How Did I Miss This Brewery?

The West Coaster ran an article on October 17, 2017, profiling Oceanside brewery Horus Aged Ales, a brewery I had not heard of before reading the article.  Horus is headed by Kyle Harrop, and he is the only employee at this brewery, and this superman does this while holding down a full-time job outside the brewing industry.  Harrop is a nomad brewer, renting time on other breweries' systems, then taking the beer back to an Oceanside industrial park where the beer is conditioned and aged in barrels before bottling.  I copied the passage below from the West Coaster article, and it describes Harrop's process for one of his beers and gives you an idea of the intensity and dedication it must take to run a brewery solo:

Goshawk’s Grasp
“I set out to do something innovative each and every time I make a beer, and that does not usually come cheap. I just don’t really sacrifice ingredients because of the cost. Some people appreciate that, others might be resistant to it.” Harrop has become known for using rare, exotic, and costly ingredients and barrels. With Goshawk’s Grasp, he used the most expensive Geisha coffee in the world. “After reading several threads and forums online about how that coffee does not belong in any beer because of how delicate and floral it is, I took that as a challenge.”

He (Harrop) added thousands of dollars’ worth of hazelnuts and boiled off more than half the original wort in the kettle. In the end, he had to charge a price that is comparable to a bottle of barrel-aged beer in order to not lose money. Goshawk’s Grasp went on sale in April and crashed the Brown Paper Tickets website due to the extraordinarily high volume of traffic.

You should read this article, and I have to figure out how to try some Horus ales.

Another quote in the article jumped out at me, this one from Winslow Sawyer of Pure Project: "Regarding his (Harrop's) Stygian beers, I would describe them as exemplary specimens of the pastry stout style.”  In an article about a San Diego brewery I have never heard of I read a passage about "exemplary specimens" of a "style" I did not even know existed.  Are pastry stouts a style?  I do not even know what a pastry stout is, but I am guessing it is not a brewery and doughnut shop collaboration.  Jeez, I need to get out more often.