Brewery Tour & North County Drive

By Jeff Perry

On a hot Saturday, Aug. 22nd, SDVSA met at its old standby location for breakfast at Cocos in Escondido. Some of you may not believe this, but Goran Freske was forced to attend in a Jaguar because his 1800' s engine block experienced a failure of terminal intensity!

After breakfast, the caravan traveled northwest to the Stone (Micro) Brewery Company in San Marcos where we received a tour of their facilities by employee Mike Palmer. Mr. Palmer explained to us the brewing process, and some technical aspects of the production of ale, during which, we sampled some of their remaining batch of special India Pale Ale II (IPA II) from their past second anniversary celebration. This ale has double the hops of their regular IPA, and is somewhat bitter . Later, we sampled their Stone Pale Ale, which received the Gold Medal at the 1998 World Beer Championship in Chicago, and their Smoked Porter Ale. Mike mentioned that co- founder Greg Koch is a motorsports enthusiast and that he sponsors a Formula Atlantic racecar, which is powered by a rotary engine. 

By the way, a "Micro Brewery" is commonly accepted as a brewery that produces less than 15,000 barrels of beer annually.

From there, the scenic back roads of North County were traveled as we made our way through Harmony Grove and Rancho Santa Fe to our final destination of Pizza Port in Solona Beach. There we found Russ, Devon, Rob & their friend from England (Geoffrey?) had laid claim to an outside table adjacent to old Highway 101. After a period of eating pizza and drinking Shark Bite Red Ale, Chapter Coordinator, Russ Qrrell, took advantage of a freed parking spot and moved his 1800 coupe (A.K.A. the Green Hornet) in front of our table. In position, it was interesting to watch both passengers and pedestrians alike take second glances at Russ' car, seemingly with a look of 'what kind of car is that?'