Category: About the Search Party

General information about the blog.

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In the Tap Lines for June 2016

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We have arrived into summer and the month where L.A. Beer Week lives, tomorrow will be the first post of many with picks for the week+ of beer in the City of Angels, but first, extensive coverage of the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival with special new releases like STiVO pils and Double Rye DBA, plus:

~ e-visits to three breweries featured at the Firestone Walker Invitational. Creature Comforts, Side Project & Mahrs Brau.
~ special featured reviews of the L.A. Beer Week Unity beer, a cellared 2015 and the new 2016 IPA.
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads The Regional Office is Under Attack .
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world

Here are two events to get your June started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) June 11th – Beer and Jerky Pairing at Southland Beer
2) June 12th – Mumford Brewing 1st Anniversary

…and here is the beer photo of the month
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Statistics and damn lies

So the first five weeks of tracking my beer intake and spending are in the books and one immediate take-away is that is has affected my drinking a bit. I set a weekly max. In this case, 240 ounces over 5 days. Sort of like a salary cap in the NBA. I could go over it without consequence but I wanted some sort of demarcation point.

In the first two weeks, I was butting up against that max number which led me to pull back the remaining three to the point where I was trying to comfortably land below that threshold.

Here are my numbers:
The low week was 176 ounces and the high week was 236.
Averaging out to 208.6 ounces per 5 day period.
Or drilling down to 40.84 ounces per day.
The biggest day was about 60 when I visited the Azusa location for next year’s opening Lagunitas Brewery. The combination of free plus riding Metro plus a long period of time led to that total.
Saturday and Sunday (obviously) were the big drinking days accounting for 49% of what was drunk each week.
Saturday was the biggest day on average with 56.8 ounces per day.

If I needed to cut down to a lower figure, Saturday would be where I started. Losing one regular sized beer from that day would be a start but getting that average below 50 would probably be better.

After the next five weeks, I will update the averages and let you know what transpired.

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In the Tap Lines for May 2016

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Another month in L.A. beer as we seemingly inch towards L.A. Beer Week next month. Expect event notices to pop up here in the latter half of the month and get a progress report on my beer consumption stats too. More importantly, the regular posts like…

~ e-visits to three breweries making gluten-free beers, like…Holidaily Brewing Co. of Golden, CO, Burning Brothers Brewing of St. Paul, Minnesota
and Aurochs Brewing Co. of Emsworth, PA.
~ special featured reviews of beers from the cellar.
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads Dublineqsue by Enrique Vila-Matas
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world

Here are two events to get your April started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) May 7th – Chad’s Beer Cellar bottle share for charity.
2) May 5th – Celebrate 5 years of hoppy beers at Cingo de Segundo.

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The Firkin for April 2016

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I entitled a pair of posts this months, “Just Stop”. That continues here with other miscellaneous bothersome beer things that can I am so done with, as of yesterday.

Beer bets between cities in major sports – Whatever the local delicacy, it seems Mayors love to make bets and put out a press release about it. Maybe as a dodge or deflection from real political isues? I don’t know but somehow beer got roped in and seems a big part of the bets nowadays. I am all for themed sports beers, especially when it comes to Portland’s Trailblazers or Timbers but these bets don’t add much to craft beer.

Game of Thrones – I am sure to be in the minority here but I have grown weary of the annual themed beer from Ommegang and the inevitable variety pack that will soon follow. Last season’s beers are still a’molding on the shelf in a couple stores and Seven Kingdoms did nothing for me. Now I don’t hate them as much as Ian McShane hates the show but I have grown weary of the branding being cooler than the beer.

Not time stamping your bottles/cans – I know that I can’t trust BevMo or CostPlus to rotate out the old let alone a corner store and I would rather not have to be wary upon entering a beer shoppe so do us a favor and time stamp the shit out of any beer that even remotely would be better fresh. It is the easy way to protect your reputation and help out the consumer.

Hating a Hater – I still don’t understand why some people out in the beer interweb world get wound up when someone says they don’t like a beer or a brewery. I say, Great! More beer for me at the end of the day if it is a brewery that I like. I guess some people prefer typing out swear words instead of having a beer. Not to mention that the chance that the person is trolling the fans is probably close to 90% means that you are basically wasting your time.

