For Christmas, I received the luxurious gift of membership in The Bruery Reserve Society. I feel like a humblebragger just mentioning it.
Driven by beer buddy Richard down to the excellent provisions store in Old Town Orange, I entered to receive my “initiation package”
Not only did I get a membership card but I also got a hoodie with the 2012 Reserve Society logo and three beers!
Two of which went directly to my cellar which will be 60% Bruery related for the near future and then we headed up to the tap room to try (4) different versions of Saison de Lente. 2010. 2011. 0% Brett and 100% Brett. I don’t know if I should have started with 0% first and moved from there but starting at 2010 gave me the impression at 2011 was the best of the bunch. Still sparkly with the barnyardy-ness mellowed a skosh. It hit my palate the best.
Stay tuned for more visits. Next time, I pick up some new beers including a collaboration with Bootlegger’s.
Traveling with beer
Beer West magazine had a writing contest last month. And a contest is like catnip to me. So I wrote a little piece and sent it in. Since I don’t know if it will get published either in print or online, I decided to put it up here too. Please enjoy.
When I hear the words “beer travel”, I do not immediately envision hopping the next flight to the beer halls of Munich, a dark pub in Ireland or even the Lucky Labrador taps at the Portland airport.
No, the phrase “beer travel” takes my mind in a different direction completely: shipping beer from my travel destination to my home sweet home (or vice versa). Or in the blood pressure spiking tale that follows, how to get some Southern California beer to a beer blogging conference in Colorado.
I am not a great air traveler even if all that is being transported is myself and the clothes on my back. When you add in turbulent winds, my palms sweat as if I was running on a treadmill for hours. Then sprinkle in fear that the special bottle purchased at The Bruery is going to break and malt-ily moisten the box it was in, or, god forbid, more than one bottle bursts and the entire cargo hold gets spritzed. Combine all of those factors together and I am one frayed nerve waiting to pop.
Once the plane lands, all I have to do is grab my box of beer and find two fellow bloggers at the shuttle desk to whisk us to Boulder. Everything is falling into place. I look ahead to what my first beer will be when we reach Boulder. I stand with my fellow passengers who did not seem nearly as agitated by the ride as I was but that is normally the case. I start to emulate their relaxed state. The carousel spins. And keeps spinning. Luggage of all shapes and colors are whisked off the conveyor belt. Soon, I am the only one there. Without my box of beer. I feel the sweat return.
My mind immediately thinks that one of the TSA agents is a certified cicerone who x-rayed the box, saw the bounty within, and took off. Perhaps worse – that security has impounded my box thinking that I am some shady craft beer smuggler.
I tell myself to – calmly – check the nearby baggage spinners in case my box came out the wrong chute. No luck. I try to call my waiting blogger companions but my signal keeps getting cut off. With diminishing hope, I trudge to my airline’s lost luggage counter. Lo and behold, sitting off to the right, completely unattended, is my box. How it ended up stranded in a no man’s land between the counter and the carousel is a mystery to me to this very day.
I kneel down and check for any telltale wetness at the bottom of the box. It comes up dry. There are no special stickers or note on the box that would give me a clue as to what happened when the box was taken off the plane.
Time is now of the essence. I look left and right and grab the box and head off. I am sure a very amused security guard was watching the camera feed wondering what in the hell I was doing with that box and why. Weirder activities must take place because I was not escorted to a windowless room. I locate the shuttle and met up with my fellow bloggers (late but not LATE) and had a fine time in Boulder.
Three days later, I fill my trusty box with Colorado beer and cart it back to Los Angeles without incident.
I still have that box and I will continue to travel with it until it is more tape than cardboard.
The Beer Allowance – January
One of my gifts from Christmas 2011 was an “extra” beer allowance of $20 a month. And I have promised to chronicle what I have bought and then I will come back and add tasting notes when (if), I drink them. Some might go into my expanding beer cellar.
So this month I got two beers with my twenty. With a little to roll over into February!
Pretty Things has been sending more and more beer out to the west coast. At first, all I could find was the Jack D’Or saison but now we have Hedgerow Bitter, Field Mouse Farewell and last night I had the Our Finest Regards barleywine. All distinctively Pretty in character. And so when I saw the Sylvan Stout at Whole Foods, I decided to spend on that. But what would the second beer be?
I decided that I wanted to try a Belgian ale. So I went to the middle Rochefort that was available and grabbed the 8. I usually do not buy these beers because they are pricy for the size and I can get a variety of quality Belgians on tap at Lucky Baldwin’s here in L.A. if the mood strikes. But now, maybe, I will pick up 6 and 10 and the Bruin as well over the next few months.
In the Tap Lines for January 2012
Happy New Year!! Let’s ring it in with beer! And with blog posts about beer!
~ e-visits to three North Carolina breweries
~ video reviews of three California brewed beers
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 59 will converge bloggers onto a single topic
~ plus many more posts about new beers, beer products and breweries
Here are two events to get your January started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) January 9th at Steingarten LA – Bootlegger’s Brewery Night
2) January 19th at the Surly Goat – Ballast Point Tiki Night
Beer Search Party – The Year in Photos
Beer Search Party – The Year in Review
Even though I did not go to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver or the Holiday Ale Festival in Portland and missed many, many events in the Southland area, 2011 was still a busy beer year for me.
Here is what I will remember most from the year that was(in no particular order):
1. CANFEST
There are good days and bad but when you get an e-mail that says that you have won a free trip to a beer festival. That is a great day times twenty. And getting a limo ride was cool, a tour of Reno beer spots from Doug at Buckbean was cool and best of all. The actual festival exceeded my expectations. I was floored by the geographic variety of breweries that can from across the country.
