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

One barrel at a time at Embarcadero Brewing

It feels like beer history in National City

An Embarcadero Brewing flight: nitro stout, coffee brown ale, golden ale, and strawberry blonde.
An Embarcadero Brewing flight: nitro stout, coffee brown ale, golden ale, and strawberry blonde.

This past September, National City’s first homebrewing supply shop officially became National City’s first craft brewery. In a number of ways, Embarcadero Brewing and Supply feels like a time capsule out of San Diego craft history. The tasting room sits within a complex of industrial parks just off Mile of Cars Way. The beer menu reads straight out of the late 90s: a pale ale, a couple IPAs, plus a brown ale, golden ale, strawberry blonde, and nitro stout.

Place

Embarcadero Brewing

340 West 26th Street Suite D, National City

When I show up on a Saturday afternoon, its large roll-up door is open to the parking lot, and two of the business’s owners are manning the tasting room: cousins Gustavo Molina and Marco Peña. Along with their respective brothers, Jorge and Arturo, the South Bay locals partnered up to open Embarcadero, using limited resources. To get the brewery component launched, they had to close the shop temporarily, and divert resources from homebrewing inventory. So, while a corner of the space remains stocked with grains, mash paddles, and single-barrel conical fermenters, the breadth of gear is not what it used to be. They swear it will be back to full strength again soon, but in the meantime, their homebrewing customers find other reasons to visit.

Sponsored
Sponsored
Embarcadero Brewing and Supply is National City's first brewery.

“We’re getting the same customers that were buying the homebrew supplies,” says Molina, “but now they just come to drink.”

There are seven beers pouring, and they all drink well. Molina and his brother take the lead on brewing, producing one barrel on a three-vessel homebrew system. It’s sitting on casters just outside the shop, wheeled out to make room for customers.

I start with the golden, dubbed Rancho Del Rey. That was the name encompassing the entire South Bay region when the Spanish first settled the area. The water behind this beer is local too, National City well water, pulled from an aquafer hundreds of feet deep. Its relative softness helps the golden remain crisply refreshing, accompanied by minimal hop bitterness.

It’s also applied to the strawberry blonde, called Camarosa for the varietal of strawberry Molina hand-picked from a local organic farm. The fruited beer tastes clean, and the sweetness of the strawberry shines through, without any astringency.

Between the water and berries, both beers benefit from small batch size, and have been early customer favorites, tough to keep in stock. Peña estimates maybe 40-percent of Embarcadero’s customers qualify as craft beer devotees. “The rest just want to come hang out,” he says. Some are National City residents – cops, firefighters, teachers, nurses — excited to try a local taproom. “They like the vibe,” he adds, and often their first question is, “What kind of light beer do you have?”

Another common demographic are homebrewers driving up from Tijuana. They too originally started coming here for homebrew supplies, appreciating the proximity. Also, as Peña points out, “We speak Spanish, so it’s easier to communicate… we connect with those guys a little more”

Embarcadero’s latest beer, a brown ale, speaks a little more directly to their Mexican heritage. Brown Like That gets its name from a song by local band, B Side Players. The beer is a collaboration with B Side bandleader Karlos Paez, and Bonita organic coffee bar, Sabor a Ti Caffe. It incorporates Sabor’s signature cold brew, fresh recipient of a first place trophy at the latest Cold Brew City contest held in December. Based on the traditional Mexican coffee drink,, café de olla, it’s brewed with piloncillo, cinnamon, cloves, and chocolate. It adds an element of candy-sweetness to the otherwise dry brown.

The easy drinking beer is likely to fill Embarcadero’s first round of cans later this year. I suspect it will make its city proud.

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

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

Temperature inversions bring smoggy weather, "ankle biters" still biting

Near-new moon will lead to a dark Halloween
An Embarcadero Brewing flight: nitro stout, coffee brown ale, golden ale, and strawberry blonde.
An Embarcadero Brewing flight: nitro stout, coffee brown ale, golden ale, and strawberry blonde.

This past September, National City’s first homebrewing supply shop officially became National City’s first craft brewery. In a number of ways, Embarcadero Brewing and Supply feels like a time capsule out of San Diego craft history. The tasting room sits within a complex of industrial parks just off Mile of Cars Way. The beer menu reads straight out of the late 90s: a pale ale, a couple IPAs, plus a brown ale, golden ale, strawberry blonde, and nitro stout.

Place

Embarcadero Brewing

340 West 26th Street Suite D, National City

When I show up on a Saturday afternoon, its large roll-up door is open to the parking lot, and two of the business’s owners are manning the tasting room: cousins Gustavo Molina and Marco Peña. Along with their respective brothers, Jorge and Arturo, the South Bay locals partnered up to open Embarcadero, using limited resources. To get the brewery component launched, they had to close the shop temporarily, and divert resources from homebrewing inventory. So, while a corner of the space remains stocked with grains, mash paddles, and single-barrel conical fermenters, the breadth of gear is not what it used to be. They swear it will be back to full strength again soon, but in the meantime, their homebrewing customers find other reasons to visit.

Sponsored
Sponsored
Embarcadero Brewing and Supply is National City's first brewery.

“We’re getting the same customers that were buying the homebrew supplies,” says Molina, “but now they just come to drink.”

There are seven beers pouring, and they all drink well. Molina and his brother take the lead on brewing, producing one barrel on a three-vessel homebrew system. It’s sitting on casters just outside the shop, wheeled out to make room for customers.

I start with the golden, dubbed Rancho Del Rey. That was the name encompassing the entire South Bay region when the Spanish first settled the area. The water behind this beer is local too, National City well water, pulled from an aquafer hundreds of feet deep. Its relative softness helps the golden remain crisply refreshing, accompanied by minimal hop bitterness.

It’s also applied to the strawberry blonde, called Camarosa for the varietal of strawberry Molina hand-picked from a local organic farm. The fruited beer tastes clean, and the sweetness of the strawberry shines through, without any astringency.

Between the water and berries, both beers benefit from small batch size, and have been early customer favorites, tough to keep in stock. Peña estimates maybe 40-percent of Embarcadero’s customers qualify as craft beer devotees. “The rest just want to come hang out,” he says. Some are National City residents – cops, firefighters, teachers, nurses — excited to try a local taproom. “They like the vibe,” he adds, and often their first question is, “What kind of light beer do you have?”

Another common demographic are homebrewers driving up from Tijuana. They too originally started coming here for homebrew supplies, appreciating the proximity. Also, as Peña points out, “We speak Spanish, so it’s easier to communicate… we connect with those guys a little more”

Embarcadero’s latest beer, a brown ale, speaks a little more directly to their Mexican heritage. Brown Like That gets its name from a song by local band, B Side Players. The beer is a collaboration with B Side bandleader Karlos Paez, and Bonita organic coffee bar, Sabor a Ti Caffe. It incorporates Sabor’s signature cold brew, fresh recipient of a first place trophy at the latest Cold Brew City contest held in December. Based on the traditional Mexican coffee drink,, café de olla, it’s brewed with piloncillo, cinnamon, cloves, and chocolate. It adds an element of candy-sweetness to the otherwise dry brown.

The easy drinking beer is likely to fill Embarcadero’s first round of cans later this year. I suspect it will make its city proud.

Comments
Sponsored

The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

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

WAV College Church reminds kids that time is short

College is a formational time for decisions about belief
Next Article

Wild Wild Wets, Todo Mundo, Creepy Creeps, Laura Cantrell, Graham Nancarrow

Rock, Latin reggae, and country music in Little Italy, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Harbor Island
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