Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

Marine intelligence yields better brews

A tributary place to drink craft beer

SpecHops brewery in Vista has a mission to honor service and serve tasty beer.
SpecHops brewery in Vista has a mission to honor service and serve tasty beer.

As any recruiter will tell you, military service provides on-the-job training and work experience that may be applied to future careers. While those recruiters likely don't have brewing in mind, David Casperson makes a convincing case the discipline instilled by his time in the USMC helps him make better beer. "If you're organized and you have a little bit of discipline," he says, "you can keep things clean, which is the key to good beer."

Place

SpecHops Brewing Company

1280 Activity Drive, Vista

Casperson and his wife Stephanie soft-opened SpecHops Brewing Company in late February. The Vista brewery produces clean beers, with a relatively "conservative" atmosphere, all aimed toward bringing the greater military community into the craft beer fold. "We're sticking with BJCP recipes," Casperson says, "just straight and narrow right now. Mostly because we want the beers to be approachable."

Sponsored
Sponsored

He also attributes the cleanliness to the precise temperature control that comes with brewing on a 15-barrel, steam-driven system powered by an electric boiler, rather than a more common gas powered rig. In setting up the system, Casperson got help from SpecHops equity partner Rich Walther, an experienced brewing engineer who's designed systems for Stone Brewing, and even Anheuser-Busch. So Casperson is not joking when he points out that this is the smallest brewery Walther has built.

The name SpecHops, of course, is a play on SpecOps, aka special operations, and Casperson has the résumé to back it up. During his ten years in the Corps, he worked as an intelligence officer, including time served on loan with Army Special Forces in Iraq. However, he began his career as a pilot, which brought the Seattle native to Miramar, where he picked up the Top Gun-like call sign, Spook. "You usually get a call sign for doing something stupid," he notes with a laugh, adding, "it usually has something to do with alcohol."

Spook says he got into craft beer drinking at Pizza Port while stationed at Camp Pendleton, where he's continued working as a civilian with an Antiterrorism Team the past eight years. Once he got into homebrewing, he attended a UC Davis summer program to learn from renowned beer experts Charles Bamforth and Michael Lewis.

He and Stephanie have been developing SpecHops since 2010, and actually debuted a few beers at Aztec Brewing back in 2012. Hovering around 5% ABV, each beer has a name referring to intel or special forces. For example, Culper Ring stout may be familiar to fans of the TV show Turn as a reference to America's original, revolutionary war spy ring. Meanwhile, a beer dubbed The Activity is a nod to the low-key name given an Army special forces unit that works with the CIA. "It's a super, super secret organization," Casperson explains, half-joking. "They have black budgets inside of black budgets to do stuff." Fittingly, The Activity is a black IPA.

U.S. marines are a humble bunch, and while he hopes to someday establish localized SpecHops breweries near military bases across the country, Casperson would rather bring attention to a larger world of public servants. The brewery features a "Story Room," where war vets, or surviving family members of those lost in combat, may record video interviews recounting stories of their service. "Seals, special operators, medal of honor winners — those folks get their stories told," he points out. "But in this county, there are lot of people who have served their time honorably…we want to be able to start capturing the everyman's story, and honor that."

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego seawalls depend on Half Moon Bay case

Casa Mira townhomes sued after losing 20 feet of bluffs in storm
Next Article

San Diego Holiday Experiences

As soon as Halloween is over, it's Christmas time in my mind
SpecHops brewery in Vista has a mission to honor service and serve tasty beer.
SpecHops brewery in Vista has a mission to honor service and serve tasty beer.

As any recruiter will tell you, military service provides on-the-job training and work experience that may be applied to future careers. While those recruiters likely don't have brewing in mind, David Casperson makes a convincing case the discipline instilled by his time in the USMC helps him make better beer. "If you're organized and you have a little bit of discipline," he says, "you can keep things clean, which is the key to good beer."

Place

SpecHops Brewing Company

1280 Activity Drive, Vista

Casperson and his wife Stephanie soft-opened SpecHops Brewing Company in late February. The Vista brewery produces clean beers, with a relatively "conservative" atmosphere, all aimed toward bringing the greater military community into the craft beer fold. "We're sticking with BJCP recipes," Casperson says, "just straight and narrow right now. Mostly because we want the beers to be approachable."

Sponsored
Sponsored

He also attributes the cleanliness to the precise temperature control that comes with brewing on a 15-barrel, steam-driven system powered by an electric boiler, rather than a more common gas powered rig. In setting up the system, Casperson got help from SpecHops equity partner Rich Walther, an experienced brewing engineer who's designed systems for Stone Brewing, and even Anheuser-Busch. So Casperson is not joking when he points out that this is the smallest brewery Walther has built.

The name SpecHops, of course, is a play on SpecOps, aka special operations, and Casperson has the résumé to back it up. During his ten years in the Corps, he worked as an intelligence officer, including time served on loan with Army Special Forces in Iraq. However, he began his career as a pilot, which brought the Seattle native to Miramar, where he picked up the Top Gun-like call sign, Spook. "You usually get a call sign for doing something stupid," he notes with a laugh, adding, "it usually has something to do with alcohol."

Spook says he got into craft beer drinking at Pizza Port while stationed at Camp Pendleton, where he's continued working as a civilian with an Antiterrorism Team the past eight years. Once he got into homebrewing, he attended a UC Davis summer program to learn from renowned beer experts Charles Bamforth and Michael Lewis.

He and Stephanie have been developing SpecHops since 2010, and actually debuted a few beers at Aztec Brewing back in 2012. Hovering around 5% ABV, each beer has a name referring to intel or special forces. For example, Culper Ring stout may be familiar to fans of the TV show Turn as a reference to America's original, revolutionary war spy ring. Meanwhile, a beer dubbed The Activity is a nod to the low-key name given an Army special forces unit that works with the CIA. "It's a super, super secret organization," Casperson explains, half-joking. "They have black budgets inside of black budgets to do stuff." Fittingly, The Activity is a black IPA.

U.S. marines are a humble bunch, and while he hopes to someday establish localized SpecHops breweries near military bases across the country, Casperson would rather bring attention to a larger world of public servants. The brewery features a "Story Room," where war vets, or surviving family members of those lost in combat, may record video interviews recounting stories of their service. "Seals, special operators, medal of honor winners — those folks get their stories told," he points out. "But in this county, there are lot of people who have served their time honorably…we want to be able to start capturing the everyman's story, and honor that."

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Tuna within 3-day range Back in the Counts

Mind the rockfish regulations
Next Article

For nutty pies at Pizza by Aromi in La Mesa

Sicilian cousins add to the Italian goodness they dish out around Lake Murray
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

This Week’s Reader This Week’s Reader