The Best Brewery Hops in Orange County: Anaheim

You may know Orange County as the home of Disneyland, the home of the Angels and the Ducks, and the home of some of the more exorbitant toll prices this side of the Mississippi. It’s also, however, home to some truly terrific craft beer— one could easily argue it’s more packed with high quality brews than the entire greater Los Angeles area. We’ll start on the northern end of Orange County, exploring the beers of Anaheim and its neighboring cities, Placentia (pronounced pla-CENT-cha) and the aptly-named Orange. Brewery hops are hard to come by in an area so defined by its sprawl, but we’ve tried to put some things together that will suffice.

HONORABLE MENTION:

Chapman Crafted Beer –> Noble Ale Works –> Green Cheek Beer Company

Make no mistake, this is some *stellar* beer. It’s relegated to honorable mention status exclusively because, well, it isn’t *really* a hop. It’s about an eight-to-ten minute drive (depending on time of day) between each brewery, so… yeah, unless you’re walking seven miles in Orange County heat, this is generally ill-advised as a “hop” without a designated driver. But assuming you have one? This would definitely make the list.

Chapman Crafted Beer should come first. During the summer, it can be warm, but they have plenty of beer to cool you off and games to distract you from the heat. Ping pong, cornhole, foosball– you name it, Chapman’s probably got it, and its facility is easily spacious enough for your entire posse to come through for a craft beer game night. Did we mention the beer? It’s also quite good. A slew of very crushable IPAs fills the tap list, but our recommendation: the Absofruitly sour series is the way to go, with a nice kick of tartness and a rather lambic-y mouthfeel. A fruity sour is always the best way to beat the Orange County heat.

By the time you’re reading this, our description of Noble Ale Works— a small industrial taproom– may be outdated, as they’re supposedly expanding both their operation and their tasting room space. This is outstanding news, as Noble Ale Works is certainly in the mix to be called a Top 5 brewery in Orange County. Noble has two distinct specialties: hoppy IPAs and dark stouts. If either of these float your boat, Noble should be near the top of your visit list. Our recommendations: the Citra Showers, a grapefruity double, is regarded as one of the top Citra IPAs in Southern California. Also, while they release some monster imperial stouts, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Naughty Sauce, a nitro milk stout that’s sugary sweet and smoother than dolphin skin.

If you’re still coherent after sampling everything at Noble, give thanks to Evan Price, the former head brewer at Noble Ale Works who helped elevate Noble to one of the top craft destinations in Orange County. Price is now running a new brewery three miles north, Green Cheek Beer Co. The tap room can be a bit difficult to find, hidden in a maze of an industrial complex, but it’s got plenty of seating and, just like his time at Noble, plenty of Price’s top-quality IPAs. Our recommendations: the Positively Busy is a smooth IPA, a lovely marriage of hop and haze, bitterness and sweetness. Green Cheek also has been putting out some sours and wild ales– the Grandiloquence with Sage Honey was on tap when we visited, a barel-aged blend of several saisons with a bright citrus flavor and a delightful sour wallop.

3. All-American Ale Works –> Stereo Brewing

All-American Ale Works may not be one of the most notable Orange County breweries, but it has several things going for it. First, if you love doing brewery hops, the Honey Pot Meadery will have a tasting room opening next door soon. (Author’s note: Honey Pot Meadery is now open!) Walking ten feet from beer to mead sounds heavenly. Second, they deserve serious credit for rolling out a fairly adventurous tap list. It’s not just IPAs with one light option and a couple of stouts like many breweries are content to do. Here, you’ll find mead-infused bragotts, fruity cream ales, some flavored browns, red, and bocks– even a nitro barleywine in the mix. We may not have loved everything we tried, but we have serious respect for anyone willing to go for it. Those willing to branch out with their flight selections should head down to All-American Ale Works with a friend, grab a game and some samplers, and explore their offerings. Our recommendations: the Good Vibes is a coconut stout that delivered the goods– and that Not Your Daddy’s Barleywine on nitro is dangerously crushable for a 10%. Sip wisely.

