OCEANSIDE, CALIFORNIA
Positioned halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, this surfside town featured discerning owner-brewer Mark Purciel’s garage-styled tasting room, OCEANSIDE ALE WORKS, visited April ‘07. Opened ’05 and located five miles off the Pacific Coast in Corporate Center, Purciel’s brews were inspired by European brewing traditions and could be bought in both growlers and kegs or purchased in local restaurant-bars.
Alongside rowdy fun-loving beer drinkers on Padres opening day, quaffed honey-dipped citric-slipped dry-spiced Whitewater Whitbier, sharply-hopped raw-honeyed lemony grapefruit Buccaneer Blonde, caramel apple-fronted dry-smoked rye-malted San Luis Rey Red, mild orange-red-fruited bitter Pier View Pale Ale, and intensely hopped, fig-raisin-centered, orange-bruised, sherry-port-finishing, cask conditioned American Strong Ale.