The first Halloween beer to be reviewed comes from Newcastle. It is their new fall seasonal for the True Blood set….Werewolf
L.A. Beer Week starts…..
TOMORROW!
Here are my picks for this week:
10/10 Naja’s Opening Night Stone Festival
(but if you can’t make it or can’t get a ticket, try Lucky Baldwin’s for Craftsman and Stone beers)
10/11 Musical Beer Crawl
10/12 Firestone-Walker Deconstructed. If you can’t get into the main event. Blue Palms has a post party and the anniversary beer will be released into the wild around this time too.
10/13 Deschutes Beer and Chocolate at the Bottle Room
10/14 Lucky Devils will be pouring Lost Abbey beers.
10/15 Beer Float Showdown 3
(you can also hit the nearby Verdugo for their annual Oktoberfest celebration)
Check out the official website for more information on each event.
Australian Brewery # 1 – Feral Brewing
Our initial stop on our tour of Australian craft breweries takes us to the alliteratively named Feral Brewing Company.
As was the case with the previous two breweries on this itinerary, the details are courtesy of the Crafty Pint. THE place to go for Australian craft beer information.
What jumped out at me other than the marvelous name was the barrel aged Hop Hog beer. Just sounds like a grand experiment. Though the Runt beer sounds good too.
Beer and Descanso Gardens
One of the calmest and tranquil places in Los Angeles is Descanso Gardens. Nestled in the mountains above my home in Glendale, the garden played host to the first LA Beer Week Finale Festival in 2009. And this year they are joining in on the Beer Week festivities with a day devoted to brew, on week from today.
The main attraction is a biergarten from 3-8pm. But there will also be a Home Brew class and how to grow wheat and barley class that you have to sign up for beforehand. It is a great place to stop and smell the roses and listen to your beer as Fred Eckhardt would say.
Session # 56
Here is the topic for this month…from Tale of the Ale
Thanks to the big boys
“What I ‘m looking for is this. Most of us that write about beer do so with the small independent brewery in mind. Often it is along the lines of Micro brew = Good and Macro brew, anything brewed by the large multinationals is evil and should be destroyed. Well I don’t agree with that, though there may be some that are a little evil….
Anyway I want people to pick a large brewery or corporation that owns a lot of breweries. There are many to chose from. Give thanks to them for something they have done. Maybe they produce a beer you do actually like. Maybe they do great things for the cause of beer in general even if their beer is bland and tasteless but enjoyed by millions every day.
If you honestly have nothing good to say about a large brewer, then make something up. Some satire might be nice, It will be a Friday after all.
So remember, October 7th is a celebration of our big mega breweries for the work that they do.”
After reading the assignment, a song lyric (probably mis-remembered) popped into my head. “..what are they good for, absolutely nothing”. Then of course, “Say it again”.
Now on this very blog, I told people not to be scared of Goose Island being sold. I have defended the Quality Control of the watered down lager that the mega-corporations shill. And yes, the BMC do donate scads of money to charity.
But to me, the “big boys” are not part of the brewing community that I know. They are a large amorphous blob that could be in any industry. They could be making fire alarms or fig newtons. They long ago gave up crafting beer and now produce an industrial product.
So I might as well, say nice things about Wal-Mart or ConAgra or Bank of America in this session. They are as much “beer” as ABInBev or MillerCoors. Or I could talk about brewing’s actual big companies like Stone or Sierra Nevada.
But the spirit of the topic is to play nice, so I say this to all the Omnicorp’s and MegaBig Companies of the world who cater to the lowest common denominator, “Thanks for not caring. Thanks for creating such a huge market for quality. Thanks for not responding to shifts in consumer taste by making something even remotely good. And to the BMC specifically, keep making your funny little commercials instead of beer.”
Repoterroir
Repoterroir is a mega-collaboration between:
“A distinct 5.5% ABV session-lager brewed with elemental, native terroir from the following collective of brewers: Sierra Nevada (wild rice, beets, cucumber, mint and carrots), Avery (Colorado alfalfa honey), Allagash (Maine purple potatoes), Dogfish Head (free-range Atlantic Ocean beach wood), and Lost Abbey (cage-free Pacific Ocean beach wood).
Born out of a backroom conversation in a Boulder restaurant and blooming into a full-blown cornucopia of a collaboration, Repoterroir is a coming together of like-minded craft beer compatriots. Brewed at Sierra Nevadas brewery in Chico, CA this sessionable lager beer reclaims the earthbound mantle of terroir from the grape-soaked, buttoned-down world of wine and repurposes it in a new sudsy sense. Featuring natural ingredients contributed by each of the five breweries, this unique and earthy beer is complex and layered but ultimately drinkable. Using the full repertoire of skills from more than 86 combined years of brewing knowledge and skill, this lager combines traditional (and not so traditional) ingredients into an ideal summertime brew.”
As with the first post of the day, I like the idea but it seems two ingredients too much just for the sake of equal representation. I can do without the carrots and beets. Color is the least of my beer judging worries.
Bruery (Faster, Bigger) + Dogfish (Better, Bolder)
Today, I will feature two posts on beers that may very well be excellent but, to me, make me long for a simple pale ale.
“Faster, Bigger, Better, Bolder (Gradually, Quietly, Steadily) is an homage to the contrasting lifestyle views of American excess set against the more humble and traditional ways of Japan. Brewed with kumquats and our own seven spice schichimi togarashi blend along with sake yeast, this is an excessive beer brewed with tradition in mind. $1 from each bottle sale will go towards rebuilding Japanese breweries and households that were destroyed during the recent earthquake.”
I can live with kumquats. Spice is fine. I love sage in beer so it is no problem. But then combine with sake yeast. That is where I start to wonder.
While the beer world was in Denver….
So the craft beer world was tilted towards Colorado, I didn’t sit on the couch grousing that I wasn’t there. Especially since my football team was winning (Go Linfield!)
I took to the road and visited 4 SoCal breweries. The first stop was Cismontane for the release of their Double Rainbow DIPA….
We got to sample the “regular” version of Double Rainbow….
Cismontane even grows a few hops outside their pleasant little industrial park tasting room….
Next stop is the fairly new Anaheim Brewing. Another pretty interior in which to drink beer and aside from me in the foreground…
I will have to sample more to make a complete assessment of their creations…
Richard and I sampled the Tavern Ale and the Oktoberfest both of which were underwhelming in comparison to Cismontane.
Our final stop was a quick jaunt to Eagle Rock Brewery to get a taster of Populist and to buy a small growler. Then home to sleep!
The Great American Beer Festival – The Results Show
I wish that more people would pay attention to the results of the Great American Beer Festival but alas the other 95% as I call them seem more interested in people (who are purported to be stars dancing) or people who can’t sing singing.
The best place to check out a digestible set of results for me has been the Brookston Beer Bulletin. So check out his summary HERE.
Suffice it say that I am glad that California (adopted home is # 1) and that my ancestral home of Oregon was 3rd.
Ken Burn’s Prohibition
One of my favorite books of the last couple year’s was Daniel Okrent’s Last Call. And that is the jumping off point for the new Ken Burns series with the name of Prohibition.
Premieres October 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2011 at 8 PM on PBS. But check your local PBS station for more information.