Category: News from Other Beer Writers

Suggested websites to visit to further your beer education.

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Session # 64


The June Session (#64) comes to us from the Beer Babe and without further ado….
“What is the one beer style usually makes up the first position in the sample flight, but yet is usually the one that we never get really excited about? The Pale Ale.

While this style serves as the foundation to its big-hoppy-brother the India Pale Ale, lately “Pale Ale” has become a throwaway term. I hear bartenders and servers using it to describe everything from Pilsners to unfiltered wheat beers (I wish I was kidding).

Whether American (typically a bit hoppier) or English (a little more malty), these brews can be complex, interesting and tasty, and are all too often fast-forwarded through in a tasting or left as the “eh, guess I’ll have a pale ale” decision.

Your mission – if you choose to accept it – it so seek out and taste two different pale ales. Tell us what makes them special, what makes them forgettable, what makes them the same or what makes them different. Then, share it with us.”

Delving into the world of pale ale actually brought up more questions than answers as I drank, researched, wrote and then drank some more.

For this session, I started with Ballast Point and their (as I sip between keystrokes) pale ale. Which, to me, tastes more in the region helles / kolsch than pale ale. (1) It is quite grain forward and even it’s light orange to yellow color hints that the name on the label may be a misnomer.

QUESTION # 1
How can a brewery make an IPA like Sculpin and have a pale ale be nearly hop less?

Back in 2010, when I first had this pale (2), I rated it a 3 out of 5 on Ratebeer which is about where I would put it again in 2012 as long as I was rating it based on it’s kolschy-ness. Looking at the past review made me dig deeper into my recorded history with pales. I started into the stats of the matter and found that pales were my 4th most rated beer style. But that it was laughably behind the # 1. IPA. And wasn’t even close to DIPA’s and Imperial IPAs either. And it was barely holding off the hard chargin # 5 style, saison.

QUESTION # 2
Why is it so easy to find bombers of stouts and IPA’s and not pale ales?

So I finished off my Ballast Point and headed to the standard bearer of the style. The one with the familiar green label. Sierra Nevada. And the mild citrusy bitterness that I seem to always return to every 3 or 4 months. In my Ratebeer review (3), I said “…pale before pale had to be uber hoppy. Nice balance here. …. Flavor is simple. A great anytime beer.”

Drinking it again, I have to agree with my younger self. The beer hints at bitterness, subtley nods towards the citrus and is a near perfect bronze color. I would still pick this over Torpedo and Hoptimum any day of the week.

QUESTION # 3
Why do IPA’s get killer names like Hopportunity Knocks or Hoptimus Prime and pale ales either go unnamed or have much more staid monikers like Dales?

Lastly, I want to talk about a local brewer. El Segundo Brewing (4). Their 1st year anniversary batch was a DIPA but their bread and butter are pales. And they do a damn fine job with them whether they be Summit based, Citra or even with sage. Heck (5) one of their IPA’s is a wheat version which is hoppy, for sure, but I would consider it more a pale than an IPA.

Question # 4
Shouldn’t pale ales be part of a breweries regular line-up instead of an IPA?

In the end, the pale like other styles that are not in the “cool” clique at the moment can range from A to Z and deserves more than a cursory glance.

(1) Checking in Ratebeer, I find that it is not even labeled as a pale but rather a kolsch.
(2) Back when it was called Yellowtail
(3) Again in 2010, I must have drunk a lot of beer that year.
(4) Literally across the street from the now partially owned by Gene Simmons Rock and Brews. A great L.A. craft beer hang out.
(5) Must stop cursing.

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Session # 60

The Washington Beer Blog is hosting this month and here is the topic du Jour

“These days people take growlers for granted. In my neck of the woods, growlers are a relatively new phenomenon. I don’t recall exactly when they appeared on the local beer scene but it could not have been more than eight or ten years ago. Maybe they existed in obscurity before. My memory fails me. Today growlers are everywhere. I think. Growlers are very common around the Pacific Northwest, anyway. I cannot speak to their popularity elsewhere. I’d love to know.”

