It might be too late to plan an extended excursion to SF for their popular beer week but maybe an overnighter to at least sample their 10th collab beer, an appropriately titled Foggy IPA
Or you can check the the SFBW website to find out where your favorite L.A. brewers will be. You know some will be trekking north to represent the City of Angels.
Coming this year…
There are some new breweries coming to the L.A. area in 2018 headlined (IMHO) by the Chinatown brewery / taproom of Highland Park Brewery.
But there are more in the pipeline that I will be visiting and reviewing, such as….
…and these are just a sample. There might be more in places as far flung as Pasadena, two new ones in Monrovia, literally right next to each other. One in Burbank, at least one in Long Beach.
Not for Leaves
If the idea of creating a local, smaller-scale malt house was both crazy and cool. Then the next step in Admiral Maltings evolution builds on that idea to take malt education a step further. Opening on (or near) January 26th is The Rake named for the tool used to turn germinating barley. There will be 20 beers on tap of examples made with Admiral’s malt plus cheese, charcuterie, and sandwiches. Even better, you will be able to look into the malthouse while sipping a Bay Area beer made with that malt.
And if you needed an excuse to head there, Almanac Beer Co. is moving into that same building with a taproom and beer garden.
AM is the combo of Ron Silberstein, brewer at Sand Fracnsisco’s ThirstyBear and Magnolia Brewpub founder Dave McLean.
Schedule This in 2018
One of my bucket list beer events is fast approaching.
San Francisco Beer Week will cover Feb. 9th through 18th, next year. You will see plenty of L.A. beer there and you can check out the initial event listing now. Just click HERE to see.
It’s a week that I feel needs to be done right because they have sooo many events.
1st Visit (and 1st Anniversary) – Gunwhale Ales
I don’t usually combine a 1st visit to a brewery with a 1st (or even 2nd or 3rd) anniversary, but plans change and I trekked south to see what Gunwhale Ales was celebrating…
After finding myself on a toll road and getting a little lost, I finally located Gunwhale and their Coastal Ales. The beer was smartly splitt between three stations. The taproom with the basics, if you can call a pretty lengthy list basic. Then one smaller side with a mix of variants as well as an outdoor station with even more variants. Watermelon, fennel, cranberry, clove and many other ingredients too were to be found in the combo of table beer, saisons and IPA’s.
Gunwhale has a good sized patio facing Randolph Avenue and I wish more places had them. On the downside, I am not big on the wildlife trophies in the main taproom or the auxiliary one. Though the latter was offset by a cool farmers hositing cold ones mural.
This is a great location near The CAMP warren of stores and restaurants. I wonder if any cross-over or if that would be too much OC walking.
But on to the beers that I tried:
Chickabiddy – Table Beer – medium good
Pau Brah IPA – with grapefruit and white tea – too much tea not enough hops.
Old Rackatee Farro Saison – little bit of orange in the way back more menthol
Cockrow Breakfast Stout – with Brauhaus coffee not bad.
Chickabiddy with guava ginger raisins and rum soaked oak chips. – maybe some ginger. Just a jumble to me.
Polarized DIPA – tropical aroma. Not bad but didn’t really hit me.
Hop for Mama Belgian IPA – nice funky aroma. Less IPA and more Belgian. Little thin.
Flooded Fields with jasmine tea and milk sugar – low ABV. Will the tea overwhelm here too? Yup. Way too much jasmine. More tea than beer. Super dry.
The Mark
There is a mark on Torrance now because Yorkshire Square Brewery has become only the second brewery in all of California to have the Cask Marque affixed to their brewery.
Cask Marque’s Certificate of Excellence “recognizes the high standards necessary for a great cask ale program so that beer drinkers can know that a particular establishment is a likely site for the sublime experience for which proper cask ale is held in high regard.” The brewery is checked twice a year to make sure they stay up to snuff.
You can see the other locations at the Cask Marque’s Cask Finder listing
A Tree Grows in Huntington Beach
Cider is working it’s way through Los Angeles. Great Society in Long Beach and now the forthcoming Tree Branch Ciderhouse.
Let’s hope that draft cider works even closer to me.
1st Visit – Empire Tavern
Second day in a row that I went into Burbank for beer. This time to San Fernando Avenue and the soft opening of the Empire Tavern.
Here is the 1st Visit report…
Now this is a “just right” neighborhood place to have a beer. Twelve tap options to select from. Plenty of bar seating and plenty of table seating as well for a space that looks like it might be teeny-tiny on the inside. Best of all is the nice picture window out from that suffuses the room with light. Granted the view out onto this stretch of North San Fernando isn’t a Hawaiian sunset but a seat at that window with a view of the hills that backdrop the valley is not bad.
I can totally see wearied Christmas shoppers from either the nearby Empire Center or Burbank mall making a post Black Friday stop here to recuperate and if I was one of the neighbors from across the street, you know this would become a regular haunt.
If I have said it once, I have said it too many times. Every little part of the great Los Angeles area can do with a place with great beer choices that they can call “their neighborhood” bar. Empire Tavern will be that place.
1st Visit – Lincoln Beer Co.
Two nights ago, Lincoln Beer Co. unveiled their new taproom digs as well as taps of their beer.
Here is the 1st Visit report…
This was one of the first taproom openings that had a literal line out the damn door! A combination of people not knowing what beers to order since many beers were new and also due to kinks being worked out for a first day of business led to long wait times and no place to sit.
But the room looks really nice. Fun lighting, bar seats and communal tables. TV’s that were tucked away from the bar. There was even a bit of greenery outside the restrooms. It reminded me of Boomtown. Maybe they took some visual cues from that DTLA space.
There was a good amount of beer on tap for the night including a nitro tap. The tap signage looked good and the beer names were nice and visible, but the box space allotted for the style name and ABV were in too fine a print. If you were feeling lucky, you could order up based on the name alone. Or wait for a less crowded time and take a closer look without worrying about the people behind you waiting.
I went with the Revenge IPA. I often choose an IPA because the hops should cover any flaws and also to see where the brewery measures in a popular and hard to break through category. This effort was so-so and the more I drank, the more I had wished that I had ordered the milk stout or Irish Red instead.
LBC will require a second visit where I can order a taster tray and sample a wider variety of the tap offerings. Look for that later.
A More Beer-y Union
Cedd Moses and Eric Needleman and their 213 Hospitality Group look to be closing in on adding to their roster of bars with a brewpub in the Harvey House section of the iconic Union Station.
This follows on the heels of the success of Arts District Brewing and the long simmering project will also has chef David Lentz of the Hungry Cat watching over the kitchen. That means seafood and beer pairings may be the norm plus The Varnish style cocktails.
The venture will probably not be up and running until late next year but it would be great to have a top flight taste of L.A. beer at this entry point as well as LAX.