Karl Strauss marks 34th birthday with new beer releases

Karl Strauss photographed at his San Diego brewery in 1989.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Feb. 6, 2023 9:57 AM PT

San Diego County’s oldest brewery, Karl Strauss, turned 34 yesterday. The party is continuing this month at all eight of Karl’s brewpubs: downtown San Diego, Sorrento Mesa, Carlsbad, 4S Ranch, Temecula, Costa Mesa Anaheim and Los Angeles.

They offer “anniversary flights” of the 33rd anniversary beer, a barrel-aged imperial Baltic porter; the 34th anniversary beer, a wheat wine aged in chardonnay barrels with Sauvignon Blanc grapes; and next year’s beer, a Weizenbock.

That’s a tempting lineup, but I’ll miss the anniversary bashes once held inside Karl’s Pacific Beach headquarters. The tasting room that hosted those standing-room-only parties is closed while the already cramped brewery undergoes a remodel, squeezing in a new brewhouse and canning line.

“Our hope is that once these are completed,” said Andrew Wilde, Karl’s marketing and creative director, “we will reformulate what the public-facing component at the main brewery will look like.”

Maybe next year.

Rowe is a feelance writer.

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Peter Rowe

Peter is a freelance writer who writes about beer in his bimonthly column Brewery Rowe for the San Diego Union-Tribune. He worked as a reporter and columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune from 1984 to 2020. A native Californian who grew up in Encinitas, Rowe is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Northwestern University. He is past president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and a former Fulbright scholar. He has won a few journalism awards, but would trade them all for a chance to avenge his 1994 “Jeopardy!” loss. Married to a terrific woman who has saved him from errors in writing and in life, he has three sons.