Category: About the Search Party

General information about the blog.

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In the Tap Lines for May 2024

With the Craft Brewers Conference in the rear view, it is time to prepare yourself for summer beer festival season. Though not as busy as in past years, there will be plenty to do and plenty of souvenir cups to collect. Below is what is currently planned for the month of May here on the blog.

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the Central Coast of California in advance of the Firestone Walker Invitational

~ special featured reviews of whatever is in the refrigerator throughout the month

~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 Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Tales from the Tardis

~ Sports & A Beer returns with Drafting for QB1

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Q1 Statistics

For Q1 (plus a little), past trends hold for the most part with IPA netting 68 of 148 total tasted beers and 32 of that 68 was straight up West Coast style. Below are other findings…

  • Pilsners & Lagers was the second most sipped style with 22, followed by Barrel-Aged with 18.
  • Firestone Walker was the most frequent brewery with 17, followed by Stone at 9 and Creature Comforts and Von Ebert tied at 7.
  • Most beers tasted were brewed in California (30) , not counting strictly Los Angeles (18) with 10 breweries from Oregon then 7 from Foreign breweries
  • The average ABV is a bit on the high side at 7.51% but I do expect that to fall as summer goes on.
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In the Tap Lines for April 2024

Spring sprang a day early this year and SoCal has been getting actual weather with slight variations instead of 80 degrees and dry as hell, so time to celebrate the season and bottom left corner of the country.

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from San Diego

~ special featured reviews of Spring beers

~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 Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzales James

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to A Crispr Bite

~ Sports & A Beer returns with

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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In the Tap Lines for March 2024

Springtime in SoCal as we move into what I jokingly call “early summer”. Hoping to find some bock beers, either strong or dopple would be nice plus the following features this month….

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the newer cities in the NWSL

~ special featured reviews of a potpourri of beers

~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 Trees by Percival Everett

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Heritage Mezcal

~ Sports & A Beer returns with Thoughts on March Madness

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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Sports & A Beer – What are sports anyway? 

I have been over the Olympics for many cycles now.  Corruption played a part.  NBC never not showing figure skating, even during the summer games a part. But another aspect was the fringe competitions that popped up and then disappeared.  I’m looking at you, flag football.

Ever since Dodgeball the Movie introduced us to ESPN8, The Ocho, it seems your cornhole, your darts, your curling are now considered athletic competitions.  Now before you say I am clinging to an outmoded way of sports thought, they are competitions sure.  It takes skill to throw a dart with pinpoint accuracy but it also is more math as you need to know where to throw it to get the right point total.  

Flag Football is a competition but it is more an anti-concussion one.  And curling is literally sweeping meets ice Bocce Ball.  What’s next, axe throwing as sport?  I know that the streaming platforms are desperate for sports content because unlike the Harry Potter movies that have been on every platform, sometimes at the same time, sports are unique individual events. But they are not going to boost the subscriber base with a mega niche offering like Quidditch.

I have to say that these outliers may be fun, but you will never see Usher playing the halftime show of the Cornhole Super Bowl.

This is an easy beer pairing because we won’t be pairing these psedo-sports with beer.  The next time a dodgeball contest is on and you are watching because you were intimidated by the nearly three hour run time of Part 1 of Mission Impossible, grab yourself a hard seltzer or a smoothie beer that pours like a slurpee from 7-11 and enjoy the weirdness that is the “sports” landscape in 2024. Or you could really zag and find a beer/wine hybrid, that would be the classy way.

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In the Tap Lines for February 2024

Another trip around the sun for this here beer blogger. Time to celebrate with an extra day and some extra special beers along with the usual posts such as….

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from Washington State in honor of George’s birthday that he shares with me

~ special featured review my chosen birthday beer

~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 Black AF History by Michael Harriot

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to True Detective – Night Country

~ Sports & A Beer returns with What are sports now anyway?

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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The Firkin for January 2024

Seems like IP un-aithorization has roared back into use again. For a while, labels that I saw on the interwebs seemed to have actual thought out designs but lately, that whole piggyback on someone else’s work is back like a cold you can’t shake.

I know that punners gonna pun and that not all artistry will be to my particular liking. There are some breweries whose labels just do not speak to me but I am at the very least, on board with breweries who at least try to be original.

But there are soooo many lazy beer labels that look like children’s cereal boxes or sodas or candy bars that I have to believe that they sell enough to make a brewery take that step into outright identity theft. Me, I would looking over my shoulder for a Cease and Desist letter.

This, at a time, when you can probably find many artists to create a look for your new pastry stout or candy sour that actually tells the story of your brand and not a secondhand tale with missing pages that is more attached to the original IP than your beer.

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Stats – Part 2 – The BSP Spreadsheet

2023 Statistics from my Beer Spreadsheet, yes, I am geeky like that.

This is all my beer drinking data.  I haven’t posted as frequently about it as I have in the past because I post monthly about the best beers of each month.

But I do like to go through and cover some findings that jumped out to me….

  • Average ounces per week is down to 143.84 a drop of over 11 ounces
  • Average ABV was 7.21%
  • Brewery with most Best of the Week Wins was Firestone Walker with 3, there were 5 breweries with 2 wins
  • Top 5 Breweries by Beers tasted are Firestone Walker with 43, Sierra Nevada with 32, El Segundo with 26 and Smog City with 24
  • I visited 16 new (to me) breweries with 5 being in the Los Angeles area
  • I tasted 17 new (to me) brewery beer with 3 being in L.A.
  • Tasted 620 beers overall
  • Only 3 in the popular 19.2oz format, one of which – Juice Force IPA from New Belgium was certainly in my bottom 5 beers
  • IPAs were 296, Barrel-Aged 45, Pilsner/Lager 78 and Sour 14 (at least IPAs were under half)
  • 520 of the beers were California brewed, 44 from my home state of Oregon, 38 from the other 48 states and 18 Foreign brewed.
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Stats – Part 1 – Untappd

With each year my use of the Untappd app skews more to researching beers and breweries than it is on checking in beers.  But there is still enough data to see a couple points of interest in what I drank last year. And without further ado…..

More interesting was this drop in style variety….

Maybe next year, I will need focus on checking in to the non-IPA styles or, alternatively not check into IPAs as much.