Photo courtesy StudioSchulz.com Barbecue duck tacos and beer samples at Stone Brewing Co.

A craft beer and food-pairing tour of San Diego makes for a scrumptious, sudsy summer vacation.

The tour guide looked at me like I was insane when I spilled my secret. I don’t like beer. She pointed to the logo emblazoned on her luxury SUV: “Brew Hop.” “Um,” she said. “You do understand that’s what this is? Beer?” It was true. I had signed up for an all-day immersion into that very thing. I would be visiting a slew of San Diego breweries where we would explore the facilities, meet the owners and brewmasters,
and then belly up to the bars, sampling dozens of sudsy selections.

Ever since my first sip of canned beer in high school, I’d hated the stuff – all thin, bitter and skunky. Over the years, I’d sipped a bit here and there, but always with the same reaction: an involuntary grimace.

So this trip was a personal mission. I had been hearing so much about craft beer, and about how new experts were changing the landscape with boutique ingredients, small-batch productions, and such skilled finessing of water, malt, hops and yeast that the beverage was now celebrated as art.

I’d seen more and more beer-centric menus popping up at restaurants – even at fine-dining establishments, which were offering beer-themed dinners – and the National Restaurant Association listing food-beer pairings among its top-five alcohol trends for 2010.

Photo courtesy The Linkery Mexi-Dog at The Linkery in the heart of the North Park neighborhood

The statistics couldn’t lie, either. National sales of craft beer grew 10.3 percent in 2009, despite the fact that overall beer sales in the United States fell by 2.2 percent, according to figures released in March by the Brewers Association, a craft-brewing industry trade group.

Why the sudden obsession? People have discovered that in the right hands, beer can be as deeply individual and nuanced as a fine wine. Last spring, PBS aired a special called Craft Beer: The New Wine. The humble brew now enjoys a rightful place at a sophisticated dining table, and a new term started popping up – “cicerone,” a term minted in 2007 to mean beer sommelier. I had to discover what the fuss was about.

As it turns out, San Diego is one of America’s most important centers of developing beer culture, and Brew Hop co-owner Summer Nixon gave a little history as she drove to our first destination, Green Flash Brewing Co.

Karl Strauss is considered the pioneer of the San Diego micro-movement, she explained, from when he opened his brewery in 1986. But the real emergence began about five years ago and exploded suddenly. Now, there are nearly two dozen members in the San Diego Brewers Guild, and beer connoisseurs line up at dawn when their new concoctions are released.

Last November, the city introduced its first annual Beer Week. If I was looking for the magic, it was here.

While Green Flash is more of a working brewery than a tourist attraction, there is a tasting area open to the public at select times, ripe for dipping into a sip or two of its nine signature ales. Through Brew Hop, I scored one-on-one time with the brewmaster himself, Chuck Silva, who opened his cache of personal project draughts – indeed, the taps poking out of the wall read “experimental,” like a delicious excursion into Dr. Franken(beer)stein’s lab.

“We’re well known for our hoppy beers,” he said, in what would become a refrain of the craft brewers I met. His Imperial India Pale Ale and West Coast IPA are “palate wreckers,” he says – bitter, earthy monsters with aggressive finishes that made me think of Grape Nuts splashed with battery acid.

;Photo courtesy Johan Bahu/San Diego Scenics North Park Community

But I loved his floral, fruity Summer Saison, an unfiltered golden farmhouse ale brewed with orange Curaçao, ginger and grains of paradise (it’s considered a “starter” beverage for craft beer newbies like me because of its light nature and mild sweetness).

“San Diego is where what’s new and cutting edge in beer is happening,” Silva said, pointing out his aging barrels chosen for their past lives to add coveted notes of whiskey, bourbon, wine and brandy. “We’re teaching consumers about beer, new flavors and new fermentations.”

There’s no sign for Stone Brewing Co., but the enormous building is hard to miss. Surrounded by elaborate gardens and anchored by a gift shop and a 385-seat restaurant, the property is more for Disneyland drinkers, with computer banks monitoring brewing precision, and bottling lines that our tour host, Ken Wright, rightly likened to the opening credits of Laverne & Shirley.

“A lot of people accuse us of over-hopping,” he said, lifting a glass of his citrusy-pine, smack-you-in-the-face-bitter Stone Ruination IPA and nearly disappearing into the pungent cloud of hop fog emanating from his hops room.  “But balance is key. If it tastes like bread, it’s too heavy.”

Stone’s Smoked Porter was too much for my nascent palate, all dark, rich and complicated with flavors of coffee, tobacco and chocolate. Yet the Oaked Arrogant Bastard Pale Ale had me mesmerized – I could actually taste the wood’s trademark vanilla tones kicked with citrus, somehow like a chardonnay.

At Lost Abbey & Port Brewing, I finally got it. Here, I worked my way though some 20 beers, completely captivated by Tomme Arthur, partner and director of brewery operations. Clearly deeply in love with beer, Arthur regaled from his “altar” (a 42-foot bar), where “the faithful” come to hear “the message of our brewers on high.”

He had taster flights, pints and growler fills (half-gallon jugs) for favorite beers, plus limited special releases. Licensed as a bar, the Abbey has its happy hour regulars, many of whom converge for what I’d been learning was one of the primary allures for die-hard craft beer fans: unique, rare concoctions that celebrate the magic of science in exploring unusual ingredients to ferment.