Turista Libre Tijuana Beer Tour

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Baja Black, Baja Brewing Company, Brava Dark Lager, Bronca Pilsner, Bufadora Doppelbock, calavera, Calavera American Pale Ale, Calavera Dubbel, cereceria tijuana, Cerveceria Insurgente, Cerveceria Minerva, Cerveceria Zesde, DasFalco IPA, Guera Pilsner, Insurgente Brown, L.A. Cetto, La Chupiteria, La Lupulosa, mexican beer, mexican craft beer, Minvera ITA (Imperial Tequila Ale), Morena Dark Lager, Strawberry Fields Ale, Tacos Los Perrones, Tiniebla, tj beer, TJ Light Lager, turista libre, turista libre tijuana craft beer, turista libre tijuana craft beer tour, Vanilla Sky Stout, Via Corporativo

Cerveceria Tijuana

Close to forty people headed south from San Diego Saturday morning, crossing the world’s busiest land border crossing at San Ysidro into Tijuana for the Turista Libre Tijuana Craft Beer Tour. After passing through the gates into Mexico and joining up with a few Tijuanenses eager to learn more about craft beer in their city we boarded a bus with the destination of Cerveceria Tijuana.

Turista Libre is a tour group run by Derrik Chinn, an American living in Tijuana that likes to take people off of Revolucion and show a side of Tijuana that many Americans never experience. Saturday’s group for the Craft Beer Tour was made up of beer geeks and beer industry people, employees from Stone Brewing Co., Bottlecraft, a beer blogger and a freelance beer writer were on hand, as well as non-beer geeks looking to learn more about beer.

Tacos Los Perrones

Cerveceria Tijuana is the oldest craft brewery in the city, located just south of downtown with a focus on German and Czech style lagers. After a quick brewery tour we settled into the pub which is adorned with solid wooden tables and ornamentation on the walls and stained glass windows creating the atmosphere of a continental pub. All six of their beers were sampled, Bronca Pilsner, Guera Pilsner, TJ Light Lager, Morena Dark Lager, Brava Dark Lager, and Bufadora Doppelbock. All were good examples of their style, perfect for warm days and long drinking sessions, but maybe a little light for the palates of those used to American craft beer. No one seemed to have complaints though, and Bufadora and Brava seemed to be the most favored among those I talked to.

After Cerveceria Tijuana we boarded the bus and headed back downtown for street side lunch served out of a converted bus at Tacos Los Perrones with some adventurous folks walking a few blocks to the L.A. Cetto winery Tijuana boutique to pick up olive oil and wine from the Guadalupe Valley east of Ensenada before boarding the bus to head to Via Corporativo, the first LEED certified building in the region for a tasting with Cerveceria Insurgente.

As stunning as the architecture of Via Corporativo is, Cerveceria Insurgente’s beer was the highlight of the stop. Started by two brothers, with Cerveceria Insurgente they want to revolutionize the palates of the people, many of whom have never had a beer not made by Grupo Modelo or Cerveceria Cuauhtémoc-Moctezuma the two largest brewers in Mexico that have a near duopoly on the beer market. Tiniebla, their Belgian-style wit was well spiced with coriander and orange peel, making for nice citrusy and creamy beer. Insurgente Brown, a 5% ABV Brown ale was a bit flat and didn’t stand out as much to me, but many people liked it and purchased bottles to take home that the brewers assured us were properly carbonated. Insurgente’s third offering, an IPA called La Lupulosa meaning “The Hoppy One” made up for any complaints about the previous beer. Brewed with five hops (Cascade, Centennial, Nelson, Warrior and Amarillo) La Lupulosa had a great aroma and flavor with a bitter punch to the taste buds. This is the kind of beer that those used to drinking Mexican lagers will need to work their way up to, but it easily pleased many of us used to hoppy West Coast style IPA’s.

Cerveceria Insurgente

For our fourth stop we visited The Beer Box, Tijuana’s first craft beer store where we sampled some beers from local homebrewers and commercial beers from other parts of Mexico and many people purchased bottles to take home with them. I grabbed two beers from Calavera, their American Pale Ale and Belgian-style Dubbel as well as Baja Black, a schwarzbier from Baja Brewing Company in San Jose del Cabo and ITA (Imperial Tequila Ale), a strong ale aged in tequila barrels from Cerveceria Minerva.

