Beer Thirty Bottle Shop & Pour House, 2504 South Main Street, Soquel, California
Sante Adairius Santa Cruz Portal, 1315 Water Street, Santa Cruz, California
CoffeeBeer >> Pint Pleasures >> Santa Cruz 3
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Beer Thirty Bottle Shop & Pour House, 2504 South Main Street, Soquel, California |
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Sante Adairius Santa Cruz Portal, 1315 Water Street, Santa Cruz, California |
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West End Tap and Kitchen, 334 Ingalls Street, Santa Cruz, California |
Last May, while touring Central California breweries with my Bay Area friend Rick, we spent one night in Santa Cruz. Our hotel was located on the beach, right at the base of the Santa Cruz Pier, which was an ideal location.
As I lived the majority of my life in California, it’s a bit surprising that this was my very first visit to Santa Cruz. Founded as a mission by the Spanish in 1791, it was incorporated as a city in 1866. After the new boardwalk opened in 1907, Santa Cruz quickly became popular as a seaside resort, and today it’s well known as a destination for surfers.
After we drove up from Monterey, our first beer stop was at Beer Thirty in Soquel. Located five miles east of Santa Cruz, the town of Soquel got its name from the native Aswaswas people. (They also gave us the word abalone, which happens to be a seafood I used to love back when one was still allowed to catch and eat it. Just thought I’d mention that.)
There is a bit of seating indoors at Beer Thirty, but the garden was definitely the place to sit in the late May afternoon. We decided to share two pints, one of Sante Adairius Grass City IPA (6.9% ABV, Sante Adairius, Capitola, California) and one of Holographic Principle Hazy IPA (6.6% AVV, Hen House Brewing, Santa Rosa, California).
We took a seat at a table under a shady canopy and sipped our beers. Brewed with Nelson Sauvin and Citra hops, the Grass City IPA had that whooaah! factor that always elicits an ecstatic moan from me. The Holographic Principle Hazy IPA was brewed with Mosaic, Idaho 7, and Cashmere hops, and the flavour was suggestive of melon, perhaps a Gaia melon. I think I can finally pin my finger on what Cashmere hops taste like: melons.
As we enjoyed our pints we admired the various dogs in attendance, especially the massive Newfoundland that came in with its beer-loving owners. Apparently Beer Thirty, besides offering over 300 bottles of local beers, local brews on tap, and t-shirts, also sells dog collars and leads, so the pub is very dog-friendly. If a customer is hungry, the Carpo’s window in the garden is open all week, serving a rotating menu of speciality items. If you prefer, it’s okay to bring your own food in. In all respects, this is a pretty friendly place with a great selection of beer, and it was a really nice welcome to Santa Cruz.
We moved on to Santa Cruz proper, stopping first at Sante Adairius. This time we sat at a corner table in the open, rustic room. Owned and operated by Adair Paterno and Tim Clifford, Sante Adairius’s beers are mostly inspired by the Belgian tradition but also mixed with unusual beer styles from around the world. Rustic ales are their speciality, and the brews are often barrel-aged, usually in wine barrels, using various yeast and bacteria.
We decided to share three half pints. Our choices were Lucy Belle Saison with Brett (5.3% ABV); Landscapes #3, an oak aged Saison dry hopped with Kohia (6.9% ABV); and Queen of the Season (6.5% ABV), a Foudre Aged Saison. The Lucy Belle was like a dry pear nectar, with a hint of, um, something safe. There was no danger at all to this beer. “It’s just a thirst-quenching warm-up”, Rick commented.
The Queen of the Season was very sour. I got the smell of a really dank cave, full of naked people that you’d like to invite home to catch some episodes of “Ted Lasso” with you, if they could only find some clothes to put on first. The Landscapes made me feel as if I were rolling around underneath a healthy lawn. “Aged with an earthworm in the bottle,” was Rick’s suggestion.
Although we weren’t ready to have dinner yet, the brewery features, as they call it, “inauthentic Detroit-style pizza”, and there’s also seating outside.
After we checked into our hotel and freshened up a bit, we took off in search of a pint and some food. We ended up at the West End Tap, which serves traditional pub food, using local products and cooked with French techniques with a California twist. The family of one of the owners had opened one of California’s first microbreweries, and the other owner trained under both Japanese and French chefs. So they both seemed well qualified to open a gastropub.
It was busy on this Tuesday night, but we managed to find a table. As we perused the menu we noticed that the dishes have beer and wine pairing suggestions, but we had already chosen our two pints to share. The first pint, Mai Tai IPA (6.5% ABV, Alvarado Street Brewing), brewed with Mosaic hops, was surprisingly dark and clear, and dankly welcome. The other pint was Philadelphia Experiment (7.0% ABV, Hen House Brewing), brewed with California barley, Simcoe and Vic Secret hops. This was hazy like a smoothie and very smooth, with hints of bitter hops gently whispering on the horizon. We expected the hops to stampede in shortly.
For our meal we split a Portobello burger which was great, and a goat cheese focaccia with roasted capers and broccoli which unfortunately was roasted beyond edibility. We decided to walk off our meal with a mile-long stroll around the Santa Cruz Pier. Back at the hotel we sat in our private patio and sipped a couple of cans of Boogie Board while listening to the sea lions barking, and we could hear them barking all night long. What an amazing experience which helped temper the taste of the burnt capers and broccoli that stayed on my palate until morning.
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