As evidenced below, sometimes San Diego-related beer news takes place well outside the geographical limits of San Diego County. Keep scrolling for the story of a local brewer returning to the area where he grew up to establish a communal, craft-focused taproom, plus info about the San Diego County Fair\u2019s professional brewing competition and a beer-centric eatery ending its run in Liberty Station.<\/p>\n
As a vocational class, brewers lead busy lives, but few have as much going on as Ramiro Salas. In addition to his day-in-day-out work at The Brigantine restaurant group\u2019s Kearny Mesa-based Ketch Brewing<\/a>, Salas runs his own business, Cerveza California. A draft-beer catering operation of sorts, that side-hustle has him gallivanting around San Diego County, slaking public and private eventgoers\u2019 thirst along the way. As if that weren\u2019t enough, he is now the co-founder and proprietor of Station West, a beer, wine and coffee bar in the City of Imperial. It\u2019s a homecoming for the native, who co-founded the first brewery in nearby Calexico 10 years ago. That business only lasted two years, but it didn\u2019t dim Salas\u2019 enthusiasm for bringing high-quality beer to Imperial Valley. For this project, he reunited with his friend of 20 years, Josue Valadez , a former brewer for Ballast Point Brewing and the founder of Mexicali\u2019s Pintito Cerveza Artesanal. Opened in late January, Station West has been an early hit with locals. Coming in at roughly 1,000 square feet with a large, family-friendly outdoor patio, the venue is equipped with 19 taps dispensing local and otherwise artisanal ales and lagers (including selections from Ketch and Cerveza California), plus ciders and other alternative beverages. Station West is located at 297 South Imperial Avenue and is open from 3 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.<\/p>\n The organizers of the San Diego County Fair Craft Brew Competition are putting out an APB aimed at local brewers, beer judges and well-versed enthusiasts. For professional businesses looking to enter their beers, ciders, meads, hard seltzers and hard kombuchas, the submission deadline is Monday, February 23, and the last date to receive shipped entries is Thursday, March 5. (Although in-person deliveries can be received from March 3 to 6.) Judging will take place from March 19 to 21. Individuals interested in volunteering as a judge are invited to sign up by clicking the I want to volunteer link online<\/a>. In other SDCFCBC (now that\u2019s an acronym) news, a quartet of new style categories are being added to this year\u2019s competition: Mexican-style light and dark lagers, Belgian-style dubbel and non-alcoholic beer.<\/p>\n The Oggi\u2019s bar and restaurant which had operated on the southeast edge of Point Loma\u2019s Liberty Station development for over two decades has closed. Like the majority of the Orange County-based business\u2019 locations, it was not equipped with a brewhouse. The only Oggi\u2019s store with brewing capabilities is its Carmel Mountain brewpub, which originally opened as Stuft Pizza in the \u201990s. Following its turn-of-the-century rebrand, Oggi\u2019s was named Champion Brewery at the 2004 World Beer Cup under Brewmaster Tom Nickel (who now owns Nickel Beer Co., O\u2019Brien\u2019s Pub and The Pub at Lake Cuyamaca, and is a co-organizer of the aforementioned SDCFCBC). As has been the case for decades, the majority of the restaurant chain\u2019s beers are currently produced at sister-business Left Coast Brewing in San Clemente. The Liberty Station store\u2019s closure leaves the 360-acre mixed-use development with a single brewery-owned venue, which just so happens to be the largest restaurant in San Diego County, Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens \u2013 Liberty Station<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As evidenced below, sometimes San Diego-related beer news takes place well outside the geographical limits of San Diego…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[15017,2251,12958,83033,79,83034,5469,83035,3365,1457,74,83036,76,75,8540],"class_list":["post-173726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-bar","tag-brandon-hernandez","tag-brigantine","tag-cerveza-california","tag-kearny-mesa","tag-ketch-brewing","tag-liberty-station","tag-oggis","tag-point-loma","tag-restaurant","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-county-fair","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-stone-brewing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}