California Wild Ales, the San Diego brewery built around barrel-aged sour and wild beer, has released Ozzy Oz-Orange, a 6% ABV Blood Orange and Cherry Sour now pouring at its Ocean Beach and Point Loma tasting rooms. It’s a heavy-metal-themed release built on the brewery’s usual foundation: a long spell in oak before any fruit gets near it.
What’s Actually in the Glass
Ozzy Oz-Orange started life as a mixed-fermentation wild ale, aged for around 12 months in American oak barrels. That extended barrel time is where the beer picks up its tart acidity, earthy funk, and a background of vanilla and oak before any fruit enters the picture. Once the base beer had matured, it was conditioned on fresh blood oranges and cherries, sourced locally in Southern California.
Blood orange takes the lead: bright citrus aromatics, a ruby-red fruit character, and a tangy, slightly bitter zest that comes with the fruit’s skin and pith. Cherries sit underneath as a darker, juicier layer that rounds the citrus out without burying the barrel character the beer spent a year building. The brewery describes the result as dry and refreshing rather than sweet, which tracks with how most of its barrel-aged fruit sours are built.
The Heavy Metal Angle
The name and artwork lean hard into heavy metal imagery: bats, round sunglasses, crosses and a purple monster, with references built in for anyone who picks up on them, right down to an invitation to get on the ‘crazy train.’ It’s a playful homage rather than any kind of official tie-in with the musician the name nods to.
Wild beer and heavy metal have a lot in common. Neither one was created to quietly follow the rules. They can be loud, unconventional, and a little unpredictable, and that’s exactly what makes them interesting. We wanted Ozzy Oz-Orange to capture some of that attitude while still being a really drinkable, fruit-forward sour beer.Bill DeWitt, co-founder, California Wild Ales
Where California Wild Ales Fits in San Diego’s Beer Scene
San Diego’s craft beer reputation is usually built on hop-forward West Coast IPAs and big imperial stouts, the kind of beers our Ballast Point Sculpin review and AleSmith Speedway Stout review cover. California Wild Ales occupies a quieter corner of that scene, built entirely around barrel-aged and mixed-fermentation beer rather than hop bills, running tasting rooms in the Ocean Beach and Point Loma neighborhoods rather than a big production taproom.
If oak-aged wild ale with fruit is what drew you to this release, it’s worth comparing Ozzy Oz-Orange against two very different takes on the format: our Jolly Pumpkin La Roja review, an American wild ale aged in bourbon barrels, and our Petrus Aged Red review, a traditional oak-aged Flanders red sour from Belgium. If you’d rather start somewhere lighter, our Dogfish Head SeaQuench Ale review covers the session sour that kicked off the more approachable end of the category.
Where to Find It
Ozzy Oz-Orange is available on draft only, at California Wild Ales’ Ocean Beach and Point Loma tasting rooms in San Diego, and it’s a limited release: once this batch is gone, it isn’t coming back in the same form. That’s standard practice for the brewery’s barrel program, which leans on wild fermentation and time rather than shortcuts to get flavors that can’t really be rushed.
