If you’re in Santa Barbara for a weekend, it’s likely you’ll end up down in the Funk Zone at some point. It’s young and hip and cool, I guess, and well, there are indie breweries and lots of wine bars. Art galleries are there, too, which is what pulled us that way, along with checking out a couple breweries.
Brass Bear Brewing has a nice patio out back, with food/beer/wine/cocktails.
I enjoyed the blonde ale, but not so much the service and vibe. It was a little on the pretentious side. Hot dogs are something I like, a guilty pleasure of sort, preferably made on the grill. The one at Brass Bear came out lukewarm. Wasn’t grilled, either.
Validation Ale is an interesting concept, one that I couldn’t get into appreciating. It goes something like this: an electronic board listing the beers, but the beers are listed in competition with each other, or rather, 2 beers face-off in a battle of … purchases? The beer with more “buys” ends up being the winner, as if it’s the “preferred” or more “popular” beer. The Validated beer stays on the board until a challenger knocks it off. What I didn’t like is that some of the beer pairings weren’t really comparable in my book, plus the whole idea of looking at a screen with a beer competition going on wasn’t working for me.
Anyway, the service was great, friendly and cheerful. The pilsner was tasty enough, as was a pale ale. I guess one good thing is that when you get there, many beers will be available to choose from, as there were some 8-10 competitions happening.
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