As summer slowly inches its way into our lives, the time has come to shell out some tasty tidbits of news worthy morsels. We’ve got some beer events coming up and an update on our progress toward our expansion and pub. Let’s get started…

The San Diego Real Ale Festival will be Friday, June 13th and Saturday, June 14th at Pizza Port Carlsbad.  The event will feature more than 45 cask conditioned ales all served in the proper manner from an English beer engine.  All styles of beer from bitters and browns to stouts and double IPAs will be available from many of San Diego's leading breweries including Alpine (Pure Hoppiness), Pizza Port, Ballast Point, AleSmith, Stone, Green Flash and Coronado.  There will also be plenty of great beer from breweries along the West Coast such as Deschutes, Elysian, Moylan's, Marin, Anderson Valley, Drake's, and many more!  There are two casks of nearly every beer so that the tap lists will be nearly identical both days.  Special guest casks tapped each day for your beer drinking enjoyment.  The festival will run from 4 pm - 11 pm on Friday and 11 am - 11 pm on Saturday.  Admission is $25 and includes an Imperial pint tasting glass and 8 taster tickets each good for four ounce sample.  Additional tastes are just $1. 
Rather than drive to Carlsbad, consider the Coaster train (which you can actually bring your own beer onto and drink it).  The train runs later at night during the Padres season so that there are trains out of Carlsbad at 9:25 pm on Friday and 7:40 pm on Saturday (there are also trains Saturday morning if you spend the night Friday, but not Sunday morning).  For the complete Coaster schedule visit: http://www.gonctd.com/coaster_schedules.htm.  Many of the local hotels in downtown Carlsbad are sold out, but there are plenty of great hotels just down the road a short cab ride away if you plan to spend the night.  For information on local hotels, visit Carlsbad's official visitor’s site at: http://www.visitcarlsbad.com/listings/index.cfm?catID=1&sectID=2.

And the following weekend is the San Diego County Fair Craft Beer Festival on Saturday, June 21st from Noon to 8 pm.  The fest will feature more than 200 beers from nearly a dozen countries.  You can see the winners from this year's competition and the expected breweries at the festival by visiting: http://www.sdfair.com/fair/index.php?fuseaction=events.wine_beer.  The Best of Show winner will be announced at the festival.  There will also be a Blue Grass music competition and Bratwurst cook-off at the festival.  Alpine will be pouring O’Brien’s IPA and Pure Hoppiness at the Fair Festival - we hope to see you there!

We are out of all our specialty beers, but we are brewing Duet today. Look for Duet to hit the taps in about three and a half weeks. We are finally brewing our Russian Imperial Stout (to be aged in true bourbon barrels) this week. It will be released in November.

On the barbeque pub expansion front, there is definite progress. The fermenters and bright tank are moved into place. All the rest of the parts are due in early July. Then, a couple of slabs, some underground conduit and wiring, water and sewer lines and we’re there. Then comes the pub. Remember, it’s small. We took delivery of our cool stainless steel smoker the other day. We’ll be doing some test runs of ribs, chicken and brisket, getting our recipes down. The tappers are in and there are a few more options we’ll have for beer selection as well. We still have to assemble the kitchen so we’re about half way there. I made a deal for another 12’X20’ cold box so that will be installed in due time.

Not much else. Look for an early summer sale on some select beer in a few weeks.

Keep safe until then, and remember “If we weren’t meant to drink beer we wouldn’t have been given stomachs.”

Cheers from the Alpine Brew Crew – Pat, Val, Shawn and Steve

Spring has sprung and April is just around the corner. For some, April is a month of flowers blooming and birds singing, and for others it’s the month that taxes are due. For those of you dreading the evil IRS we here at Alpine Beer Company have created “Tax Relief Day,” April 15th. When we open for business that day, there will be 5 extra beers available, 2 new bottled beers and 3 draft re-releases.

For growler fills only, we’ll offer Duet – a 7% IPA using Simcoe and Amarillo hops “in harmony,” O’Brien’s IPA – a 6% IPA that’s slightly maltier and more sessionable, and Exponential Hoppiness – a 10.75% Triple IPA that’s double dry-hopped and oak chipped. Look for these same beers at your favorite beer establishments around town.

The bottled beers are very special. These beers have been aging for 15 months in oak barrels formerly used for red wine. We have about 75 cases of a Belgian Kriek called “ Chez Monieux.” It comes in a 750 ml Belgian-style capped bottle and weighs in at 5.8%. We used 2 varieties of cherries with a dominate amount being the tart Montmorency Cherry from Michigan. You don’t want to know how much the cherries cost. The Kriek bottles are not bottle conditioned, no sediment at the bottom, so long aging (more than 2 years) is not recommended, but who knows.

The other bottle is a Belgian Lambic which comes in a small 375 ml bottle at 5%. This is the same barrel aged beer without the cherries. It has a tart, fruity, sour taste and is bottle conditioned. It does taste like a one year old lambic and should age well if properly stored. It’s called “ Briscoe” and because of its demure size we refer to it as “Briscoe Lambic Junior.” We have about 20 cases.

Neither the Kriek nor the Lambic are available for samples. There is a 6 bottle limit on the Kriek and a 4 bottle limit on the Lambic.

Since April 15th looks to be a very busy day, if there is a line at the counter there will be no sampling. We think it’s only polite to allow everyone that wants to buy beer to have a chance and sampling takes a lot of time.

What little is kegged of the Belgian beers will be saved for the opening of our pub. Remodeling will start on the future site of our barbeque themed watering hole after the first of April. We feel more positive about actually starting work there since we’ve seen a sign posted inside saying they are moving April 1st, no joke.

We have 2 brewery tours scheduled. One for Wednesday, April 16th at about 9:30 AM and the other on Friday, April 18th, about 3 PM. The World Beer Cup will be in town that week and there will be lots of international beer people visiting San Diego. The organizers scheduled several tours around the county and we were included on the Wednesday tour and some Belgian Judges have arranged a private tour for that Friday. Watch for small groups of people with accents that Friday afternoon and say “welcome.”

Enough already! Please keep safe out there. Drink responsibly from the Alpine Brew Crew – Pat, Val, Shawn and Steve.