El Segundo
El Segundo
El Segundo Brewing Company is an independent and passionately hop-obsessed craft brewery from the coastal town of El Segundo, just a few kilometres southwest of Los Angeles in the South Bay area of Southern California – founded in May 2011 by Rob Croxall, a born-and-bred El Segundo native who after a decade in aerospace finance and another decade of passionate home brewing in the garage behind his «Blue House» took the leap into independence, making his first delivery that same month to the restaurant Rock & Brews directly across the street – with his brother, his father and the first three pints of their lives from their own brewery by his side. Together with co-owner and Director of Sales and Marketing Thomas Kelley, Croxall built from modest beginnings with a capacity of just 60 barrels per month in a rented space at 140 Main Street one of the most productive and influential independent craft breweries in Southern California, today producing over 400 barrels per month.
What has made El Segundo Brewing unmistakable and unique from the very beginning is its uncompromising and almost obsessive focus on hops – and specifically on hops in their freshest, most aromatic and most characterful form. The brewery's own dry-hopping process, which Rob Croxall developed over years in his home laboratory, gives every El Segundo beer an expressive, juicy and intensely fruity hop profile that has reset the benchmark for West Coast IPAs in Los Angeles and far beyond. The collaboration with Southern California punk legends Pennywise as well as numerous appearances on the most respected beer lists in the region and international awards underline the brewery's standing as one of the most creative and characterful IPA addresses on the American West Coast.
The range of El Segundo Brewing Company spans from the iconic Blue House Pale Ale – the first beer Croxall ever brewed in his home garage and conceived as a lighter, more accessible entry point into the world of hop-forward craft beers – through a growing and award-winning family of West Coast IPAs, Double IPAs and Imperial IPAs to characterful seasonal beers, collaboration brews and limited special edition releases, all of which prove that a brewery born out of pure passion for hops has lost nothing of its original energy, creativity and uncompromising spirit after more than a decade in the game.