Thanks to the crew at Hopped LA, I got the opportunity to test out beers from new Torrance brewery, Buzzrock. (and be filmed for an “unCanned” segment too)
Gary Magnone received a whopping 12 crowlers. Basically covering all but a couple of the beers that Buzzrock makes at their Brews Hall at Del Amo location.
Considering the brewer lineage of Stone and Monkish, it was no great shock to find that the beers were all above average. There was some weirdness though, the pale ales were all dark orange in color while the IPA’s were uniformly golden yellow. The Witbier was made with peaches and boy was it dripping with the actual fruit taste, then there was the Sabro Hop Double IPA which was a straight up coconut bomb.
Of the group, my pick for what to try is the Hazy IPA because it too, was weird, but it grew on me. It had the right color and haze profile. The aroma was spot on but when you sipped, it was Cascade hopville. Picture a hazy with the fruit taste removed, replaced by pine. More classical was their Oatmeal Stout which ticked all the boxes for the style. Coming in third for me was the Oat Pale Ale which was bright with fruit and had a nice hop/malt balance.
Between the George Lopez and Colin Cowherd sub-brands, I would steer to the Cowherd. Both the Pils and IPA were down the middle whereas the Lopez beers seemed to be trying to hard and ended up not working well for me.
Promising start though for Buzzrock, enough to make a visit to their Torrance brewery a better bet.