I had been driving around calling on potential accounts in Southern California one day and I was pretty much done by around 3:30 and heading back toward my hotel. I decided to have a late lunch/early dinner and remembered a brew pub that I had found when I was looking at area brew pubs upon my arrival to my hotel a couple days before. I punched in the address for Hangar 24 in Irvine and headed over that way.
Ben Cook was going to school at Cal State-San Bernardino studying biology just around the turn of the millennium. It was in college where Cook found that he had a passion for brewing beer. Using his biology know-how and equipment from the biology lab at the college, Cook built his first home brewing apparatus in 2001.
It turned out that Cook was pretty good at brewing beers and he found that he could trade some of his beers for services rendered. One of those services was to trade his beers for flight lessons at the Redlands Municipal Airport. Flying out of Hangar 24 at the airport, Cook made friends with other pilots and instructors at the facility. After flying planes, the friends would meet up at Hangar 24 at the end of the day to talk about their flying experiences and to drink some of Cook's delicious beers. Cook eventually got his pilot's license, possibly the only guy in the history of flying who got his license directly because of beer.
Cook loved brewing beer so much that he eventually enrolled in the masters brewers program at the University of California-Davis. After graduating from the program in 2005, Cook went back to Redlands to start the next chapter in his life.
Pictured right - Ben Cook. Photo courtesy Hangar 24.
There was land available literally across the road from the Redlands airport. With the help of family, friends and fellow pilots, Cook was able to purchase a plot of land and he broke ground for his brewery in late 2006. It took time to build a structure, as well as procuring brewing vessels and equipment. On March 15, 2008, Cook sold his first beer under the Hangar 24 name.
Within months, Cook was distributing Hangar 24 beers to local restaurants and stores. In addition to brewing beers, Cook continued his love of flying often taking his single engine place to Lake Havasu, Arizona. In 2017, Cook established a tap room at the Lake Havasu City Airport.
And in March of 2020, Cook opened a 3rd location in Intersect Irvine, a complex of campus-style office buildings, retail space and entertainment areas. While not exactly at or across from an airport, the Irvine location was close to the John Wayne Airport that services Orange County. Cook contracted with culinary consultant James Bailey to come up with selection of food for the Irvine location that personified "California-Casual" dining.
However, 17 days after opening in Irvine, Hangar 24 - along with virtually every non-essential business across California - was forced to shut down for a period of several weeks. They were able to open for take-out only in the summer and finally opened for physical distance dining later in 2020. In the meantime to keep the brewing facility busy, Cook had his crew make hand sanitizer that they were able to give out at pop-up stands where they were selling sandwiches during the deep throes of the pandemic.
It was around 3:30 when I pulled into the parking lot at the Intersect. (see map) Hanger 24 isn't visible from the street and it was difficult to find until I figured out that I had to park in the lot and walk around the building. It's a pay lot, but businesses and restaurants - such as Hangar 24 - will validate for free parking. Hanger 24 was near a large open court area north of the parking area I parked the car in. Walking in, I found a large group of people seated at a communal table in the middle of the brewpub.
It's counter service at Hanger 24 for both food and beer. The food menu was on a card near the counter and the beer menu was on the wall behind the beer spigots at the back of the bar. They had 15 beers available on tap that day including a Mexican lager, a citrus lager, a couple West Coast IPA's, a wheat beer, and a seasonal Oktoberfest beer. My tastes veer more toward the hazy IPA's and I got a pint of the Pacific Coast Hazy IPA.
Compared to other brewpubs I found in the area, Hanger 24 had a more food offerings on their menu. Appetizers included carne asada cheese fries, wings, pretzel bites, and a crispy caramelized pork belly that can be had with either BBQ sauce or teriyaki. Salads, protein bowls and flatbread pizzas were part of the menu, as were sandwiches, burgers and tacos including a grilled marinated mahi taco that they called "al-pastor". I always thought al-pastor tacos were made with pork.
After I ordered my food, I took my beer out to the patio area off to the side of the brewpub. It was a nice area and I thought I'd end up having my late lunch out there. But then the large group inside broke up and came out to the grassy area just beyond the patio at Hanger 24. It appeared that they were going back into a meeting and I didn't feel like listening to a guy drone on about something I wasn't interested in, even though it was a nice day on the patio.
I almost got the fish tacos, and the blackened chicken sandwich caught my eye, but in the end I went with the basic burger - a 1/3 pound black angus burger topped with American cheese along with lettuce, tomato, onions and pickles. The bun was a somewhat oversized bun that was made with a cream ale infused into the flour. I got fries on the side - tots were available for a buck more, but for some reason I didn't get the tots this time.
The burger and fries were served on wax paper on a small cooking sheet, similar to the way the burger and fries were served at Green Cheek Beer Company located a couple miles from Hanger 24. And the burger was good - the American cheese was oozing off the burger all around the patty. The burger, itself, was flavorful with the taste of the black angus beef popping out with all the cheese, veggies and condiments around it. The bun, as I said, was pretty good sized and I tore about half of the crown of the bun off the burger as I was eating it. But it held together pretty well for as messy as the burger was.
The fries were crispy on the outside and had a nice feathery potato texture inside. They were a nice accompaniment to the burger.
By the time I finished up, the bar area at Hanger 24 was filling up with workers from the surrounding office buildings coming in for an after-work beer. I needed to head back to the hotel to get caught up on some e-mails and I realized well after the fact that I could have easily brought my computer in with me to do some office work while I was enjoying a burger and a beer. And I did enjoy my food and the beer I had at Hanger 24. It was really a nice, laid-back brewpub and I would have no problem hitting the place up again at some point in my travels to Southern California.
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