Salty Toast Beer Fest: San Diego Pours, Filipino Food & Our Usual Chaos
We returned to Broadway Pier in San Diego for the Salty Toast Beer Fest, where Starfire Brewing, RAR, Beer Zombies, and a surprise triple IPA from Montreal’s Messorem kept our tasting cups busy. Drekker’s Slang Du Jour Bumbleberry Cobbler opened the episode, but SD Sisig’s pork belly, garlic rice, fried egg, and lumpia nearly made us abandon the rest of the beer tents completely.
Adam & Dedra
7/30/20269 min read
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Salty Toast Beer Fest in San Diego: Waterfront Pours, Montreal IPAs, and Filipino Food
There are plenty of places to hold a beer festival. A convention center works. A park is fine. A parking lot can get the job done.
But a beer festival on Broadway Pier in San Diego, surrounded by water with cool coastal weather and dozens of breweries pouring unlimited samples? That is difficult to beat.
We traveled to San Diego for the Salty Toast Beer Fest, a waterfront craft beverage festival featuring more than 55 beer, wine, and spirits vendors, local food trucks, live music, and international soccer on a giant screen. More importantly, it brought us back to Broadway Pier, where we had attended the San Diego Festival of Beer every year before 2020. It had been roughly seven years since we last drank our way across that pier, which was about six years and eleven months too long.
With our hotel only a couple of blocks away, we also had the most important part of any beer festival strategy handled: a short walk back to the room.
Or, as Dedra described it after the food arrived, a short waddle.
The Featured Beer Was Basically Cobbler in a Glass
Before getting into the festival, we opened the episode with Drekker Brewing Company’s Slang Du Jour – Bumbleberry Cobbler Sour à la Mode.
This smoothie-style sour was loaded with blueberry, strawberry, blackberry, granola, cinnamon, and vanilla bean. It poured a deep reddish color and was thick enough to coat the glass, which is usually a good indication that Dedra is about to approve of whatever we opened.
Unlike the aggressively tart sours that make your entire face fold inward, this one leaned sweeter and more dessert-like. Adam picked up plenty of cobbler and pie-crust character, while Dedra immediately appreciated the rich fruit and softer sourness.
By the final pour, it had gone from “smoothie sour” to “something we could possibly dump over waffles.”
We did not actually sacrifice any beer to a waffle. We have standards.
Low standards, sometimes, but standards.
Returning to Broadway Pier
Salty Toast was organized by the same team behind Arizona’s Copper State Beer Festival, which made the trip feel like a combination of an Arizona beer community reunion and a San Diego vacation.
The difference between arriving from the Phoenix heat and stepping onto the San Diego waterfront was immediate. The day started sunny before becoming overcast, temperatures stayed comfortable, and there was water in nearly every direction.
It was the kind of weather that makes you question why you live somewhere where opening the front door during summer feels like checking the inside of an oven.
The festival layout included the indoor Port Pavilion and the open-air pier. The beverage tents stretched toward the end of the pier, food trucks were stationed closer to the entrance, and a giant screen was showing international soccer near the back. Boats passed alongside the event while everyone wandered between breweries with tasting cups in hand.
Another welcome difference from many Arizona festivals was the absence of drink tokens. We did not have to find a ticket, drop it into a bucket, and complete a small business transaction every time we wanted a sample. We simply handed over the cup and received beer.
Efficient. Dangerous. Beautiful.
Our First Stop Was an Arizona Brewery
One of the first tents inside the festival belonged to Starfire Brewing, the Tempe brewery we had discussed in our previous episode.
Naturally, we made a beeline for it.
We started with Baptized in Bloody Water, the fruited sour made with strawberry, watermelon, hibiscus, and lime that Dedra insists tastes like a pink Starburst. Adam attempted to turn the conversation into an investigation of whether Starburst candies have actual flavors or merely colors, but the important thing was that the beer tasted just as good at the festival as it did at Starfire.
We also had a chance to talk with brewer Trevor Burrus Jr. and tell him how much we enjoyed the beer.
Then we remembered that an entire pier of breweries was waiting for us.
We moved on.
Eventually.
We may have returned to Starfire a few more times.
The Surprise Favorite Came From Montreal
One of the fun parts of a large beer festival is discovering breweries we might never encounter during our normal Arizona and Southern California travels.
That happened with Messorem, a Montreal brewery known for hop-forward beer, sour beer, and barrel-aged releases. We had never tried them before, and their French beer names were not exactly helping us keep detailed tasting notes by that point in the afternoon.
What we do remember is the triple IPA.
It was hazy, flavorful, dangerously drinkable, and probably the favorite beer of the entire festival for both of us. That was particularly surprising considering the amount of competition surrounding it.
Adam returned to the tent just after the brewery switched one of its kegs. He had been told to come back around 4:00, and he arrived at approximately 4:02.
That was not impatience. Kegs take time to change.
Messorem was one of those discoveries that justified attending the festival by itself. We went to San Diego expecting California and Arizona breweries to dominate our favorites, only to have a brewery from Montreal walk away with the unofficial Adam-and-Dedra award of the day.
The award has no trophy, no cash prize, and absolutely no credibility, but we mean it as a compliment.
Smoothie Sours, Hazies, and Hidden Barrel-Aged Bottles
The RAR Brewing and Beer Zombies tent was another obvious stop, especially for Dedra.
RAR had several of its Out of Order smoothie sours lined up, and Dedra developed a simple plan: start at one end and work through all four.
