Pull Up A Stool with Chuck Silva

All About Beer: What is it about the San Diego beer community? Ten years ago, even though a lot of the major players were in place, it wasn’t on fire the way it is now.

Chuck Silva: I think the fun thing that makes San Diego unique, compared to other awesome metropolitan craft beer hot spots, is that San Diego offers more diversity of beer styles. There’s a lot more Belgian styles, innovative new styles, not just hoppy beers. We have great hoppy beers here, for sure, but we’re not so narrowly focused.

Compared with San Diego, in LA, people who want to get into the industry seem to face more of an uphill struggle, even though there are very good places there. It’s hard to see how the two places can be so different.

LA is a whole different scene. Everything’s so “what’s hot and what’s not.” Brewpubs are restaurants first, and so LA, being so fickle—what have you done lately?—a brewpub might be hot for a couple of weeks, but what’s next? It’s hard to build a loyal audience. That’s just how I feel about LA. It’s not personal; it’s just an observation.

It’s my impression that Green Flash was one of the earlier companies, not to brew Belgian styles, but to put a Belgian twist on American beers. Is that accurate?

To some degree, yes. The original focus at Green Flash was high-end craft session beers. That all changed once we made West Coast IPA. It redefined the benchmark West Coast IPA style. There were already a lot of great IPAs out there, so we had to make the beer extravagant.

Our introduction to Belgian beers was our third-anniversary beer. We did a Belgian tripel, which is still in our line-up. That was more a traditional abbey tripel. Then I saw Belgian breweries were inspired by the hops that we’d been using on the West Coast in particular, with beers like Houblon Chouffe. So I looked at that and thought if they can put a Belgian flavor and American hops together, I can do that my own way. I started playing around. We used our imperial IPA wort and fermented it with our house yeast and a Belgian Trappist yeast, dry hopped with several American hops. That’s how we got Le Freak.

Was La Freak the first of the American-produced beers in the Belgian IPA vein?

I think so. We’ve been bottling it since 2008, but we were brewing it in 2006. Then a lot of others got inspired to try these hybrids.

Did you get your brewing start in Southern California?

I did, actually. I was in the United States Navy, then in the defense industry afterwards. Making beer was my hobby at that time. I saw that the American Brewers Guild had trade school and apprenticeship classes. I joined the guild, quit my day job, relocated to San Diego and landed a job in 1998.

Is Rayon Vert your only Brett beer?

It’s the only one we package. We have some other barrel beers we’re playing around with that we may develop into specialty-bottled beers. I do have a house Brettanomyces which has a different character. We have a beer called Little Freak, another called Super Freak, one called Black Freak. Those are beers we’re trying to develop further, but it might be another year or two before we can get those out.

What else is new on the horizon?

The current thing is our Hop Odyssey. We’ve chosen six beers, each one very hop-centric, kind of getting back to our hoppy roots. There will be a different hoppy beer, draft only, every other month. Starting in February, the first release is a black IPA. The second is an imperial red rye, with the focus on Mosaic hops. Mosaic is a new variety. The red will be dry-hopped with all Mosaic, but there’s different hops in the brew. Through 2013, each one will feature a different hop.

A lot of people just know us for our hoppy beers, so it’s good you’re asking about our Belgian styles as well. It’s a funny thing, we just won three medal at the GABF, and two were gold medals for our Belgian style beers—the Trippel and Le Freak. Somebody was watching the live streaming and told me somebody comments “Green Flash winning medals for Belgian beers? Is this a new thing?” And other people were able to chime in and say, “No, they’ve been brewing these two for years now.”