San Diego beer notes: Oggi’s Pizza & Brewing

Oggi’s Pizza & Brewing is another mainstay of the San Diego brewing scene, one I’ve reviewed before and visited several times now (each visit to San Diego we go there). In fact, Oggi’s is a chain of brewpubs, with a ton of locations. This time around, we visited two.

The first was the Point Loma pub where we had an impromptu lunch. This one is a pretty typical sports bar, with their house beers on tap. I had the Sunset Amber Ale with lunch (a pizza, naturally), which has a nice infusion of (San Diego) hoppiness with a typical American Amber malt base.

The other Oggi’s we visited was for dinner and my brother’s main haunt: the Mission Valley location. This one’s a gem of the Oggi’s (although admittedly, this is the only one I’ve been to—multiple times—other than the Point Loma lunch visit so I may not know what I’m talking about), a sports bar/pizzeria with a very small arcade in the back.

The first beer I had was one I didn’t dare pass up: a Double IPA (of course) called Ultimate IPA. Seriously, with a name like that, I had to drink it, right? 9.8% alcohol, with big hops. I don’t think I’d call it the “Ultimate” out of all the other San Diego Pale Ales out there, but it was tasty and went down too easy.

Two other beers on tap caught my eye: their Imperial Pilsner and their Nit Wit. I had a taster of each and ultimately ordered a pint of the Nit Wit.

The Imperial Pilsner is pretty much what you’d expect: a 9+ percent alcohol Pilsner. It was okay, but too hot/sharp in the alcohol I thought. There’s not a whole lot you can do with a Pilsner if you’re going “Imperial”, in my opinion; a good Pils stands on its own.

The Nit Wit was pretty good—a Belgian Witbier, as you’d expect, very cloudy and very nicely spiced with the coriander and orange peel. (And, frankly, a nice break from the hop bombs.) I thought Oggi’s did a really good job with it.

Dinner was also very good: BBQ pulled pork sandwich. I don’t care what you’re drinking, pulled pork goes well with anything.

Good work, Oggi’s.

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