Boy does this topic come at an awkward time. Or maybe it is destiny.

I have been blogging about the growler situation in California for awhile to the point where I even put a petition widget on my website. I got some interest and some offers of help but the wheels have been spinning in the same spot until earlier this month when someone influential in the Twitter-sphere mentioned it and I suddenly got a massive (for me) influx of signatures on the petition.

Which is great but I have a new-ish job and the time to work this issue the right way is just not there for me. But I do not want this momentum to wane and blink out. So here is an unpaid job opportunity for the California beer lover with connections to breweries and the tourism arm of the State of California as well as the people who govern liquor laws in the Golden state. Maybe that is one person or three (or more).

Here’s the deal: The State of California does not allow plain growlers to be filled by breweries. The growler must be purchased from the brewery who is filling it. So, you can’t take your Eagle Rock Brewery growler to Golden Road and get it filled. Or vice-versa. And you can’t have a mason jar or any other container filled with your favorite beer like they can in Portland. That means some people have second homes filled with growlers from all the different California brewers or they have to pick and choose which growlers to buy and only get fill-ups at those places.

My proposal is simple. Have a statewide “Brewed in California” growler that can be filled at participating breweries from north to south and all points in-between.

This project needs someone to take the helm and drive.

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Beer Mixology

It looks like one of the beer trends to have legs is the Beer cocktail. And one way it will stay in the forefront is with the new….

You can check out recipes and the people behind the website HERE. And I would suggest starting with the Beer-mosa and working up from there.

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Session # 59


The first session of 2012 comes from Mario over at Brewed for Thought…..
“So as we are all incredibly interesting people, and almost always drink beer, let’s talk about what we drink when not drinking beer. Maybe your passion for coffee rivals that of craft beer, or it could be another alcoholic beverage such as scotch. My daughter being a root beer fan would appreciate her dad reviewing a few fizzy sodas. Maybe you have a drink that takes the edge off the beer, be it hair of the dog or a palate cleanser during the evening.

Beer cocktails, wines, ciders, meads, you name it as long as it’s not beer. Try to tie it in with craft beer in some way for extra credit. Be creative and I’ll see you guys in the new year.”

I must admit that I am just a dabbler, pinkie toe in the cold water type of guy when it comes to other beverages.

I can tell you that Dr. Pepper made with actual sugar is unarguably better than the mass produced stuff. I often enjoy coffee from the folks at Intelligentsia on lazy weekends. And my extremely tiny liquor cabinet is primarily populated by smaller batch distillers.

But beyond that? Well, I just don’t know that much. And it is because my passion is not there. And/Or, I just don’t have the cranial capacity to hold The Oxford Companion to Wine and the Companion to Beer in my head at once.

With the preamble now out of the way, there is one tipple that even though I am not a beverage multi-tasker, I enjoy most often when craft beer is off the table. A simple gin and tonic. Compared to my favorite brew, I feel freer when drinking a gin and tonic because I don’t have to analyze and then over analyze each little sip. I can simply enjoy the subtlety of the gin and the fizz of the tonic at the roof of my mouth.

And there are some tremendous gins out there from Junipero from Anchor or Hendricks that lightly trip across the tongue. And maybe it is that effervescence and complete lack of beer-i-ness that keeps me coming back. Or maybe it was instilled in me by my father and our trips to the bar at the Empress Hotel in Victoria B.C. Whatever synapse fires when I order one is darn close to the one that goes when I select a beer. Just writing about it is making me wonder if I have any tonic at home to go with my Aviation “eau de vie de Genievre”.

Now let me get back to my GinAdvocate magazine and rating the latest on RateGin.com.

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American Beer Blogger

When I saw this come through the beer blogosphere, my first thought was about damn time. Blogging in general is somewhat sneered upon and beer bloggers get a share of that disdain too. But this might actually get people to see at least one of us in all three dimensions and humanize the lot of us a little. So if the video moves you, then head to Kickstarter and donate a dead president or two.

