Name: Coronado Brewing Company

Location: Coronado, CA

Type: Production

Available in DC Market: Yes

What you need to know: The San Diego beer scene is both intense and saturated with fine craft breweries. Breaking news, right? While this landscape is so massive, there are a handful of established breweries sustaining slow and steady growth while continuing to innovate. Coronado Brewing is just that kind of brewery. Founded in 1996 as a brewpub, the response to their beers has been so great that they now have to fight to keep up with distribution. They now distribute to ten states and brew over 4,500 barrels of beer a year.

Sponsorship

Beer #1: Barrel-aged Barleywine (barleywine / 11.0%)
Notes: Brewed with honey and aged in oak brandy barrels, this bad boy is for real. It’s got all the classic traits of an American barleywine: a deep, dark brown pour; a nose of toffee, dried fruit, and the like; a mouthful of the same with enough hops and carbonation to keep an even keel; and enough punch to knock you on your tuckus. Definitely worth a visit, but tread lightly.
Beer Advocate: 88 (20 reviews)
Rate Beer: 98 overall, 92 style (29 ratings)

Beer #2: Idiot IPA (imperial IPA / 8.5%)
Notes: Coronado brought this one along last year and rightly so – it’s definitely a standout. Back then, we said, “Think big and bold imperial IPA with loads of piney and citrusy hops. To balance that out is a generous, but not overbearing, amount of sweet and caramel notes rounding out this DIPA. Coming in at 8.5%, this one can put a hurting on you pretty quick.” As true today as it was then.
Beer Advocate: 89 (247 reviews)
Rate Beer: 98 overall, 86 style (340 ratings)

Summary: Yet again, Coronado is doing itself justice by bringing out the big guns – especially the hard-to-find barleywine – and they’re leaving their beautiful location in San Diego Bay to do it. Cheers to that.

This profile is a part of the DCBEER.COM SAVOR Brewery Profile series. For more information, follow the link to see profiles of all 2012 SAVOR participants.

Beer Review Disclaimer: The beer reviews found on Beer Advocate and Rate Beer do not represent the opinions of this site. We provide these in the hope that they will serve as a resource showing what some craft beer fans have thought of the beers. These reviews can be a helpful guideline, but are not the be-all end-all about a beer’s strengths or weaknesses.