A New Brew for San Diego: Sake from Kuracali

A lot of new brewery founders have other jobs, but Charles Perkins has a particularly cool one; by day Perkins works for the San Diego Supercomputer Center. In his spare time on nights and weekends, he's been building Kuracali, sake and beer brewery that may be producing delicious beverages by the end of summer.

The 1,200-square-foot space includes a small tasting room which will initially keep weekend hours and sell tasters, pints and growlers of the beer and sake; its San Marcos location is near The Lost Abbey and Rip Current Brewing, making it easy to incorporate it into a stop on a brewery crawl.

There are only a handful of American craft sake breweries in the U.S., and none in California. Perkins is hoping to use polished California-grown rice as his base, and experimenting with different kinds of yeast to brew his Sidecar Sake line, which will focus on premium fresh ginjo-grade clear and 'cloudy' unfiltered sake. He'll also brew beer using sake yeast; Kuracali's Red Planet Ales will include a robust porter, sweet stout and cream ale. Combined, the beer and sake production encompasses a 12 BBL brewing setup and both are planned for distribution to local restaurants and bars.
· Kuracali [Official Site]
· All Beer Coverage on Eater [~ESD~]