Third Thursday Drink About

On Thursday night, we joined the inaugural Third Thursday Drink About hosted by local bars. Our friend Kara flagged this opportunity at the last minute and Michelle and I knew it would be good times. Two buses from Brewery Tours of San Diego traveled in opposite directions making stops at 8 local craft beer bars. The bus was FREE and was in operation from 8pm-midnight. Bars would simply ring a bell to let you know the bus is outside. Typically, the buses were about 20 minutes apart.
We started at Small Bar, then took the bus to Hamilton's, and finally to Toronado. We were a bit worried that the bus would simply abandon the route at midnight, leaving us stranded. If that happened, we knew we'd only have to walk home which would have been less than a mile, albeit unchillindamos. The buses did one more loop beyond midnight to make sure everyone got where they needed to be at the end of the event, nice touch!
The buses were mostly busy and full. With word of mouth, this may be an epic event every month around here. Towards the end of the evening the bus crowd was a little rowdy but all in good fun. There were probably more drinkers than beer fanatics on the bus; quite evident with one person opening a grocery bag and distributing cans of Tecate and numerous others vulgarly expressing their inebriated mission for the evening. As with any other tasting event, I ran into a few QUAFFers and recognized a handful of the local beer fanatics.
I did have another beer from Hollister Brewing Company in Goleta (just north of Santa Barbara). A person on the bus told me that the brewer of Hollister was hosting a tasting at Toronado and some of the beers were still on tap. I had their aged bourbon barrel (porter, I think) served from nitrogen and a creamer faucet and it was quite tasty. Michelle also had another of their beers. Its a bit foggy, but I remember it tasting like an imperial wheat ale. They had several other on tap but I tried to visit their website to recall what we had and there's nothing beyond their home page. Shout @ Hollister Brewing - You guys need to get your website going so we can see your beer list!