will be a Mosaic pale ale, West Coast IPA, hazy IPA, blonde ale and hard seltzer. Those will be joined in October by a Pilsner, tropical dry-hopped lager, San Diego-style IPA, another hazy IPA and a work-in-progress IPA. Those beers will be produced on a 10-barrel system from Alpha Brewing Ops, feeding into four 10-barrel fermenters and two 20-barrel tanks.
WestBrew’s headquarters comes in at 4,800 square feet, nearly half of which is devoted to a tasting room with a bright, coastal-colored motif, complete with soft couches, modern lounge seating, a blue-felt pool table and surf scenes projected onto the wall above it (and sports when that’s more favorable). There’s also a City-approved outdoor service area and a large mural depicting Big Sur’s McWay Falls will soon be added. The company’s can art matches the tasting room’s aesthetic, and both are built to “celebrate the West.”
It’s a nice starting point, and if Schreer has his way, WestBrew’s headquarters won’t be its lone venue for long. He hopes to open more locations beyond the trio of satellites he’s secured. Helping to grow the company to the point where that is feasible will be local brewing-industry fixture Jay Jones, who will serve as WestBrew’s Director of Sales after most recently serving in sales and related roles for Thorn Brewing. Also on board is Jillian Morgan, who came over from Brew Ha Ha Productions, has worked for local operations Bagby Beer Co. and Mother Earth Brew Co., and will be responsible for social media, marketing and graphic design.
WestBrew’s soft opening will likely be held the last weekend of September. It’s still taking shape, but tickets will likely be sold for separate blocks of time that allow people to check out the beer and environs while social distancing. More details will be provided via the company’s social-media accounts. Following that, the tasting room will be open Wednesday through Friday from 3-10 p.m. and 1-10 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays.
WestBrew is located at 1061 La Mirada Court in Vista