I started at Astronomy brewery where I had a few pints with my husband and friend who writes for Beer Alien. Because it was Black Friday they had $4 pints of their dark beers, which was where we started. I ordered the cocoa habanero stout and my husband ordered the coffee porter. Both were well made if not particularly strong flavors. The coffee porter was nice and dry with mild notes of coffee and roast. The cocoa habanero stout had lots of chocolate flavors with mild habanero that was extremely subtle even after warming up. Both beers were nicely balanced.

I next ordered the Hawking Hazy Pale while my friend Terry ordered the lemon vanilla version. The base Hawking hazy pale was bursting with citrus notes on the nose and had a nice mix of tangerine and vanilla notes with a good thick body and mild lingering hop acidity. For such a young brewery, this pale was impressive in how much better it was than a lot of San Diego attempts at hazy pale ales. Few San Diego attempts are as flavorful. The lemon vanilla version was like drinking lemon cake. The hop aroma was mostly covered up by the lemon and vanilla, making it a decadent beer to savor.

Next time I am in the area I look forward to seeing how Astronomy grows. They have a fairly standard mid-sized tasting room and hopefully will grow into their theme further as they get more established.

Hawking Hazy Pale

Hawking with lemon and vanilla

I wouldn’t try to compare Astronomy to Crafthaus considering Crafthaus has been open much longer, around 4 years, and is fairly established now on the local scene. Though of the few hazy beers I tried at Crafthaus I think Astronomy is doing them better as is Hop Nuts. Though I didn’t love the IPAs at Crafthaus, I was quite impressed by some of their other beers.

I started with the gose, which was complex and thick with an excellent balance of flavors and a light tart finish. This was so enjoyable that I left with two six-packs to bring home. I followed it with their saison, which was incredibly dry with light notes of pepper and that thankfully did not taste like white wine as many of the style do. This was also quite nice.

Crafthaus was also pouring some frozen beers, where they add beer to a slush and other things. We tried the Frozen stout with chocolate. The base beer already had some strong coffee flavors so it blended nicely with the chocolate, making it similar to drinking a frozen mocha. It was a bit sweet for my tastes so I ended up adding extra beer to balance it out. I ended with a pour of the base Belgrade stout. It had intense coffee flavor with a nice dry roasty base. I prefer this style of prominent coffee to the balance at Astronomy.

Gose

Belgrade coffee stout

I finished my rounds with Bad Beat, just around the corner. Since I had already enjoyed a few beers, I only had one pint here, of their amber lager. It was nice and dry with mild bread character.