Road Trip to San Diego

On Jan 1, my Marine son and I are driving out to where he will be stationed in San Diego (Miramar MCAS). We will take four days and then I will fly home. If we put in some good long diving days early on, we will have some time to hit some breweries in the area. I was thinking of Stones for sure but can anybody recommend another must see?

It should be a fun drive. He has a 2004 Pontiac GTO with the 5.7L Corvette engine in it.

I did a brewery tour with my son in March of this year…it was awesome. Here are a few we hit.

Lightning -San Diego Local Breweries Information | San Diego Breweries
Ballast Point -http://www.ballastpoint.com - This is a MUST - Big Eye and Sculpin !
Green Flash -http://www.greenflashbrew.com - This is a MUST - Have a Palate Wrecker !
Lost Abbey -http://www.lostabbey.com - This is a MUST - mmm…Hop-15.
Ale Smith -http://alesmith.com
Iron Fist - http://www.ironfistbrewing.com/main.html
Mother Earth -http://www.motherearthbrewco.com - Ask for a Big Momma tester. They normally won’t give you one, but I explained we were from MN and only wanted one. They gave us one :slight_smile:

Have a great time…

Good stuff GarretD. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it.

I can’t argue with any of the ‘must sees’ but I recommend you at least drink some pizza port beer while you are in SD. I had several of their fresh hopped IPAs last month and all were exceptional. I, unfortunately, don’t remember the names of any of these phenomenal beers, but I had them all at Downtown Johnny Browns in the heart of downtown SD during beer week. If you are an IPA fan, seek these beers out.

If you are in the downtown area, check out the Ballast Point brewery in Linda Vista. It is half homebrew mart, half brewery. The will draw you a fresh pint while you shop.

Stone Brewery is incredible. 30 minutes away in Escondido, CA

I am fortunate enough to go out there once a year on business.

Garrett’s suggestions are right on - as is the mention of Pizza Port (pizza’s pretty tasty too).

Coronado is also worth visiting in my opinion.

Stone is the place though for a cool tour. Just don’t expect to have any beer that you can’t regularly get elsewhere.

I’m on it like a fly on a turd. Thx. We’re doing 12 hr days to arrive a day early.

I should have mentioned depending on where you stay you might want to check out Churchill’s pub as well. We were they on St. Patties day and it was awesome.

http://churchillspub.us/site/about.html

Damn I want to go back and do it all over again…San Fran and San Diego…11 breweries…64 beers tested and a great time with my son.

We’re staying in Mira Meza between San Diego and Escondido. Making good time. Getting close to Arizona border soon. Lots of scenery so far this morning starting from Albuquerque. I didn’t realize we were over a mile high.

So how was the trip?

[quote=“GarretD”]So how was the trip?[/quote]It was friggin awesome. We had a great time driving and although we went 12-13 hours per day, we were not tired or sore. We started with Stone in Escondido. Great tour by Phil and got a nice taster glass and four samples. We had lunch in the Bistro gardens and it was just like on youtube. Then since my son is not old enough to legally drink, we bought a whole bunch of 22 oz bombers from Stone, Ballast Point, Alesmith, etc. so he could enjoy them as well. We spent a lot of time at Sunset Cliffs. The scenery was really nice. Great trip all around. Thanks for the recommendations.