From there, it’s about a mile walk/bike west on La Palma up into Placentia for a visit to Stereo Brewing. We were pleasantly surprised by our visit to Stereo. A “classic rock” theme could’ve easily devolved into some Hard Rock Cafe style hackery, but the tap room is welcoming and boasts a massive shelf with an impressive selection of board games. They routinely have Vinyl Swap nights, and their Summer Tour– a series of city-inspired variant releases for which buyers can get stamps per variant, with new prizes coming to reward those with multiple stamps– is a clever, on-theme incentivizer to encourage return customers. Furthermore, the beer was reliably good down the tap list. Our recommendations: the Astral Plane, a hazy IPA with some nice hop bitterness, and the Wall of Sound, an award-winning oatmeal stout with easy chocolate smoothness and a refreshing dry finish.

2. Hoparazzi Brewing –> Asylum Brewing –> Bottle Logic Brewing

This is easily the most hoppable three-or-more brewery hop in all of Orange County, and it’s one of the easier hops in Southern California. You hardly need to leave the parking lot– two breweries are in the same complex, and the final destination is across a side street. It also helps that one of the breweries on this hop has some of the best sours in Orange County, and another is the highest rated Orange County brewery on Untappd. There will be something for everyone here, all of it wrapped in a package of convenience and tied with a beautiful bow. (For the iron-livered, start at Phantom Ales a half a mile north of this hop, and order a Brown Recluse or some of their tasty meads.)

Start at Hoparazzi Brewing. It’s a homey taproom, with some decent space and game selection. The bartenders are helpful, the beer is mostly good. Every time we tell people about Hoparazzi, they assume that they are well-known for their IPAs. They do have a good variety of crushable IPAs on tap, but if you’re going for IPAs, you’re missing the boat. What Hoparazzi boasts above all else is its La Tarte series of sours. They may not have the reputation outside of Orange County that places like The Bruery or The Good Beer Company have for their sours, but best believe that statewide recognition is waiting around the corner. Our recommendations: La Tarte Melina and La Tarte Cerise, sours rich with raspberries and cherries, respectively. They’re jammy, nearly creamy with their texture, but they still give you the sour power you crave.

Head next a few doors down to Asylum Brewing. Its taproom is one of the smallest in the area, but that’s not a negative– it was a quiet afternoon, so we sat and played board games in peace, conversed with the owner, and ran down the tap list. Many of the larger breweries boast huge taprooms filled to the brim with rowdy parties, kids, dogs, etc… so it’s enormously pleasant to know there are places that are more of a safe haven– an asylum, if you will– from the other forms of brewery madness. Their beers don’t have a bunch of fruits, adjuncts, sugars, etc., but they have a number of high-quality west-coast IPAs to peruse. Our recommendations: Monsters We Breed, a rich, dank west coast IPA, and, just to show they can go coast to coast style-wise, Dubstep Never Dies, a tropical New England IPA with some pleasant bite.

The grand finale: Bottle Logic Brewing. Bottle Logic has one of the best reputations in Southern California, and with good reason– its beer is consistently outstanding. As a possible negative to some, one gets the sense that “serious beer drinkers” populate this tap room more than the rowdy casual chuggers who’d complain about the lack of cornhole. There are plenty of places to get wild– there is only one Bottle Logic. Be careful with your order: the flights are six deep, and many of their best selections are 10% ABV and up, so mind your constitution and follow the rules for maintaining one’s head during a brewery hop. Everything here is terrific– including the Berlinear Equation, their berliner weisse that could easily stand alongside the best sours in Orange County. However, if you’re at Bottle Logic, you should order some of their imperial options. Or, for the brave, all of them. Our recommendations: their stouts are absolutely top of the line. We recently had a rum-barrel-aged porter, The Lost Colony, a nutty rum cake of a drink, slamming you with 13.2% ABV but also gliding gently over your palate with vanilla and walnut. We also had La Calotterie, an apple-brandy-barrel-aged stout with almond and vanilla, which… again, 14.1%, but it’s heavenly– as Emily said, “This would be perfect at Thanksgiving.” Also, if you see a hefty imperial IPA at the base of their tap list, that too should be a must– their recent triple New England IPA, Absolute Unit, was a sleeping giant of destruction and mayhem, intensely crushable for a 10% ABV drink, thanks to its vibrant tropical citrus flavors. Your vision is blurring, but all you can sense are the papayas and pineapples dancing in your mouth.