It was a solid plan until we left the tent to explore the rest of the festival. By the time we returned, nearly everything was gone.
Dedra had completed only part of the challenge and immediately blamed the people standing near the tent for drinking all of “her” smoothie sours.
RAR also brought its hop-saturated ales, including hazy IPAs featuring hops such as Nelson Sauvin. Adam tried multiple versions and found another favorite with a baseball-inspired name that neither of us could confidently remember later. This is one of the unavoidable problems with trying dozens of two-ounce samples: the memories remain, but the beer names begin leaving the building.
The festival also gave us a new strategy for future events: look beyond the taps.
Several breweries had special barrel-aged bottles sitting behind or above their draft setups. Solaris poured Adam a barrel-aged stout made in collaboration with Horus Aged Ales, and other breweries brought bottles that were easy to miss if you only studied the tap handles.
We also tried beers from breweries including Belching Beaver, Everywhere, Tripping Animals, Green Cheek, Mother Earth, Mason Ale Works, Fall Brewing, Harland, Relentless, Villains Brewing, and several more that had thoroughly blended together by the end of the afternoon.
One long-aged cookie-inspired stout from Tripping Animals did not deliver the massive flavor Adam expected, especially compared with some of the other barrel-aged beers. That may have been the beer, or it may have been the result of asking our taste buds to process their twenty-seventh assignment of the day.
Arizona Made a Strong Showing
Starfire was not the only Arizona brewery at Salty Toast.
We also found Pinnacle Brewing Company, which brought a lighter lineup than many of the IPA- and stout-heavy tents surrounding it. One of the beers was a collaboration with Sana Sana Cervecería, another Arizona brewery we were happy to see gaining attention beyond its own taproom.
With so many double IPAs, smoothie sours, and barrel-aged stouts available, a crisp lager-style beer provided a useful reset.
It also gave us something we could describe accurately after several hours without using phrases such as, “It was the hazy one by the tent near the other hazy one.”
The Filipino Food Nearly Ended the Festival
Eventually, we needed food.
The festival had plenty of predictable beer-festival choices, including pizza, burgers, and tacos. Dedra instead chose SD Sisig, a San Diego Filipino food truck, and it may have been the best decision we made all day. The truck was part of Salty Toast’s official food-vendor lineup.
We ordered lechon kawali, featuring large pieces of fried pork belly served with garlic rice and a fried egg. The pork belly had a crisp exterior without becoming hard or excessively greasy, and the egg yolk slowly worked its way into the rice as we ate.
We also ordered six pork lumpia because apparently ordering a smaller quantity was not an option.
We were devastated for nearly half a second.
The lumpia arrived crisp and flavorful with sweet chili sauce, while the pork belly plate included cucumber and several dipping sauces. Adam rotated between the sauces, combined them, tried the meat without sauce, and generally approached the meal like Homer Simpson surrounded by bowls of chips and dip.
Dedra mostly stayed loyal to the sweet chili sauce.
She also stole Adam’s cucumber and blamed the wind.
By the time we cleaned out the containers, the food had accomplished two things. First, it made us immediately want to search Arizona for more Filipino food. Second, it left us wondering how we were supposed to fit any more beer inside our bodies.
We walked around for a while and eventually found the necessary storage space.
Professionals adapt.
Soccer Fans Versus Beer People
While we were completely focused on pork belly and garlic rice, the soccer crowd began moving chairs toward the giant screen at the end of the pier.
We looked up and realized that nearly every chair around us had disappeared.
Once we finished eating and headed back toward the beer tents, we found the missing chairs arranged in front of the game. The area had transformed into an outdoor waterfront watch party, and we had to weave through people who were attempting to watch soccer while we continued our important work of locating more beer.
We also ran into several familiar faces from Arizona, including follower Fernando and his wife, along with Rachel and Charlie from The Beer Babes Family, who were helping with the event. The Beer Babes Family was also Salty Toast’s charity partner, supporting women throughout the beer industry.
There were tequila, vodka, bourbon, and whiskey vendors inside the pavilion as well. New Riff was particularly tempting, but we decided mixing liquor with an afternoon of unlimited beer samples while standing on a pier was a questionable choice even by our standards.
Nobody wants to become the person who falls into San Diego Bay during the beer festival.
Final Pour
Salty Toast Beer Fest gave us exactly what we had missed about Broadway Pier: coastal weather, water views, interesting breweries, a relaxed festival layout, and enough beer options to make detailed note-taking completely unrealistic.
The biggest beer surprise came from Messorem and its Montreal-brewed triple IPA. Starfire gave us a familiar Arizona favorite with Baptized in Bloody Water. RAR and Beer Zombies kept the smoothie-sour portion of the day well supplied, at least until everyone else selfishly drank the beers Dedra had planned to sample.
Then SD Sisig nearly stole the entire episode with pork belly, garlic rice, a fried egg, and lumpia.
After the festival, we returned to the hotel, where Adam promptly fell asleep while Dedra watched television and set a two-hour alarm so the entire San Diego evening would not disappear during an accidental four-hour nap.
That is the benefit of staying two blocks from a beer festival. You can walk back, recover, and somehow convince yourselves to go out again.
Anyone who enjoys craft beer festivals, waterfront events, discovering unfamiliar breweries, or eating enough Filipino food to temporarily suspend beer operations should keep Salty Toast on the radar.
Watch or listen to the full episode to hear more about our favorite pours, the smoothie-sour challenge that ended too soon, and the food truck meal we are still thinking about.
Craft Beer. Food. Fun.
Cheers.
