Anaheim craft brewer Bottle Logic is pouring well-made, tasty beers

Anaheim’s new craft brewery, Bottle Logic, has been open for a couple of months now, and I finally had the opportunity to investigate the facility and try the beers. I walked away from the bustling tasting room questioning my own opinion of what I’d seen and tasted.

Making beer isn’t exactly hard, but -- as evidenced by the quantity of mediocre craft beer out there -- making good beer can be. Great beer is an even rarer beast, and you’ll not often find anything great at a brewery that’s less than a year old. It takes time to dial in the brewing equipment and perfect recipes, and start-up breweries don’t often get it all figured out for a few months. Bottle Logic’s brewers seem to be an exception to this rule; while too early to call the beers great, many of the 10 brews I sampled were surprisingly good.

The tasting room, located in a typically nondescript industrial park off the freeway, is attractive, comfortable, and features an outdoor patio -- a rarity among craft tasting rooms even in the sunny Southland. Inside is dark wood, bare metal, and slate gray trimmed in the brand’s signature orange. Behind the wood-clad, L-shaped bar is a blackboard menu emblazoned with “Welcome Fellow Innovators” and a list of a dozen taps from the brewery’s two series: The Constants and The Variables.

The Constants are the brand’s core brews, and include a hoppy wheat ale (She Shot First -- a standout among the offerings), a ginger-laced saison (The Tattered Prince), and a West Coast IPA (Recursion). There’s also a milk stout and a wonderfully drinkable, sub-5-percent-alcohol porter.

The Variables are the more experimental collection of rarities and one-offs, and during my recent visit five beers in the series were on offer: a Russian imperial stout, a double IPA, and a crisp Czech-style pilsner (another standout) in addition to two different flavored pale ales (one laced with green tea and the other with coconut and coffee -- both endearingly odd).

Judging from the throng of craft fans who lined up at the bar on Saturday afternoon (a crowd that was deftly handled by the tasting room crew -- another all-too-rare occurrence at new taprooms), the locals know that Bottle Logic is already on its game and pouring well-made, tasty beers.

Bottle Logic’s tasting room is open Thursday through Sunday, and they offer 2-liter glass growlers, and nifty plastic 1-liter growlers (for only $2 plus the beer) to go as well as a limited selection of bottles.

Bottle Logic, 1072 N. Armando St., Anaheim, (714) 660-2537.