Handgeplukte Kriek is heading to a guided tasting on Tuesday, Nov. 10, from 6 to 9 p.m., when Chad Stevens of Lyons Peak Brewing Company pours his Jamul-grown kriek next to two Belgian bottles. The event page is on Bottlecraft’s site. The tasting falls during San Diego Beer Week 2026, which the San Diego Brewers Guild lists as Nov. 6–15.
Tickets are $40. At last check on Nov. 9, 2026, Bottlecraft’s ticket page showed 13 tickets remaining. That count changes as tickets sell, so check the listing before you go.
What’s in the Handgeplukte Kriek tasting
The pour list is Handgeplukte Kriek (2025, Batch 1), Cantillon Kriek Lambic Bio (Season 2019) and Drie Fonteinen Oude Kriek (Season 19|20). A ticket covers a welcome taster, one pour of each kriek, and a blue cheese pairing put together by Venissimo. Bottlecraft says gratuity is included.
The product page does not name which Bottlecraft shop is hosting. In a Nov. 5 Bottlecraft staff recommendation published by San Diego Beer News, Gene Fielden invites people to join Stevens at Bottlecraft Little Italy that Tuesday evening. Bottlecraft’s Little Italy location page lists the shop at 2252 India St., San Diego, CA 92101, and posts Sunday–Thursday hours as noon–10 p.m. and Friday–Saturday as noon–11 p.m. The shop is 21 and older only.
The Jamul orchard behind Handgeplukte Kriek
Handgeplukte Kriek is a lambic-inspired fruited sour Lyons Peak makes in Jamul with Schaerbeek cherries grown on the property. On the event page, Bottlecraft says Stevens met Jean Van Roy of Cantillon in 2017 and was introduced to Kris Michielsen, a Schaerbeek grower and published author on the cherries used by Cantillon and 3 Fonteinen. Two years later, the page says, Stevens received USDA approval to import Michielsen’s trees. He planted 200 of them in 2020, harvested only two cherries the following season, and brought in 1,200 pounds in 2024.
Lyons Peak’s own beers page describes a simple process for Handgeplukte Kriek: cherries go to the freezer as they are picked, then, when harvest ends in August, base lambic-style beer is racked onto the fruit for about six to eight weeks before a little sugar is added and the beer is naturally carbonated in the bottle or keg. San Diego Beer News lists the beer at 6.2% ABV. Lyons Peak’s beers page does not post an ABV in the text we checked.
Who brewed the World Beer Cup gold
The medal history needs a precise credit. Bottlecraft introduces Stevens and Lyons Peak through “their World Beer Cup Gold Medal in the Belgian-Style Fruited Beer category,” then says the tasting will feature “that beer,” Handgeplukte Kriek (2025, Batch 1). Lyons Peak tells a tighter story. The gold-winning beer was Handgeplukte Kriek Batch 0, made in 2024 at AleSmith Brewing Company in Miramar, after Lyons Peak still lacked an ABC license and had 1,200 pounds of cherries to use. Peter Zien and the AleSmith team, including head brewer Anthony Chen, brewed that first batch. Lyons Peak says many of the processes and even the barrels from Batch 0 are still used to make the beer at the Jamul shop, and that AleSmith won the 2026 gold against 65 international entries in the Belgian-Style Fruited Beer category.
San Diego Beer News makes the same distinction: the cherries were a key ingredient in a kriek brewed by AleSmith, which won the gold earlier this year, and Tuesday’s tasting features Batch 1. The bottle being poured at Bottlecraft is Lyons Peak’s 2025 beer, not the 2024 AleSmith batch that took the medal.
Tickets for the Handgeplukte Kriek tasting are sold on Bottlecraft’s event page. If a side-by-side of Jamul fruit and vintage Belgian kriek is the Beer Week stop you want, the remaining seats are limited and the ticket count will not stay current for long.