1. The Bruery/Bruery Terreux

Confession: this is not a hop. If you need a hop, try the one above that ends with Bottle Logic– you won’t regret it. But if you’re simply looking to try a lot of bold, flavorful, adventurous, sensual, grandiose beers in friendly taprooms with games to play and bottles whose prices are outrageously low compared to what they’d cost in the outside world? Then you have one of two choices. Hit The Bruery, or hit its sister, sour-emphasized location, Bruery Terreux.

Why go there instead of doing a hop? Let’s set aside everything about the taprooms themselves– they’re lovely, but they aren’t why you go to either of these places. You go because there are roughly fifty beers on tap. Yes, we wrote that correctly. You know how some breweries give out flights via checklist, where you pick up a small piece of paper, detailing the dozen-ish options they have and what you want? This checklist is more like a scroll, and it goes front and back in small print, with helpful descriptions of everything you could possibly drink. The bartenders are also knowledgeable and are more than happy to help if you feel overwhelmed by the absolute onslaught of options at your disposal. These lists contain options from The Bruery, which usually consists of more Belgians, stouts, and barrel-aged drinks; Bruery Terreux, which usually consists of a variety of sours and wild ales for which your tastebuds are unprepared; and Offshoot Beer Co., the Bruery’s (ahem) offshoot that focuses on crafting hoppy IPAs. Whatever you want? They have it.

And they don’t just have it– they have top-of-the-line versions of whatever you need. The reason you’d go to one of these locations instead of hopping from taproom to taproom is because this is a one-stop shop. Best sours in Orange County? Bruery Terreux has them. Best barrel-aged stouts and strong ales in Orange County? The Bruery is, at worst, top three. Best IPAs in Orange County? Again, one could easily argue for Offshoot Beer Co.’s inclusion in the top three. And by the time you’ve tried everything that looks delicious on the menu– well, that’s a moot point, you won’t be able to try everything that looks delicious on the menu in one sit, unless they’re carrying you out into an ambulance after. It’s a full day of elite level beer consumption.

Our recommendations require their own paragraph. Sours? The Frucht series of berliner weisses are both obscenely fruity and devilishly sour. Outside of that, the Sans Pagaie, their Belgian-style kriek, and the Tart of Darkness, their oak-aged sour stout, are among the best sours in Southern California. Stouts? Their Share This series is a must– our most recent sample of these was a mole-infused spicy 13.5% stout. If that doesn’t make your mouth water, check your pulse. The So Happens It’s Tuesday is also a no-frills, no-holds-barred, 14.7% stout. Don’t order too many of them, or you’ll So Happens It’s Tuesday your pants later. Finally, of the IPA options, you really can’t go wrong, but on our last trip, we had the Delta, a hazy double, and it knocked our socks off. The Alpha, Bravo and Charlie beers are also quite good– I’m looking forward to the imminent release of Echo.

BEST PLACE FOR IPAS:
Noble Ale Works (Runner-up: Green Cheek, Offshoot)

BEST PLACE FOR SOURS:
Bruery Terreux (Runners-up: Hoparazzi, Bottle Logic)

BEST PLACE FOR STOUTS:
Bottle Logic (Runners-up: Noble Ale Works, The Bruery)

BEST PLACE TO PLAY GAMES:
Chapman Crafted Beer (Runner-up: Stereo Brewing, Asylum Brewing)

BEST PLACE FOR A LARGE GROUP:
Chapman Crafted Beer (Runner-up: The Bruery, Green Cheek)

BEST PLACE FOR A SMALL, QUIET DRINK:
Bottle Logic (Runners-up: Asylum Brewing, Hoparazzi)

BEST PLACE TO EAT:
No brewpubs on this list! Many of them have regular food trucks.

Which is your favorite of these brewery hops? Are there any you love that we neglected to mention? Please shout them out in the comments below!