Two new breweries to top your beer bucket list for 2018

Two to Watch

Breweries open here at such a rapid clip, news of yet one more is often greeted with a yawn. Two newcomers, though, are raising my eyebrows and my expectations.

They are, in order:

1. Wild Barrel, hosting a grand opening party on Saturday, is the wild child of craft beer stalwart — or shall I say “legend”? — “Dr.” Bill Sysak and brewer Bill Sobieski.

The Barrel’s soft opening began in mid-2017, so this g.o. was a long time coming. It will feature a new beer, Murky Minds Drink Alike, a New England-style IPA made with Carlsbad’s Burgeon Beer. (Four-packs will go on sale for $18 at 11 a.m.) Also, check out the beer-and-chocolate event led by Sysak.

A former Army medic, Sysak was one of the most prominent figures in Southern California craft beer. His parties were the stuff of, well, legend, and as Stone’s beer ambassador he shepherded epic evenings of beer and whatever took his fancy (chocolate, cheese, cigars, vegan dishes, the tears shed by joyful unicorns).

Sobieski is also a craft celeb. Another Stone veteran and homebrew star, he is the former brewer at Anaheim’s Hoparazzi, where his stunning fruit-centric beers won an impassioned following.

Wild Barrel Brewing: 692 Rancheros Drive, San Marcos.

2. On Jan. 22, the downtown spot once occupied by The Beer Company will re-open as the Bell Marker. The 200-seat brewery restaurant has a complicated back story, but the tale is front-loaded with the return of a top brewer, Noah Regnery.

The Carlsbad High grad held head brewing posts at Pizza Port and Santa Barbara County’s Hollister Brewing. At Bell Marker — the name is a reference to El Camino Real’s bell-shaped historic markers — Regnery is brewing a dozen or more house beers. The initial lineup includes an English pale ale, an Irish red, a West Coast IPA and a Czech pilsner.

Now, that tangled back story: Bell Marker is part of Tony Yanow’s Los Angeles-based Artisanal Brewers Collective. Yanow and Meg Gill founded Golden Road Brewing in 2011, then sold it to AB InBev in 2015. Since then, Yanow and his collective have bought numerous Southern California taverns and restaurants, planning to make beer at each site.

“But this is the first place to actively brew,” said Regnery, the collective’s director of brewing. “We want to be Pizza Port-esque, with all sorts of beer styles. And since we’re in San Diego, they’ll obviously be hop-heavy.”

Bell Marker: 602 Broadway, San Diego.

Double Dipping

Salt & Straw, the Portland-based ice cream emporium known for its out-of-the-carton thinking, is scooping up two unusual treats at its new Little Italy shop:

Peanut Butter Stout, made with the Belching Beaver beer of the same name, and Hopped Orange Creamsicle, using Modern Times’ Thermometer Island, a barrel-aged saison dosed with blood oranges.

“We broke down the flavors and used the finished beer in the ice cream,” said Tyler Malek, whose business card identifies him as Salt & Straw’s “churnmaster.”

S&S perfected this approach in Portland, where it has made ice cream with Breakside Brewery’s beers, while Breakside has made beers with S&S ice cream.

“Coming down to San Diego,” Malek said, “I felt that kinship and the ability to jump in with some of these amazing breweries.”

Peanut Butter Stout promises to be a regular at the local Salt & Straw. Hopped Orange Creamsicle is enjoying a limited run, through Feb. 1.

Salt & Straw: 1670 India St., San Diego.

Kings of Beer

Craft beer fans — and I’m as guilty as the next — are notorious for chasing after the next great beer. At times, though, it’s good to return to the classics.

Weihenstephaner Vitus Weizenbock (7.7 percent alcohol by volume) comes from the world’s oldest operating brewery. Of the many wheat beers made by this 978-year-old Bavarian institution, Vitus is one of the best. The firm malt body is overlaid with clove, banana and pineapple.

Vitus is this week’s King — Kaiser? — replaced North Island IPA (7.5 percent), the epitome of the Next Great Beer. Nothing wrong with that, as one sip of Coronado Brewing’s fruity New England-style brew will tell you. Maybe in a few centuries, it too will attain classic stature.

Words to Drink By

“The span of his shoulders and definition of his torso barely concealed under a Brockton Brewing T-shirt forced an exhale from Lori’s lips. He kept quiet as her eyes took him in, from rubber boot clad feet to the light red stubble covering his jaw.” — Lust at first sight in Liz Crowe’s 2012 bodice-ripping, bottle-smashing “Paradise Hops.”

Twitter: @peterroweut

peter.rowe@sduniontribune.com