2. LA BEER WEEK
This year, I was not sick during the festival and I needed to be in peak condition. I was at an event almost every night. But the best of the two week fest was the Firestone-Walker Deconstructed party. One of my craft beer bucket list items was having a Sean Paxton special beer dinner. Check that off. The idea of trying all the components of the XV was brilliant.
3. GOLDEN ROAD
I have been lucky enough to be here in Los Angeles as craft beer has finally gotten off the ground. I got to walk around Eagle Rock Brewery before it became the beer destination that it is today and this year, I got to do the same thing with Golden Road Brewing. I had the honor of being at several media days at the brewery and to see the rapid growth is amazing. I am a lucky camper to have both ERB and Golden Road within 10 minutes of my apartment.
4. BEER BLOGGERS CONFERENCE
Any time I can get to Portland for beer is a good time and would make a year end list. But what really vaults this trip to the 2nd Beer Bloggers Conference into the top tier was a traffic ridden trip to the farm, the hop farm. I really loved touring through the in production Goschie Farms. The scent of hops in the air. Little green snowflakes flying. Seeing the hop bines. Just tremendous. Not to diss the rest of the conference, but those little green cones are scene stealers.
5. Stone Brewing
2011 will go down for me as the year where I truly felt like a member of the L.A. craft beer media. And when did I know this? When I and quite a few others in the beer trade are being squired around the San Diego area with Greg Koch and the Stone gang (including the awesome Randy Clemens). I got to visit Stone Farms and eat awesome food that was grown steps away, went to the Liberty Station site, learned about the Stone store in South Park and have Stone beer at each stop. A great way to spend a day.
My Beer Allowance – December 2011
Keeping up with the craft beer world is a a fun adventure that has allowed me to meet many great people and visit some truly fun places. The downside is that it easy, too easy, to over spend. There are just too many beers and beer events to drink and attend.
It is a good problem to have. But unless you have a benefactor with deep pockets, there is always a financial wall that you run into.
Enter Christmas and my wife…..
For 2012, I get $20.00 to spend each month on those beers that I want but have left on the shelf. So, the next time that I see two bottles and would normally have only bought one. Now I can try both. Or I can take a flyer on a beer that intrigues me but that I know little about. Or I could order some off the interwebs. The possibilities are endless.
Throughout 2012, there will be posts of “allowance” beers. But if you have ideas or suggestions for beers that you would pick-up if someone handed you $20 as you walked into your beer store, then let me know. And feel free to let me know if you like any of my choices or if you think that I went off the deep end.
In the Tap lines for December 2011
December is all about the holiday ales. I started highlighting individual seasonal offerings right after Thanksgiving. So we all could celebrate each holiday in it’s proper time. It will end with a review of Anchor Christmas on Christmas.
Also, again thanks to Charissa Santos, for the above logo. If you like the look of it, check out her site HERE. She does branding, print and web design and she is easy to work with and she really made me take a hard look at where I am going and what my design does to help me get there.
~ e-visits to three beer-y spots that might catch Santa’s eye
~ video reviews of three wintertime beers including Anchor’s holiday offering on Christmas Day
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 58 will converge bloggers onto a single topic
~ plus many more posts about new beers, beer products and breweries
Here are two events to get your December started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) December 3th ColLAboration Holiday Pop-Up Beer Garden
2) December 10th – Jingle Bell Jubilee at Blue Palms
the ethics of this blog
After winning the Canfest 2011 trip and I reading this article about ethics by Pete Brown, I was reminded that I need to re-iterate the standards of this blog to either re-assure or horrify whoever is kind enough to read it.
1. I do receive the occasional free beer. But ALL beers get reviewed on their taste ALONE. I will endeavor to always note if I have received a beer for free but if I forget or am too hasty on the publish button then note that the default applies.
2. The same goes for any beer event I cover. Due to the kindness of the people in this industry and the fact that I blog for free (at this point), expensive events that are out of my financial reach are sometimes accepted in order to attend and write about them. But they do not get free passes if poorly run.
3. All editorial decisions are mine and mine alone. No one holds sway over anything I write. If there seems to be more positive coverage about a brewery or a beer it is due to the fact that I like what they are doing, they are in close proximity to me and I visit them regularly or that they have regular PR that I feel is important or noteworthy.
4. Currently, the advertising on this site is a test to see if it generates revenue. How I utilize ads may change in the future or they may disappear all together. Whichever way the winds blow, I will make sure that ads look like ads and are not hidden or embedded anywhere.
5. I also write a weekly post for FoodGPS about beer and I compile the Weekly LA Beer Blast for that blog. I carry all of my standards to wherever I write. I do this and my blog simply to educate people about craft beer and to promote it as much as I can.
6. There is blatant “homerism” to where I grew up – Portland and where I live – Los Angeles. You, as the reader, will have to read between any lines when I post about either place.
Thank you for wading through the boilerplate. We can now resume regular posts.
In the Tap Lines for November 2011
This November will feature CanFest! Smack dab in the middle of the month, I will be in Reno and you will be able to follow along right here.
Also, again thanks to Charissa Santos, for the above logo. If you like the look of it, check out her site HERE. She does branding, print and web design and she is easy to work with and she really made me take a hard look at where I am going and what my design does to help me get there.
~ e-visits to three breweries that can their beer
~ video reviews of three beers from Escondido’s own, Stone Brewing
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 57 will converge bloggers onto a single topic
~ plus many more posts about new beers, beer products and breweries
Here are two events to get your November started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) November 5th Homebrew Demonstration at Eagle Rock Brewery
2) November 11th – Four Points LAX Beer Appreciation Night