2008's world beer cup gold medalist, Hopnotic IIPA, found on tap at Craft Kitchen La Mesa.

With the explosion of San Diego breweries opening over the past three years, most of the new crowd of beer businesses have tenaciously sought to market their brands and attract beer fans to their tasting rooms.

Prodigy Brewing Company has been an exception. Visitors to Prodigy's Facebook page are met with a disclaimer: "We DO NOT have a Tasting room." While Prodigy beers have been on pour within San Diego County for more than three years, production has not been consistent enough for fans to find them without some combination of determination, vigilance, and luck.

I've encountered Prodigy founder Dean Rouleau at local events over the years, most recently pouring a pair of his beers at the San Diego Beer Week launch party, Guild Fest. At that time, he reaffirmed his interests as a brewery operator are confined to making beer, not doing the added work to promote it. True to his word, he's been nonresponsive to requests for more information.

Rouleau made a name for himself while a brewer at San Diego Brewing Company, particularly with a 2008 world beer cup gold medal for Hopnotic double IPA, a 9-percent paean to hoppiness that has become a part of Prodigy's lineup since launching in 2014.

Sporadic social updates and limited press coverage since that time reveal a short history of dashed plans and upheaval. The business launched with a 6-barrel brewhouse in Grantville that it quickly augmented with oak foeders. It reported plans to upgrade to a 15-barrel system in summer 2015. Then, after being forced out of its original location, shared photos of four 30-barrel tanks being moved to a new brewery site in San Marcos at the beginning of 2016. Soon after, Prodigy suggested it may open a tasting room on Cedros Avenue in Solana Beach, but posts dwindled from monthly to bimonthly over the course of 2016, to seasonal in 2017.

Whatever its size, California ABC records show the license for Prodigy's San Marcos brewery is still pending. However, Rouleau has been making beer — somewhere — and distributing at select locations throughout the county. Last spring, Prodigy signed on with boutique distributor Brown Bag Beverage.

Former restaurateur Susie Baggs founded Brown Bag in 2014 and distributes to a handful of local breweries, including Half Door Brewing Co., Novo Brazil Brewing, as well as out-of-town companies such as Oregon's Hopworks Urban Brewery and pFriem Family Brewers.

Baggs explains that Prodigy's relatively low visibility makes Rouleau's beer a different kind of sale. "He doesn't have a tasting room, so a lot of beer buyers don't know about him," she says. However, due to Prodigy's limited production, the beer sells fast. "When we have it," she says, "we'll have 10 kegs and sell it the same day we get them."

So, who's buying? What makes the difference, according to Baggs, is whether the establishment's beer buyer knows the history of the guy behind Prodigy's beer. "It tends to be sold more to people in and around the beer world who know about Dean," she says.

Using the beer-locating app Taphunter, I managed to find a fresh keg of Hopnotic on tap at La Mesa gastropub Craft Kitchen, where the buyer confirmed he remembers drinking it during Rouleau's San Diego brewing days and tends to buy Prodigy beers whenever they become available.

That's likely the case wherever Prodigy beers show up — at a recent keep-the-pint night at the San Marcos location of Pizza Nova, for example, or repeat accounts in North Park, including Encontro restaurant, pretzel shop California Tap Room, and Latin-American eatery Tamarindo.

Prodigy Brewing may never truly take off until it has a place of its own, but in the meantime, those making the effort to seek out its beer will always find it fresh.