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A concise brewery bio
Congregation Ale House has begun brewing operation!. Caleb McLaughlin, formerly of Rogue Brewing is at the helm. I set out to Azusa to try some of the new beers and take some photos, since I can’t share beer over the interwebs, here is the latter….
The lovely brick building in Azusa is easy to get to and plenty of parking.
Your two Congregation brewers!
The beers on tap.
Considering how many British actors are starring in major Hollywood movies, it is amazing that they haven’t clamored for some beer to remind them of home. The old school stuff from cask.
Well, that dry spell will come to an end (and hopefully earlier rather than later) this year with the introduction of MacLeod Ales. Based in Van Nuys they project themselves as “the valley’s other production brewery”.
Their brewing plans are to “replicate and celebrate the traditional brewing methods of the British Isles.”
When they start up, an empty spot in our craft beer eco-system will be filled and hopefully it will make our bars more open to cask spots in their taplines instead of 5,000 IPA’s and it may encourage more cask beers from our current and future brewers.
Who knows, maybe in 5 years L.A. will have a major cask beer festival. For now we will have to rely on MacLeod for draft, cask and bottle.
Behind this pretty cool bar in Highland Park,
Bob Kunz is busy creating Highland Park Brewery. In LA parlance, that means filling out forms and attending political meetings and then filling out more forms. Bob seemed ready to go when I saw him at the Blue Palms 5th Anniversary and if the cookie crumbles in the right way, they could be brewing in the next couple months and you might be able to order a new local neighborhood beer at the Hermosillo.
So keep your finger crossed and knock on wood.
The second stop in Iowa is Okoboji Brewing Company. And these are the beers that caught my eye from their brewhouse in Spirit Lake off of Highway 71.
Boji Beach Golden Rye Ale
“Light golden in color, crisp, smooth and dry with slight bitterness to balance the sweetness of the malt. This beer will be well received by American Lager fans even as an ale. The rye adds a bit of spicyness and some bakery qualities which enhance the complexity of this beer.”Midwest Charm Farmhouse Ale, with Ginger
“Traditionally brewed seasonally in the barn and other farmhouse buildings, thus the name. This style almost died out due to the perception of being a “regular person’s beer” but was revived by craft and home brewers with the love of its diversified flavors. Cloudy amber color with some spicyness and earthy flavors from the yeast. This semi-dry, medium bitterness beer has been revitalized because of “regular people” loving great beer.”They also have an adjacent homebrew shop so that Iowa home brewers have a spot to find their ingredients and equipment!
Between keeping up with L.A., the obscene brewery opening pace in San Diego, the Bay area gets the short end of the coverage. Which explains why it has taken me two years to talk about a new (well, not now) brewery in Petaluma by the name of HenHouse headed by Collin McDonnell and Shane Goepel who are doing the brewing on nights and weekends for now.
According to their website they are “all about creating new and interesting kinds of delicious” two barrels at a time. They have a couple chicken monikered beers (Big and Little) as well as a representative sampling of beer styles from Belgian Golden to Black Lager to ESB and a Hopless Saison. Oh and an Oyster Stout as well.
And they must be good because of the two places to reliably find their beers are their HenHouse location and at a couple restaurants run by some unknown guy, Thomas Keller and his French Laundry and Ad Hoc restaurants.
If you find Almond Street in London and you happen to notice you are in South Bermondsey, then you are probably pretty damn close to Partizan Brewing. One of the new wave of English craft breweries that are sprouting up.
You can’t miss their distinctive label designs or how they spin new beers off of one particular style. They have multiple IPA’s with different hop combos (and one coffee version that sounds intriguing from the hops and coffees include, or you can get a Styrian Golding Saison or a Sage version or a lemongrass version. You will have to plan ahead though because they are only open on Saturdays.
Our first stop in the Hawkeye/Shocker state. (if you follow the two big Universities) is at Confluence Brewing Company in Des Moines. What caught my eye from their website was this nugget, “It all started, improbably enough, with a failed attempt to make “raisin almond beer.”
Yeah, that sounds bad but it had to get better from there and now here are the beers that I would pick from their portfolio:
First is the canned (along with their Des Moines IPA and Farmer John’s Multi-Grain Ale) is the Capitol Gold….”Glowing like the Iowa Capitol dome in Iowa’s capital city, Des Moines, this golden lager is brewed with time-honored German brewing methods. Its slightly sweet, bready, malty flavor is balanced perfectly by traditional German noble hops with medium-low hop bitterness.”
Second in my taster tray would be the Citra Blonde. I like that hops are being deployed into beers that allow the hop to really shine through and since I love the Citra, this would be a no-brainer to try.
Last but probably not least or even last would be the Blue Corn Lager. Sounds interesting. Grain forward beers are rare but can taste oh, so good.
Tillamook is known for the cheese but now it also has a cool sounding brewery too. Trevor Rogers is behind De Garde Brewing and according to no less of an expert than Belmont Station of Portland, he is “utilizing yeasts he cultured from the local environment and an assortment of fun barrels to produce an array of unique beers with complex flavors.”
Here is a partial list of the unique offerings:
Chenin Blanc Regards (Double India wild ale with wine grapes)
Tempranillo Desay (wild Saison with wine grapes)
Italian Plum Desay (wild Saison, hasn’t been poured yet)
Cherry Desay
Cranberry Bu Weisse
Sacramento is becoming quite the beer town. Considering they have have a neighboring city to the south that is thought of more for beer (just like us in LA), I am glad to see that they are doing their own brewing thing. Without further ado, let me introduce New Helvetia Brewing.
New Helvetia is trying to honor the brewing past embodied by Buffalo Brewing which was one of many regionals that went under in the run up to the BMC beer take-over as well as honoring a more recent Sacramento brewing casualty all while staying connected to the current community. For that last bit, each of their beers has a recommendation for a local restaurant dish that pairs well with the beer. (Really cool idea!)
Here are the two beers that I would order first….
“The best of both worlds, this Pale ale is brewed in the British tradition, with a nutty, full body and clean finish. Except because we’re not British, we added a very American amount of Cascade hops late in the boil, leaving this beer both flavorful and sessionable and more of a half IPA than a pale ale.”
“This American wild ale is brewed according to the best traditions of Belgium; Having been allowed to undergo a spontaneous secondary fermentation, this beer displays a striking tartness that perfectly balances the roasted qualities of the malt. An Auroch (by the way) is a Paleolithic Longhorn Bison.”
Lately, I have been harping on how big a craft beer market that L.A. is, well the corollary to that there are some really underserved markets as well. One pocket in particular could use a brewery and thanks to the efforts of Robert Cortez, Pacoima could be the home of a new brewery.
Pacoima Brewery, (aka Pac City) after three years of looking has finally found a home. An “As Is” home which is being cleaned up and permitted so it can hold a three barrel system with six fermenters plus a cold box and cold room.
Cortez has a Belgian bent to his beers filtered through his Latino heritage. Past home brewed creations that may make their way into production include a caramel IPA, a Mexican Rye Lager with sweet corn added and some Belgian beers with Apricots and strawberries.
Thanks to advice from a who’s who of L.A. brewing like Drew Beechum, Aaron from Bootlegger’s along with the app age of home brewing tools like BeerSmith, he is well on the way to adding to the brew scene in Los Angeles.
My phone died before I could get to all my questions so I will be following up too in the coming months as well and YOU can follow the progress, HERE, on their FaceBook page.
