With so many craft breweries in Craft Beer Mecca a.k.a. San Diego, and so little time, we made the trek down the street from Ballast Point to meet up with Alex and his brewery, Intergalactic Brewing Company.
Decorated with the help of his wife, Intergalactic Brewing Company showcases posters of all types of sci-fi movies, and they name their beers after movies such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Starship Troopers, and Dr. Who. Some of those names include Cyth Black IPA, Your Worshipfulness, Grabthar’s Dry Stout, and Beam Me Up Scotch Ale. (Can you guess what movies and TV show’s those are named after?)
We spoke with Alex to get to know him a little more, and to hear his thoughts on the San Diego beer scene, and more specifically his brewery.
HOW DID YOU STart intergalactic brewing company?
Intergalactic Brewing started four years ago in 2013, me and a buddy were homebrewers and I wanted to take it to the next level and I have always been a sci-fi fan. The name kind of developed from that because it was unique in the marketplace at the time…something to kind of differentiate ourselves, plus it’s something I’m interested in.
What are your thoughts on the san diego beer scene?
Being a part of the San Diego craft beer scene is really cool. There’s a lot of amazing breweries, and world-class breweries in town, and I have emails to like most of their brew masters and owner’s because they’re very welcoming.
It’s really kind of counterintuitive to a lot of industries where people are like, “No, trade secrets we don’t want to tell you anything,” like, “We want you to fail because we’re taking market share.” We’re all fighting the big guys. We’re all fighting AB InBev, Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors…those guys. We’re competing against them for market share. We’re not really competing with each other quite yet for market share. Someday it’ll happen, but that’ll be a good day for all of us too because that mean’s we’re really big and awesome together. At some point you have to go from being the rebels to being a democracy.
What’s it like being down the road from Ballast Point?
Being really close to Ballast Point was both a blessing and a curse. If you had bad beer, people are going to be like, “Well there’s world-class beer right here. Why should I bother coming over to you?” But it’s also really awesome because we didn’t have bad beer, so people are like, “Hey! There’s this other cool little brewery down the street and so we got a lot of people from Ballast Point and from AleSmith and these other big giant well-known breweries that are tasting them and sending them our way because they’re like, “Yeah, those guys are good. Go check them out, their tiny. They’re cute.”
What’s your favorite coffee?
I was in my hometown and Badass Coffee of Hawai’i was opening up and I got a job as one of the supervisors starting there. I don’t drink coffee, I still don’t drink coffee, and I never had any barista experience, but they liked me. I became a supervisor and shift lead at Badass Coffee for three years. It’s a really cool company to work for. Their coffee is so good. It really is. They have a really big following. It’s funny because a lot of my customers there, came here because they’re like, “We like beer and coffee!” (We do too!)
We used some of their coffee in some of our beers too. We have two award-winning coffee beers that we’ve won, and one of them includes their Kona Coffee.
Do you have any favorite sayings?
Peace, love, and rock and roll!
What does the perfect day look like?
A really good day for me is coming in, and brewing a batch of beer, not screwing it up, talking to a couple of my customers, you know before I go home, and maybe go to a bar and hang out with some of my friends. Not really complicated. Doing what I like to do, and then hanging out with good people is always a good day for me.
If an alien were to abduct you, and they said you could take three things with you, what would you bring?
Three things from earth, no caveats, I would just take the state of California. They would just come with me, because there’s so much to do here, a hoard of beer or some way to continuously have beer, my guitar, and probably my wife…she’d probably like it if I said that. She’s really cool, but maybe she might want to go, I don’t know, but I’d take her with me.
Who is Alex?
I am a native San Diegan, musician, brewer, and I think most of the time, a pretty cool dude. But you know, that’s just my ego talking.
