Trip to San Diego

Last weekend I took a few days off work to head down to San Diego to go camping with my Dad and QUAFF (Quality Ales Fermentation Fraternity). QUAFF is the big home brew club in San Diego with lots of members. I mentioned in another post that I've been camping with this club before to Aqua Caliente, but since I had so much fun last time I figured it would be another great opportunity to meet more people with similar interests. The timing was perfect because of Mother's Day and it happened to be my dad's birthday that Saturday.
So anyway, that next morning before we headed out to the campsite, my dad and I wanted to check out Intergalactic Brewing Company, which was just recently opened by a guy I went to high school with, Alex Van Horne. After touring the brewery and bombarding Alex with a billion questions my dad and I headed down to Balboa Park for a San Diego Brewery Exhibit that was in town. I'll include a picture or two of the exhibit but it was pretty fascinating to see the evolution of what San Diego has ultimately become.

Finally, hit the road with several growlers from Intergalactic and Beachwood. Because I google mapped the the route to get to Lake Morena, I saw that we had to drive through Alpine. It didn't take much convincing to have my dad stop off there for a few samples and what's another growler?
So eventually, we got to the campsite and set up our tent. We met up with the rest of the QUAFF club members and immediately started sharing beers. I met lot's of great people while I was down there, homebrewers seem to just be so easy going and down to earth.
Later in the night, everyone seemed to be bouncing around from site, drinking beer from each others Jockey set-ups. I eventually got to try this guy's beer which is a strong ale aged for 2 years... It was a Strong Ale known as "Creeping Death" nicknamed because its so easy drinking and so high in alcohol. It was brewed with a bunch of different dark fruits and had 5 different yeast strains to finish it off at 17% abv. Needless to say... "Creeping Death" got the best of me and I my head was hurting pretty bad for most of the next day. The 95 degree weather wasn't helping my situation either.

At one point, some of the members from the club began roasting a pig on a manual spit for a potluck scheduled for dinner. The pig was roasted for 8 hours, totally worth every minute too... That night was more mellow than the night before. I went to bed kind of early and felt great the next day. Had my steak and eggs and we hit the windy roads back to Rancho Penasquitos. Because it was Mothers Day, we relaxed at home and spend some quality family time together. We had an unfortunate incident that afternoon that later resulted in having to put down my childhood pet Abbey. She brought nothing but happiness to our family so it was very difficult to see her go. She was 13 years old and not getting any younger. We all miss her very much and will never forget her as she was a true member of our family. Here's a picture of her as a puppy with Beau our other faithful companion probably sometime circa 1999.
Anyway, it was a quick trip but I was very glad to be down in San Diego with the family this last weekend. I'm sure I'll be down there relatively soon with the San Diego County Fair beer entries due next month. Until then, Cheers!