Meet Magnetic Brewing

“I am Magnetic Brewing,” replies Morgan McCarty when asked about the staff at his new brewery-to-be in Kearny Mesa. It’s a solo operation, and though he has the support of a loving wife and two young kids, he has grown adept at getting things done on his own over the past few years.

McCarty originally got into brewing when a friend of his received a malt extract kit from Home Brew Mart in 2007 and asked him to help him make his first beer. Five batches in, the duo made the upgrade to all-grain brewing and, over the course of the next several years, proceeded to purchase new parts, cobbling together more advanced brewing systems.

When his brew bud took a job out of state, he took his toys with him. McCarty replaced the necessary components and kept on keeping on. He currently brews using a one-and-a-half-barrel rig with two modified 55-gallon stainless steel drums as the brew kettle and mash tun. This is the system he will utilize when Magnetic, his foray into pro brewing, debuts in the next couple of months.

An electrician by trade and by day, he uses his vocational expertise in maximizing electronic temperature control during the brewing process. Once open, his general focus will be on ales, but he does expect to produce the occasional lager. A witbier, brown ale, pale ale, India pale ale, and double IPA figure to be on tap perpetually. McCarty says it’s important to him to have something easy-to-drink on tap for people who get dragged to his tasting room by their beer-nut friends, but also aims to have special, more experimental brews for the enthusiasts dragging folks to his business.

Magnetic will be located at 5595 Magnatron Boulevard, Suite O, in the same industrial park as Helm’s Brewing Company and roughly a half-mile from Kearny Mesa’s first brewery, Societe Brewing Company. The 120-square-foot tasting room will have a good amount of visual metal to convey the magnetic theme. A roll-up garage door will provide entry to a bar with seating as well as two adjacent walls with mounted countertops. McCarty plans on being open Wednesday through Sunday, and will serve beer in taster glasses, pints, and growlers.