Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Great articles that you should read.
If you do not follow the BeervanaBlog, well, you are missing out. Especially if you want to be up to date on hops. Jeff Alworth has done the legwork on new and slightly new hop varietals so that you can sound so much smarter at the bar.
HERE is the extensive round-up. I am the most intrigued by the English and French hops since especially Endeavour and Barbe Rouge.
I raise your tiny home and give you this….
…it needs a little love but that is where L.A. Beer Hop comes in. Per a recent Facebook post, “Our 2020 look. It’s a 1955 Aloha Travel Trailer that we’re converting into a MOBILE BEER BAR. 6 taps on the exterior. Surprises inside. Coming this Summer!” Now I have to measure to see if it will fit in my underground parking garage for a cool party.
Last year, I put Paperback Brewing on the radar of readers and then, well, nothing really happened. I mean there was probably forward motion but nothing really concrete. Seems like 2020 might hold more news on this Glendale brewery….
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.