Add this beautifully packaged beer to your treasure hunter list…
La Trappe for their Oak Aged Batch 51 has matured their Quadrupel for 18 months on very fancy Pineau des Charentes Rouge Cognac barrels. Sounds quite luxurious.
Batch 51
Poor
Here at BSP headquarters there sits an old-style (thankfully not rotary) phone. It is the red phone, because it is red, and when people have bad ideas, they should call us. Which they never do.
Bit of an intro to say that the Brew Brothers who have eponymous spots in North Hollywood and Burbank are headed to a third place on Ventura Boulevard near Vineland. The place is called…
It is a bit of a tired name to me. Once you finish groaning about the pun, Google it and you get bars all across the United States so you won’t be really standing out namewise. Plus it has a negative connotation.
Now that I have that out of my system, it is great to see that there will be another craft beer bar coming to town and subsequent posts show that they are putting in a lot of effort on the interior look.
Two Everywhere
Everywhere Beer Co. fresh off their Hot Dog Week have hit the two year mark and they have a few things on the agenda that attracted me.
3 special bottle releases included rum barrel-aged painkiller and a brand new barrel-aged stout
a celebratory piñata
a tiki-seltzer bar with adult “capri sun” packs
Be ready August 2nd through the 4th.
Avid for Avocado
I am not into Avocado or guacamole which puts me into a minority here in Los Angeles. There is always an exception though, and for me it is the Avocado Ale from Angel City Brewery which I find to be an excellent summer drink.
This year is the twelfth edition of the Avocado Ale Fest in DTLA. Get there early as lines grow and try this summer tradition ale,
Review – Gelson’s Summer Blonde Ale from El Segundo
Looks like there is a renaissance of branded beers much like in the olden days of craft beer. One of these is a new blonde ale on tap at Gelson’s fancy supermarkets that is brewed for them by El Segundo brewing.
Here is the brewery description, “made with 100% Tettnanger hops, contributing to its subtle floral and herbal spice notes. The malt profile, featuring Rahr 2-Row, Rahr Premium Pilsner, Flaked Corn, and Dextrin malt, creates a harmonious balance of doughy sweetness, white bread, cake batter, and honey.”
It is quite a light beer. I abhor the word crushable but this beer is one that will go down quick. It was served extra cold which both helps on a hot day but also dampens flavor. The malt is the lead act but even it is mild and the corn finish is what you will remember most.
It’s Handy
Handy Market has been a Burbank staple for years and with my love of going to non-chain grocery stores / grocery boutiques a miss on my part. But after seeing a few beer posts from the store, I decides to drive a town over and see what I had missed.
It is a tiny space in comparison to most grocery stores but the first positive point was the availability of single cans. I picked up a pils from Highland Park and a pastry sour (never had one of those) from Ogopogo. The next positive was the double endcaps of beer. This was where most of the bottled and barrel-aged resided. There was Bottle Logic but also a couple Belgians and de Garde as well. Third positive was the prices were pretty fair. $5.50 for a local beer is pretty good.
The one down is that it is only the small cold case in the corner. It was a limited selection though one last up, was that it seemed to be curated well.
The Haze Way
Some breweries tend to go with hazy and others go with juicy when they are labeling their non West Coast IPAs. Los Angeles Ale Works uses the latter and have a new one you should check or or more appropriately check in to, Hotel Hazeway Juicy DIPA with “hoppy notes of peach, passionfruit, white grape and red currant.”
Signed
During L.A. Beer Week, Lincoln Beer Co. held a Collective Brew party. Now the hazy pale ale dry hopped with New Zealand Cascade is signed, sealed and ready. You could call it a democratically brewed beer.
Red and Now Yellow
It was inevitable. If there was a special Deadpool Aviation Gin bottle then there was going to be a Wolverine one as well. This will probably be hard to find and harder to find both.
Now, where is the Wrexham bottle?
A Book & A Beer – The Napoleon of Crime by Ben MacIntyre
Fiction sometimes echoes facts and such is the case with James Moriarty, arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. He was partially based on an American gentleman thief named Adam Worth. And his story is told in The Napoleon of Crime by Ben MacIntyre.
From faking his own death in the Civil War to London, Paris, New York and Johannesburg, Adam Worth live a full life despite not making it to 57 years old. He stole diamonds, money, pickpocketed and ran a gambling den but is most famous for s more spur of the theft of the famous Gainsborough painting, The Duchess of Devonshire.
With each chapter you wonder who else can be stuffed into his man’s adventure. The Pinkertons, Scotland Yard, Pierpont Morgan, criminal nicknames galore and Sherlock Holmes. The face you see on the book jacket provided the idea for Moriarty. Now famous as the ultimate arch nemesis. But he was a gentleman through and through. Barely resorting to violence and always striving and always spending his ill gotten gains as fast as he took them.
It is a fast paced book with a lot of twists and turns, highs and lows and a lot of transatlantic boat travel.
To beer pair with this historical tale, I would suggest selecting beers that say they are on style but really are something else. A good example being Widmee Hefeweizen which is actually a really good wheat beer. Or perhaps there is a DIPA that is a really a Triple IPA.