Rebranding – Full Sail, Fort Collins, AleSmith, Bell’s and a bevy of others have been re-branding lately. Was there a memo telling everybody to hit the refresh button. I long for a re-brand like Stone where the recipe was freshened up as well.

It feels good to get that off of my chest.

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My Stats

I will be charting out my beer imbibing over the next month or so to see how much I drink and how much I spend on beer. Piggybacking on the idea from the Beer Stat app, I want to see how much in Oz’s I drink. I know it isn’t super excessive in amount but is it in cost and ABV?
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In the Tap Lines for April 2016

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Water retention is up in NorCal but the weather has been 99% dry here in SoCal. Maybe April will bring some wet weather which would be better for drinking some cozy up by the fire stronger beers. Maybe that is just the hopeful April Fool in me.

~ e-visits to three breweries in North Carolina and Georgia. The theme being states under fire for possible/future oppressive laws
~ special featured reviews of beers from Portland (continues)
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads the One City-One Book for Glendale.
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 110 is hosted by ME! and covers the topic, “Twitter”

Here are two events to get your April started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) April 1st – The Doughroom will tap a rare keg of Panil Barrique.
2) April 3rd – Southland Beer will host a sipping session with Tahoe Mountain Brewing

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In the Tap Lines for March 2016

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March has blown in for another round and this month, the Portland posts start us off and will be the featured reviews. L.A. happenings and news will start to seep in though as Phantom Carriage turns one and Brouwerij West turns One day + tickets for the 8th L.A. Beer Week Kick-Off go on sale in 4 days!

~ e-visits to three cideries from Oregon such as Portland Cider Co., Cider Riot and the Apple Outlaw.
~ special featured reviews of beers from Portland
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads the Best Food Writing of 2015
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 109 covers the topic, “?”

Here are two events to get your March started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) March 4th – The Doughroom will have (3) taps from Bend, Oregon’s Crux Fermentation on draft.
2) March 12th – Firkfest at Farmer’s Park in Anaheim

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The Annual Birthday Beer

Moving on to year 46!

I am currently in Portland, tasting wine and beer and Ken’s Pizza so I had to find a beer to celebrate the vacation.

This year, there is no One Birthday beer. The taps are flowing here in Portland and I have two beers to talk about. Both purchased by someone else but both kindly shared.

Number one is Murder in the Rye a bottle only (and expensive one at that) from Deschutes. A strong ale aged in local whiskey barrels. Thanks to Rich Rosen for buying this for the table to share. It was very smooth and didn’t burn or obscure the base ale. It would work with a number of foods.

Number two is the All Hail Mosaic Pale Ale from Ex Novo in NE Portland. It poured a light orange and is of the light malt and tropical hop variety. Loads of grapefruit pith and plenty of bitterness. Probably enough to deem it an IPA.

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Days Off

I resolved, starting in mid-January (so as not to taint it with the failure of New Year’s resolutions), to embark on a plan to have two beer-less days each week for the rest of 2016.

At first, I thought I would rotate depending upon how the week was scheduled taking a Wednesday and Friday off one week and Tuesday-Wednesday the next. But I quickly settled on taking Monday and Tuesday off the last four weeks. Those being the days with the least amount of beer events on the calendar and it being easier to just have set days each week to set my internal body clock to.

There was no problem that caused the change and there were no goals for this plan of action. This was done to see if I would feel better, taste beer better and spend less money on beer. In short, a sociological and financial experiment on myself, by myself.

So far (granted small sample size) the changes have been negligible at best. I have felt better most days but that might be attributed to early morning walks with my wife or to getting a better night’s sleep. I don’t feel like my taste buds are sharper after a couple days off though I do notice that the first couple sips of beer on Wednesday night seem brighter and more alive.

The beer buying continues but I expect that I will soon have too much beer in the ol’ fridge and I will be forced to by space constraints to slow that as the year progresses. That said I was pretty discriminating to begin with. I hardly ever bought six-packs if I could buy one or two instead. I am big on buying orphan bottles. So the gain potential is smaller.

As the year progresses, I will periodically update the blog on how the experiment is going. Will I make it through to December? Will I become a super taster? Time will tell.