 

For our last stop we headed back downtown to the hip Calle Sexta (Sixth Street) and La Chupiteria for a tasting with Cerveceria Zesde. The brewers who are all under 21 wouldn’t be able to legally drink a beer in a bar in the United States got their start just six months ago and that seemed apparent with their first beer, DasFalco IPA. It had plenty of bitterness, but not much flavor to balance things out. Their next two beers Vanilla Sky Stout and Strawberry Fields Ale were better. The stout had plenty of chocolate and vanilla sweetness with roasted malt to balance things out while the strawberry ale had a strawberry sweetness that wasn’t overpowering (although it did get a bit too sweet for me as it warmed up).

With that the tour ended and many of the turistas elected to have dinner or check out other bars in downtown Tijuana before heading home.

Note: I consulted with Turista Libre on the breweries we should visit in Tijuana and helped promote the event.

Photos by Kinsee Morlan and Jeff Hammett

A version of this post can be found at West Coaster

Click below for a few more photos from the tour.

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Turista Libre Tijuana Craft Beer Tour

Tags

Cerveceria Insurgente, Cerveceria Tijuana, Cerveceria Zesde, mexican craft beer, mexico craft beer, tijuana craft beer, tijuana craft beer tour, turista libre, turista libre beer, turista libre craft beer

Saturday June 4th Turista Libre, which leads atypical day tours in Tijuana (in their own words: “No strolls down hooker row. No donkey shows. No gringo stereotypes.”), will be focusing on the craft beer of Tijuana. Turista Libre is run by Derrik Chinn, an American who has been living in Tijuana for the past three plus years.

Derrik is a friend of mine and was my neighbor while I briefly lived in Tijuana a couple of years ago. We’ve drank many a Tecate together (sometimes it seems as if Tecate owns the entire city), but he was just as excited as I was to find that there is a small but growing craft beer community in Tijuana.

We’ll meet just inside Mexico mere feet from the final border gate at 12pm. We’ll head over to Cerveceria Tijuana, which I believe is the oldest brewery in Tijuana and has the most presence in the US (they were at last year’s Stone Anniversary Festival). There we’ll sample six 5 ounce tasters (Morena Dark Lager, Guera Pilsner, Bronca Pilsner, Brava Dark Lager, Bufadora Bock, TJ Light Lager) as you can tell by the names, Cerveceria Tijuana focuses on lagers, but they’re quality lagers based on those found in Europe. From there we’ll head to the newer breweries of Cervecería Insurgente (3 six ounce tasters, La Lupulosa, Tiniebla, Brown), and  Cervecería Zesde (3 six ounce tasters, DasFalco IPA, Vanilla Sky Stout, Strawberry Fields Ale).

We’ll also stop by The Beer Box, a bottle shop with many Mexican, American and European craft beers so you can purchase a bottle or two to take home.

Tickets are $35 and space is limited, so make sure to prepay to reserve a spot. The tasters listed above as well as transportation from the border is included in the ticket price, but you’re on your own for bottles at The Beer Box. We’ll stop for tacos at least once because we’ll surely need them with all that beer. The day will end around 7pm in Downtown Tijuana near a few of the new beer bars if you’ll looking for more, or a short walk or cab ride back to the border.

So grab your passport and we’ll see ya June 4th!

There’s plenty of information about past tours and what to expect on Turista Libre’s website.

Questions: email me at events@sandiegobeerblog.com or Turista Libre at turistalibre @ gmail.com

Read more about Turista Libre: Urbanist, LA Times, NBC San Diego, and MSN

Calavera Mexican Imperial Stout

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calavera beer, calavera mexican imperial stout, chili beer, imperial stout with chili, mexican craft beer, mexican imperial stout

Calavera, which means “skull” in Spanish is a small Mexican brewery specializing in types of beer typically not found in Mexico. I picked up a 750ml bottle of Mexican Imperial Stout at The Beer Box in Tijuana. It’s bottle conditioned and weighs in at 9% ABV and used chili peppers for a very Mexican take on the style.

It pours black letting no light through with a solid tan head. The alcohol comes through in the smell as do the hops, I can also smell chili peppers.

This is a beer that needs to be drank fairly warm. The label recommends 10-13 degrees Celsius (approximately 50-55 degree Fahrenheit). Bitterness from the hops and roasted barley dominate the flavor. The alcohol is very apparent. The finish tastes strongly of chili peppers, there isn’t much heat or spiciness, but the flavor of chilies.

This is a beer I would love to age and taste with a few years on it, hoping for the hops to mellow out a bit and let the sweetness of the malts and maybe even more of the chili flavor to stand out. But I’ve been warned that Calavera’s current bottling system is inefficient and the possibility of oxidation is high. This beer isn’t easy to find (it’s not distributed in the US) but if I can ever get my hands on another bottle I will age it for a few years to see how it stands up.