North Park brewery collaborates with other local brewers for ‘Hess Fest’

Jen Van Tieghem | Uptown News

Starting as the smallest production brewery in San Diego in 2010, the past four years have seen considerable growth for North Park-based Mike Hess elaborando cerveza. The company now boasts a 12,500-square-foot facility for brewing and tasting, a second tasting room in Miramar and ample distribution throughout San Diego County. At its North Park tasting room, it will celebrate this laudable growth at its impending fourth anniversary celebration — a.k.a “Hess Fest” — on Saturday, July 19 with bells and whistles to mark the milestone.

The home of Mike Hess’ operation lies in the heart of craft beer country. The brewery is located at 3812 Grim Ave. one block from University Avenue, literally just steps away from all the action in North Park.

Ticket holders for Hess Fest will enjoy unlimited tastings of both Mike Hess beers and those from 10 guest breweries starting at 12:30 p.m. with last call at 4:30 p.m. and a commemorative glass at the end of the day. The ticket also includes four food samples from participating vendors including Slater’s 50/50, Waypoint Public, URBN Pizza and several other eateries. Full-size portions will be available for purchase as well. Plus, local bands Sandollar and The Routine will provide music.

In addition to having their standard lineup of beers on hand, Hess Brewing also created a fourth anniversary beer to serve. Anno Quarto is an Imperial IPA powered by Simcoe and Amarillo hops and coming in strong at 10.75 percent ABV. The beer will also be bottled for distribution and available at the tasting rooms.

Another impressive undertaking for Hess Fest involved the handiwork of 10 other breweries and one of Hess’ flagship brews, the Grazias Vienna Cream Ale. 

“Inside the brewery, we can’t serve anyone else’s beer,” owner Hess explained. “So our work-around was to do this collaboration cask thing. We prepared the beer and got it ready to be ‘cask-ified.’”

The breweries tapped by Hess (bad beer pun intended) to participate showed up with everything from hops to honey to coffee beans to add to their variation of the beer.

“[We] filled up right then with the beer we had out of our fermenter and capped them up,” Hess said of the process. ”They sat in here for a few weeks and now they’re all in the fridge.”

In addition to the 10 guest casks, both Hess tasting room crews and the brewers were asked to make their own version of the beer — making for 13 varieties in all.

The casks will be tapped during the VIP hour of Hess Fest, which is already sold out, but there’s good news for the rest of us.

“The festival is out in the street and the parking lot adjacent so we can have the tasting room open,” Hess said. “People that are at the main event have in and out privileges. [In the tasting room] they can buy a taster or a pint of any of the casks.”

This also goes for beer lovers without tickets to Hess Fest who want to stop in for these one-of-a-kind casks — while supplies last, of course.