We focus (non-monogamously) on aroma-driven, complex, flavorful, sessionish beers. We often brew hybrid styles, combining the features we like from established categories to create new, Island-Of-Doctor-Moreau-style mash-ups.
Fortunate Islands combines the mildly nutty malt body of a wheat beer with the intensely bright, citrusy hoppiness of a righteous IPA. Black House has the full-body, robust chocolatey flavor, and intense coffee aroma of its imperial counterparts, but packed into a 5.8% ABV package. Blazing World combines the subtly fruity qualities of a dry amber ale with the enormous hop-profile of an über-dank double IPA.
Lomaland, our flagship saison, isn’t so much a hybrid, as a return to origin—a quenching, sessionable, farmhouse libation. Sporting a mixed grain bill and fermented with a blend of Belgian yeast strains, Lomaland offers the complexity and nuance of the most traditional examples of the style. We like to think that it’s so traditional, it’s avant-garde.
We also brew loads of special release and one-offs batches, allowing us to pursue our various whims. We have a tank dedicated to beers fermented with Brettanomyces—an alternative yeast strain capable of producing wildly distinct flavors—and our sour programs is just getting off the ground.
Our tasting room is where we test different concepts, from variations on our core beers to experimental pilot batches. We hope to release some our more successful experiments in cans and bottles in the coming years.
…a 30bbl production brewery and tasting room in the Point Loma neighborhood of San Diego. Modern Times is named after a beautifully crazy utopian community founded in 1850 (see “Modern Times was..” for the full explanation), and (almost) all of our beers are named after real utopian experiments or mythological utopias.
The brewery was founded by the guy writing this (Jacob McKean), a beer geek, former Stone Brewing Co. employee and long-time homebrewer, along with crack team of consultants consisting of illustrious graphic designers, vicious attorneys, a slightly unhinged kombucha-obsessed real estate agent, one faraway brewing prodigy, a pricey architect, a gregarious general contractor, and (a bit later in the process) three outstanding brewers.
Today, we’re distributed throughout Southern California and have a fully awesome tasting room at our brewery. You should totally come check it out.
We brewed our first batch on May 18th, 2013; our beer went on tap for the first time on June 24th 2013; and we held the soft opening for the Lomaland Fermentorium tasting room on August 9th, 2013; and our Grand Opening was September 7th, 2013.
“Why is it called ‘Modern Times’?”, you ask, tilting your head like an inquisitive puppy. “Modern Times” was a utopian community built on Long Island in 1850 by a bunch of wild-eyed wingnuts who thought they could demonstrate to the world what a more perfect society might look like. They bartered, lived without a state, sometimes ignored the conventions of marriage (although probably not in the super hot way you’re imagining), and generally experimented with creating a less exploitative, more pleasurable world. Naturally, the whole thing eventually imploded when legit nut jobs from New York City found out about the “free love colony” just a train ride away and overran it. It’s now Brentwood, NY.
I chose to name the brewery after Modern Times because I’m fascinated by the colorful, ambitious little pockets of history that develop in the folds of progress, the forgotten little paradises that barely register in the onward rush of civilization. I also appreciate what the colonists were trying to achieve for themselves: to live, right now, in a world of enterprising, fulfilling hedonism. Hopefully, Modern Times Beer will be one of those little pockets too.
Our beers are (almost always) named after real utopian experiments and mythological utopias.
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