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Tarantula Hills Brewing in Thousand Oaks has hit a significant milestone. Saturday, June 22nd is their 5 Year Anniversary.
Festivity Details include: (yays and nopes are mine)
5th Anniversary Beer + Brewer’s Special Keg – yay!
Smoked Old Fashion Cocktail – yay!
El Rey Oyster Shooters – nope
Great Lineup of Live Music – OK
Birthday Sundae flavored Ice Cream – yay!
5th Anniversary Merch – OK
The Torrance Beermuda Triangle is gaining another tenant as HopSaint Brewing Company will be expanding to a location HopSaint @ The Ditch. I would probably ditch that moniker to match up better with the delicious beers that HopSaint puts out.
I will follow up with news about when and where when opening is closer.
As much as I enjoy both Bourbon and Bourbon barrel-aged beers, I like to see alternative barrels being used which is why I am highlighting this upcoming release from The Bruery…
Even though one can buy watermelon practically all year round, it still remains, stubbornly, a summertime fruit to me and with summer just a few June Gloom days away, it was time to taste Wheater Melon from Los Angeles Ale Works.
Right off the bat, back in childhood with a watermelon Jolly Rancher. The beer is light orange in color. That candy blast comes in strong and then leaves just as strongly, leaving a watery and light finish. Was hoping for a bit of wheat backbone here. Would be quite enjoyable on a hot day by the pool but I fear it would clash or be drowned out by most summer BBQ foods.
Hard to believe that Daisy Cutter from Half Acre Beer is 15 but time does fly. In honor of that anniversary comes DC Select Double IPA, a collaboration with Sierra Nevada Brewing.
“For Daisy Cutter Select Double IPA, both teams hand-selected special lots of freshly harvested Centennial from CLS Farms, a fifth-generation family hop grower in the Yakima Valley. All agreed on a selection that presented punchy notes of sweet, bright citrus, with a touch of background earth. We used it to build a recipe that echoes the ages – Classic IPA.”
For a week long in June, Homage Brewing and its two location will be celebrating their 8th anniversary.
“You can expect BIG strawberries, BIG tunes, RARE bier on draft, food, wines and new merch.”
After driving by it many, many, many times, I finally made a point of stopping at Western Station a mostly wine (but also beer) bar in Eagle Rock.
It is a small and dim but not dark space with a group setting in front but mostly bar seating. The beer and wine lists are chalked up in frames on one side. There is also a side wall with bottles of wine and a couple coolers with a small but nicely curated choice of beers. Any place that has Duvel bottles is a step ahead of the game.
The small draft list had Highland Park, There Does Not Exist and a pair of Craftsman beers and since I had not had the famous for Los Angeles 1903 Lager in quite some time, I went with that.
File Western Station under where you want to go when you have bi-curious beverage groups. Wine fans will find something and beer fans will too.
Sierra Nevada is expanding their torpedo fleet by two with the upcoming release of Pacific Torpedo a West Coast IPA featuring Magnum, Chinook, CTZ and Idaho 7 hops and also Dank Torpedo a DIPA that the brewery says is “packed with sticky golden lupulin”.
I have dabbled in the alternative burgers. Even kinda like the Impossible Burger when I want something lighter than an In n Out. One local vegan burger joint is Monty’s Good Burger.
There is one in Koreatown and one in Echo Park and now they have a local craft house beer, from Party Beer Co.
May brought a nice mix of new beers and new breweries and that is shown in the Best of for the month…
Santa Monica Brew Works Flecha Azul Margarita Sour – I have had a couple nice sours recently headlined by this SMBW that smartly combined margarita with sour in a Gose-ish way.
Trusted Gut Kristalweizen – clean and crisp but unmistakably weizen. Perfect for a summer day.
Ghost Town + North Park Ghost Park IPA – Cannot go wrong with North Park even if they are just half of the brewing team.
The big winner for the month is…..
Brouwerij West 8x8x Hazy DIPA – now this was a proper hazy. it was like drinking cream and pineapple and it had an impressive layer of murk to it.