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Poet Gardens, the home of the Whittier Brewing Co. won’t be the city’s only brewery for long as a 2nd brewery has gained approval from the Whittier Planning Commission.
The brewery is La Bodega, owned by Erik and Raul Tapia. They plan to operate a brewery, as well as a retail store to sell beer and wine alongside a restaurant in a former optometrist’s office.
Abraham Mercado, a friend of the owners will be the brewmaster and the hope is for a 2020 opening.
I don’t think that brown bananas or lumpy apples will be the new hazy IPA but with an emphasis on upcycling and making the most of the fruit and vegetables that are grown, one company, Hazel Technologies is creating products to slow the inevitable decay of food.
Per a recent article in the Los Angeles Times that leads to its own waste. R&D has to be done on actual fruits and that creates a whole separate waste cycle but Hazel has gotten creative and is taking “discarded passion fruit and making a sour IPA, and discarded bananas and making a banana rum. He (the company founder) has a fridge full of dragon fruit and is considering making a dragon fruit beer.”
I have heard about re-use of hops and small beer but this would be a whole new world for whatever brewery is really into conservation.
Arts District Brewing begat Imperial Western Beer and now brewmaster Devon Randall will add another name to her resume as All Season Brewing Company is set to open sometime in (maybe) early 2020 at the former Firestone Tire Building on La Brea near Wilshire.
The space will hold the new brewery as well as a Chicas Tacos location and marks, as far as I can tell, the only real mid-city brewery in Los Angeles.
When more information comes available, I will pass it on. Along with other jokes about how SoCal only has one season.
A few days ago I saw a cryptic post about the timing of the sale of Barley Forge. It seemed on its face as a simple explanation for fans who might want to schedule last visits to the Costa Mesa brewery, but it also was a foreshadowing that the brewery was changing hands. Greg Nagel from OC Beer Blog broke the news that new that….
It looks a strategic parry to their neighboring brewery, Gunwhale Ales which opened a second location near Green Cheek and now Green Cheek is returning the favor. Also, it is interesting that this will be the second brewery space that Green Cheek will take over.
Jason Lee Norman, an Edmonton publisher and author, has come up with an ingenious use for a can of beer. Norman teamed up with Blindman Brewing for custom can labels for the brewery’s limited edition summer ale. Each can had a micro-short stories from local writers on the label.
For those who love to have something to read on cereal boxes this is perfect. Pour your beer and then read your story while you taste the ale. I could see this being a great idea for a brewery that has a large distribution footprint that can add local flavor by having a different label for different markets.
A little financial sleight of hand and suddenly a 20 million dollar fine seems like a small price to pay for the Craft Brew Alliance. ABInBev owned a minority stake in the group that includes Appalachian Mountain Brewery, Cisco Brewers, Omission Brewing Co., Redhook Brewery, Square Mile Cider Co., Widmer Brothers Brewing, and Wynwood Brewing Co. (basically just Kona and Widmer and really just Kona if you want to sit on brass tacks) had a September deadline for ABInBev to buy them at higher price A) 475 Million. That was declined and the 20 million paid so that lower price B) could be paid around 321 million.
321 + 20 < 475 sums up that transaction.
What happens now though Kona gets added to the formerly known as “High End” or “Brewers Collective” as if we were in the USSR. The other breweries on the list will too but I doubt they will last long before being spun out somehow. ABInBev has the geography and styles covered already with higher financial performers. Widmer Bros. is the odd duck here as a heritage brand with super-strong ties to Portland. It might be a target for revival for an ambitious under VP in ABInBev ranks. Or it may end up on the scrap heap too which would sad for the current oldest brewery in Portland.
This story was recently in the L.A. Times….
It is rare that a government body is even a tiny bit pro-active but San Diego has seen the power of both biotech and beer and have created a new bank. One that will be filled with water and (hopefully) won’t increase taxes.
The city wants to take “stranded”, unused water from business ventures willing to part with it and offer it to water dependent companies willing to pay for extra. It is a clever idea and one that could conceivably work with other finite resources. It will be interesting if this project takes off and can be a model for other water districts.
I was vigilantly checking my credit card statement when I saw a strange name on a purchase. I looked at my calendar and saw that I was at the Eagle Rock branch of Craft Beer Cellar that night and not at some place called Talon. I dug a little more and found out that the Talon is now the new name of the bottle shop.
The only news that I can find was on Facebook saying that Tom & Nicki have taken over. Leads me to think that the franchising through Craft Beer Cellar is having problems over on the West Coast too or maybe some other answer is at the root of the sign change.
I made a quick stop and did not see any of the regular staff on hand but the shelves were stocked so let’s hope that the beer choices stay strong.
What you see is an old fire truck transformed into a second life as beer delivery system. Not only does it make you wonder what other cool vehicles could become taps but I also wonder if something like this could be combined with Jose Andres and his food for disaster victims (World Central Kitchen) to create a charitable beer truck. Maybe for the California fire fighters working in super hazardous conditions as celebration when a fire is contained.
Read the back story on this rolling Ohio tap truck right HERE.
In late October, the news broke that Lagunitas (or was it Heineken) had closed a Community Room charitable space in Portland. It was PR claimed that it was a hard decision to make but I am pretty sure that the big brewery could have stopped taking reservations and then easily found the spare change in the marketing department couch to keep the place afloat through all the booked events or called it quits on January 2nd.
This led me back to a conversation I had recently where the massive Lagunitas complex off the 210 freeway was brought up and how it had completely fallen off the map in the Los Angeles beer universe. Back in time when I was invited there on media day and saw all the space for trucks to be loaded with easy access to move out onto the freeway to send Lagunitas beer to the large SoCal market and presumably to Mexico. Space for brewing and taprooms and food. But years have passed and no rooftop garden bar as spoken of. Nothing but a temporary taproom that had the look of thrown together over a weekend which I don’t even know is open or not anymore. And there ha been nary an update about the whole project since.
If two states are affected, in two widely disparate areas like Portland and SoCal, there is something afoot. This feels like a re-trenchment from above and not something guided by Petaluma HQ. I expected this to happen to one of the “High End” breweries or Constellation with the inflated Ballast Point sale but maybe Heineken hit a financial wall first. A self-imposed wall to be sure.