Tap Handle #330: Oceanside Ale Works - Buccaneer Blonde

I love adding taps featuring beautiful women to the collection, and this one is no exception. It's just a gorgeous tap with great detail, although it would look even better with a matte finish instead of gloss. This is a very rare tap...the only one I've ever seen in fact.

Oceanside Ale Works was founded in 2005 in Oceanside, California by Mark Purciel and Scott Thomas. Purciel, a high school teacher and beer lover, began brewing beer in his garage. He then started entering it into regional county fairs where he won multiple awards. He and his buddy Thomas, a local firefighter, decided to open up a small brew house and called it Oceanside Ale Works. They started out in a small site in an industrial park that barely had space for a tasting room and was only open to the public 2 days a week. The beers were named after local landmarks like San Luis Rey Red Ale and Pier View Pale Ale, made from old world recipes brewed with a Southern California interpretation. In 2010 they moved to a larger location in another business park. The bar is crafted from a large piece of the Oceanside Pier, and the tasting room is larger, with space for a food truck to provide eats. OAW remains one of the few manual brew houses in the USA, and currently brews 4 year round varieties and several specialty tap room batches that are stored in oak barrels.

Also in 2010, OAW was featured on Bloomberg TV in a show called The Mentor, that features top CEOs mentoring small business owners across America. Jim Koch, founder and chairman of The Boston Beer Company, brought his national business expertise to help Purciel and Thomas make the right decisions about scaling their business and finding a way to increase sales and distribution.

Buccaneer Blonde is a blond ale with a balanced light body and small amounts of honey add to its lager-like character. Weighted average on ratebeer.com is 2.88 out of 5.

Oceanside Ale Works Official Website