Mission Brewery

I recently toured Mission Brewery in San Diego while out there on a business trip and thought I’d share my experience with you. Mission Brewery currently resides inside of the old Wonder Bread building in downtown San Diego, just a block and a half east of Petco Park. Mission Brewery has called this factory their home since 2010.

I showed up with some coworkers having no plans other than to enjoy a new beer now that my busy day of travel was over and conference proceedings were due to start first thing tomorrow. The building itself is absolutely stunning. The original brick remains the powerful structure that stands tall with pride. Upon entrance you can see one of the silos that was once used as part of the Wonder Bread factory back when it resided there. Some of those parts have since been repurposed for use at Mission Brewery.

As we sat at the bar and started reading through beers trying to make the, always difficult, decision of what to try, we could smell the beer brewing in the air only a couple feet away. After tasting the Dark Seas Russian Imperial Stout, the Blonde Ale Kolsch, and the Strawberry Wit Witbier, I decided to select a pint of the Strawberry Wit to enjoy for a light, summery experience.

We sat for a little while enjoying our beer selections, taking everything in and looking at the grand chandeliers above. Then something caught my ear. The bartender had just said something about a tour while talking with another customer! Me being the outgoing person I am, happily got the bartenders attention and asked “Did I hear you say something about a tour??”

To my delight she responded with “Yes, we have tours.” She gave us some information about them including the cost ($12, so cheap!) and the fact that you’re supposed to reserve a spot on the tour in advance. This dampened my spirit, until she said, “Let me check and see if we have any spots available on the 4 o’clock tour coming up.” Turns out they had enough spots for my coworker and I to join on the tour that started in just a few minutes. Time for a tour, woohoo!

The group met over at some tables where we got introduced to our wonderful tour guide, Jesse. He shared some of the history of the building and Mission Brewery with us, including that the original Mission Brewery was established in 1913 on the coast but went out of business during the first year of prohibition. You can read more about the history of Mission Brewery on their website.

Along with the tour came 5 beer tasters! Bonus! We got to try the Mission Blonde, Mission Amber, Mission IPA, Mission Hefeweizen, and Dark Seas. Too bad I was also struggling to hold the Strawberry Wit all the while I was enjoying each of these tasters!

We proceeded along on the tour after enjoying our first two tasters. Our first stop was where the grains come into the brewery, this is what the original Wonder Bread Factory component was repurposed for. This is the machine that grinds down the grains/malt to create what’s called the ‘grist’ for the next part of the process. This looked like a giant funnel, routing the grains into a little machine no bigger than a person.

Next, Jesse explained the four key ingredients required to brew beer, water, hops, malt, and yeast, as we walked over to the next set of machines. These were the ‘mash tun’ and the ‘mash kettle’. This is where the grist is combined with the water and heated up to the right temperature, but only for a couple of hours max.

Now there were quite a few more machines in the brewery where I’m not 100% sure what their role is and I didn’t get pictures of them, so I’ll skip over those ones one jump right over those. If I had to guess though, it would be for whirlpooling and other special customization’s. I think all of the steps I’m missing between the mash kettle and the fermentation tanks are what help define what types of beer they are brewing.

Now on to the fermentation tanks. These are where the magic happens, dirty water turns beer! I would say Mission Brewery had around 15-20 fermentation tanks, they were pretty impressive for the size of the brewery. The beer gets transferred into these tanks and sits for a specified length of time, again, the length specific to the beer being brewed. Fun fact, did you know that lager is held at a cooler temperature than other beers and that is partially why lagers are cleaner beers than others?

Then we moved on to possibly the coolest part of the tour, the bottling room. I believe Jesse told us that the machine that they use is actually an old German machine they had purchased. The machine operates relatively well with 5 people working it, however, they typically use more people for efficiency.

This is the machine that does all of the work to get the beer into bottles and carbonated so it can be shipped anywhere. This is the reason we are able to enjoy the Mission Brewery beers in the comfort of our own homes. The machine is loud and constantly moving things along. The other machine in this room was the canning machine. It was much smaller than the bottling machine but quite as effective. Similarly to how they feed the bottling machine empty bottles to sterilize and then fill, they do the same with the canning machine. Empty cans were stacked near the canning machine in preparation for the next round of canning.

We ended up being part of a fun group, I mean, how do you find a NOT fun group on a brewery tour? Our tour guide, Jesse, was very knowledgeable. We even stopped to pose so he could take a picture of the group at the end of the tour in the bottling room! The tour was definitely worth doing and I’m glad we were able to go on it last minute.