San Diego Brewing Company
If you can judge a book by it’s cover, then you can also judge a brewpub by it’s website.
San Diego Brewing Company’s website (www.sandiegobrewing.com) is the epitome of small brewery websites. It’s beautiful, feature rich, full of quality content, updated frequently, and extremely informative. Hats off to the team that put it together. The site set our expectations for an inaugural visit to their establishment.
We were, unfortunately, over sold.
Beer
They have a large selection of draft beer, at least 30 taps wrap around the backside of the bar area. A couple local brews and many out of town beers. I enjoyed a Russian River Pliny the Elder and an Alaskan IPA, while Jorge & Gretty ordered a Sierra Nevada Early Spring Brew and Callahan Blueberry Wheat respectively.
I did not notice any type of bottle selection.
They also brew their own beer here, however nothing on the menu looked interesting during this visit. Their beers receive mediocre reviews at RateBeer. We’ll test drive a couple of their brews on our next visit and update this review.
Ambience
It feels like a college hang out, not that there’s really anything wrong with that. A little loud, a little messy.
In addition to their LCD units, they have many dated 17″ tube style TVs hanging around. The worst part about the old-school TVs, their color is blown out (at least the units we could see).
Location
Just up the freeway from us on Friars Rd, a very accessible location. They have a massive parking lot, we were able to find a spot without any issue whatsoever. In my opinion, this is the saving grace for them.
Food
Nachos are pretty hard to mess up, but somehow they did it. Our entire plate was greasy, had minimal cheese, no jalapenos, a small portion of guacamole and salsa that tasted like the cheapo stuff you can get at Food 4 Less. Major dissapointment.
My Tuna Melt was dry and lacked flavor.
Overall
Because it’s less than 10 miles from my place and they have a pretty decent beer selection I’ll go back. If it were any further a repeat visit would be debatable.