We’re fortunate to be living during an absolute renaissance of craft beer: a time when a slew of creative and devoted brewers take some inspiration from a rich international heritage, combine it with outside-the-box thinking and a playful, adventurous spirit, and come up with beverages of spectacular variety.

If you’ve got a room at the Sofia Hotel on Friday, August 9 or Saturday, August 10, you’re but a 12-minute drive from one of the country’s most exuberant celebrations of the craft-brewing industry: San Diego’s third-annual Beer Con!

The Basics

Held at the Marina Village Conference Center, Beer-Con is fantasyland for malt- and hop-lovers: a two-day immersion in beer tastings and presentations from beer-makers and other industry experts.

You can land a one-day pass for $109, which includes conference admission; the two-day pass for $139 adds brewery tours to the fun.

(And thanks to an Uber app, you can request a ride there and back on your smartphone!)

Breweries and Speakers

An impressive congregation of breweries will be represented during the proceedings. They include some of San Diego’s finest, such as Coronado Brewing Co., Mike Hess Brewing, and Thorn St. Brewery, as well as some of California’s other standout outfits like North Coast Brewing out of Fort Bragg and Stone Brewing Co. from Escondido. The Golden State, after all, is one of the foremost centers for microbrew activity in the U.S., and fabulously situated amid the broader beer-worshipping arenas of the West Coast and interior West.

A great lineup of speakers will add a little edification to the imbibing. This year they’ll include brewmasters like Doug Constantiner of Societe Brewing Co., expert beermongers such as Mark Shultz of Slaters 50/50, and dedicated beer aficionados such as Laurie Delk.

Friday will see vans setting out for local brewery tours, while the conferences will run all day Saturday.

If you’re an appreciator of finely crafted IPAs, porters, stouts, pilsners, pale ales, saisons, and all the other refreshing elixirs a noble guild concocts out of malted grain, hops, and water (with the help of hard-working yeast, of course), Beer-Con is a can’t-be-missed extravaganza.

What better way to spend a couple of August afternoons than by sampling regional beer culture? And it’s only a stone’s-throw from the Sofia!

Photo credit: QuinnDombrowski