Ridiculous

So I'm back in San Diego for a while ...

One day, I hope, what San Diego has as far as beer, will happen in Maryland.

Look at what is possible on this Friday alone:

Stone Brewing has tours at 2 and 6 Monday through Friday. They'll also have a special Smoked Porter + Vanilla Bean on cask. Lost Abbey just down the road, is open from 4-8 and they're holding some kind of welcoming event as they hired a new brewer from the excellent Boulevard Brewing, complete with some special brew they've put together for the event.

Other breweries with tasting rooms and/or tours on Friday and Saturday include AleSmith, Green Flash, Ballast Point, Alpine and Lightning among others.

At perhaps the greatest bar in the world if you dig hoppy beers, O'Briens, they're having a Green Flash event with 10 taps. And then Summer of Beer Steve tells me at a place I also need to check out named Downtown Johnny Brown's, they have Ballast Point's wonderful Sculpin IPA on tap right now. Tentatively we have plans to check that out (or O'Briens, or La Jolla Brew House or Toronado or Hamilton's or...) and catch the Ravens game down here. Good times.

I've got some things to do Friday so I'm pulling my hair trying to figure out how much if any of that I can squeeze in especially with traffic and family but wow. The best and worst part is its not any particularly special weekend, there's just a ton of great beer down here and the big boys tend to have something going on all the time whether its special beers, events, growler fills and so on.

All that said, I've got my eyes on the prize, one of the greatest beer events anywhere, the February 13th-15th Belgian Beer fest at Max's in Baltimore. San Diego would be lucky to have that kind of event, glad we have it in Baltimore though.