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Where brews meet brains

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The line outside Wavelength Brewing Company in Vista on a recent Friday wasn’t to sample a new stout or a favorite IPA.

It was to look at Jupiter.

“Jupiter actually has over 70 moons,” brewery owner Hans Haas told a child looking through a telescope outside his downtown Vista bar. Haas then explained that the planet has four natural moons, and the others are bodies trapped by Jupiter’s massive gravity.

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It’s just another Friday night at the brewery at 236 Main St., where people with a thirst for beer and hunger for knowledge come for weekly star-gazing parties and lectures from college professors.

Last month, Palomar College professor Scott Kardel spoke about light pollution and its ill effect on astronomy. This Friday, City College professor Shane Haggard is scheduled to speak at 8 p.m. about the chemistry of fireworks.

The brewery’s first speaker was City College professor Lisa Will, the resident astronomer at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center. Other speakers have included Cal State San Marcos professors Amber Puha and Bianca Mothé, who appeared at the brewery in March in recognition of International Women’s Day and as part of the San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering.

“I’ve always been a huge fan of science and aerospace,” said Haas, 35, a Valley Center resident who opened the brewery with head brewer James Petti in late 2014. “It seemed like pairing craft beer with some sort of science outreach would not only be a unique way of branding your beer, but doing something good.”

With about 110 microbreweries across San Diego County, Haas said making good beer isn’t enough to stand out anymore. He didn’t want a gimmick, however, but a theme that reflected a passion. That’s why science talks aren’t hidden in the middle of the week, but on Friday nights when the crowds are largest.

“If we used a science thing every once in a while, it would be tougher to get people in,” he said. “We wanted to show people we really were about science outreach.”

The theme permeates the brewery. TV screens don’t show ballgames — Haas admits some walk-in customers have been disappointed on their first visit — but instead broadcast an image of earth as seen from a camera mounted on the International Space Station.

A device called ISS (International Space Station) Above sits on a shelf behind the bar and sends alerts whenever the space station passes overhead so customers can go outside and look for it in the sky. Liam Kennedy, creator of ISS Above, has spoken at the brewery.

Besides the brewery’s attention to serious science, it also pays homage to science fiction films with posters and movie props like Star Wars helmets that were donated by repeat customers.

“It’s a unique niche,” said regular Bill Carton, who runs the Space X Facebook group and donated Space X flags and other items to the brewery. “You would think that it would be in Pasadena or Houston, but it’s here in Vista.”

Carten and his wife, Kae Carton-Horne, came to the brewery on a Friday last month to hear Kardel’s lecture.

“A friend of mine says this is the only bar where you feel smarter after you leave,” Carton-Horne said.

The lectures are a regular date night for the couple, who bring their own tablecloth and a pot of franks and beans to go with the craft beer.

“I guess we’re the epitome of a geek couple,” she said. “We met at a science fiction convention in 1968 in Boston.”

Regular customer George Crissman said he comes to hear lectures every two or three weeks.

“They have a way of giving a technical presentation that doesn’t sound technical,” he said.

Haggard of City College, a frequent speaker at the bar since its opening, said he strives to make his talks accessible.

“I’m going to keep it very simple,” he said before his talk on the chemistry of fireworks, which would reveal how different metals make different colors when burning, using sparklers to illustrate his points.

Haggard, who has degrees in chemistry and engineering and who once worked for NASA designing rockets, was the second speaker to ever appear at the brewery. He said he has seen the Friday night crowds grow to standing-room only audiences over the past year.

“I think it draws a little bit of everybody,” he said. “People who like beer and people who like science. And it’s unique. People just show up to see what’s going on.”

Haggard said he hopes his talks have a lasting effect on people.

“You look at things a little differently when you have a better understanding of the world around you,” he said.

Kardel, of Palomar College, spoke at the brewery for the first time last month and said he found the crowd very receptive.

“There were kids who wanted to have my picture taken with them, which was cool,” he said.

Kardel, who hosts planetarium shows at Palomar College, said he appreciated that the people in his audience seemed genuinely interested in his talk.

“You’d expect that at a planetarium or at the Air & Space Museum,” he said. “It’s exciting to see it at a bar.”

Haas, the owner, said he is a fan of online TED talks and asks speakers to keep their presentation the same length, about 18 minutes. Speakers have talked about the discovery of new elements in the periodic table, water on Mars, ISS Above and, naturally, the chemistry of beer.

Many of the past talks can be found online at Wavelength’s YouTube channel.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

760-529-4939

@GaryWarthUT

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