“AMERICAN BEER BLOGGER is a half hour television series dedicated to all facets of the ever growing craft beer market. From home brewing, to micro beer; viewers will experience the very best of the craft beer culture. In each episode, Lew will visit a different brewer, each of which has their own sets of quirks and ways of doing things. Lew will talk to these brewers, get to know them, will show us first hand the various methods and techniques used in creating a craft beer. From the tiniest bottler to the largest manufacturer, Lew
will get his hands dirty. Topics such as bottling, food pairing, manufacturing, distribution, history, technique (and so much more) will all be touched upon

AMERICAN BEER BLOGGER sets out to entertain the viewer as well as educate on this rapidly growing industry. Through humor and a charming, hands-on host, our show will not only be entertaining for the microbeer enthusiast, but also enjoyable for the average viewer as well.”

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Session # 58


This month is hosted by Phil Hardy at the Beersay blog.

“The idea for me was based loosely around the visits of three ghosts to Ebenezer Scrooge, but relayed in a post about the beers of Christmas past, present and future.

What did you drink during Christmas holidays of old, have you plans for anything exciting this year and is there something you’d really like to do one day, perhaps when the kids have flown the nest?

Do you have your own interpretation, was Scrooge perhaps a beer geek?

Or maybe it’s all one day. What will you drink Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon and what will you top off the holiday with that evening?

Just a few examples there, but the idea was to keep the topic as open as possible to allow you free rein to write about a subject with a seasonal twist in whatever way the title grabs you.”

I was a bit stymied by this topic which is to be expected since Los Angeles is not known for needing wintry beers. For some reason the winter warmer tastes a bit better when there is a chill in the air. But then the fine folks behind the colLAboration beer gardens announced their winter beer garden at the new Golden Road brewery and a festivus of an idea popped into my head.

Every year I plan on going to the Holiday Ale Festival in Portland and every year, I miss out for one reason or another. But if the Ghost of Christmas Beers Past could grant me a wish, I would love to go back to last year’s festival and try the Cascade sours, the bourbon barrel ales and after enjoying Sleigh’r and Imperiale from Ninkasi Brewing, I really would like to have tried their Unconventional Imperial Stout with Lavendar , Taragon, and Heather.

The Ghost of Christmas Beer Present will not stop me from heading to Golden Road Brewing tomorrow. They will be debuting their next two brews at the latest colLAboration. They are “Brewer’s Choice” beers, which were “developed collectively by the entire GRB brewing team, are perfect for the holidays and an amazing follow up to the limited edition (and nearly gone!) Burning Bush IPA.”

My glass will be filled with Rye on the Palate and Shwartz Stout. And then I will buy more of the new Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale which is perfect for us in L.A. since it is a light, fruity IPA. Perfect for the typical warm days we have this time of year.

In the future, I hope to have my own December Ale festival. Hopefully, the Ghost of Christmas Beer Future will be able to help me think of a catchy name first. Because, I would love to have vertical tastings of Bruery “Days of Christmas” beers, Jubelale from Deschutes and maybe even Jubilee from my local, Eagle Rock Brewing.

Maybe I will start this year. From acorns do mighty oaks grow. I have some Anchor from ’08 down in the cellar somewhere.

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Beer Trips.com

I find October/November before Thanksgiving to be the perfect time to travel. The crowds have thinned. Kids are usually in school. The prices are a bit cheaper too. So around this time, I usually get the hankering to hit the road.

And when I heard about Beer Trips on Lisa Morrison’s Beer O’Clock show, I really wanted to hop on a plane and visit a brewery in the old country without having to do the planning myself.

You can go to London, Prague, Bamberg or even Northern Italy for a tour. And they seem to be worth the money and they certainly have good recommendations from the press.

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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.”

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another beer blog to read

I heard about Pints and Panels at the Beer Bloggers Conference in August and knew that I would have to feature them in my monthly beer blog pick.

It is one of the best review sites not only because of the comic format but the reviews are quick and to the point and with each one you get to know what M. likes and why.

I also love this quote on her about page “Beer is like music — it is infinite. That’s what I like about this gig — it’s never done.”