Category: Beer in the news

Great articles that you should read.

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Smog at 1%


July 1st of this year marked the official start date of Smog City Brewing partnering with 1% for the Planet.

This is a non-profit founded by Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chaunard, which uses business to help save the environment, which is kinda important to beer what with water and agriculture being essential to brewing.

Smog City will be the first 1% in Los Angeles county to join up and will commit 1% of their gross wholesale and Torrance taproom revenue to non-profits that protect the planet.

This is the next step for the brewery who has already been working with Food Forward already (exhibit A – Kumquat Saison) to harvest fruit that would otherwise go to waste.

Maybe this will be the start of more L.A. County breweries joining the crusade.

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200 Years in the US


Has it been that long? Not that I was here for all of it but if Guinness says they have been sending us their fine Irish stout for 200 years, then I will believe them. It would have been cool to see the Toucans flying above other American landmarks like the Grand Canyon or the Space Needle, or even the Hollywood Sign, dare I say.

Cheers to the next 200!

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New Reuben


Two big pieces of news from the “other” brewery in El Segundo. Rob Rubens Distilling and Brewing has hired a new brewer in Shawn Manriquez formerly of The Homebrewer in San Diego. Manriquez collaborated with breweries and distilleries such as Modern Times, Mason Aleworks, 32 North, SD Distillery, and more.

This will allow their starting brewer Jeremy to focus on the distilling side of the world.

The second item is that their 1st “Beerversary” is coming up on June 3rd where they will have a selection of limited release brews.

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CA vs OR

The Trailblazers fell (predictably) to the Warriors in the 1st round of the NBA playoffs and the Clippers of L.A. ran out of gas against the Jazz so we will not get an Oregon vs California battle.

But we can look at the numbers….


That is a mighty big brewery number from Cali but they will need more than that to catch up to Oregon per Capita.  And that is the story, Oregon is drinking and producing at a Top5 pace in 4 out of 6 thanks to that by person calculation.

If this was a seven game series, I would say that Oregon would probably win in seven games.

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TM

Trademark Brewing recently signed the lease for a space in Long Beach according to a post that I saw recently on Facebook. (always trust Facebook, right?)

Set a Google alert, or have your calendar on your phone ping to remind you to check back on the progress.

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States Rights

Is it just me, or is Budweiser suddenly making jabs at our current dysfunctional federal government?

First there was their Busch history reboot/retcon that was a hallelujah to immigrants during the most hallowed of Super Bowls.

Now, the Belgian (barely) beer brewer is pushing a states right agenda. Last year was “America” bedazzled cans with the Budweiser name scrubbed for patriotism. Now, they are rolling out labels for all 50 states. California replaces America as does the catch phrase “Eureka” and the Golden State in smaller fonts below it.

We have gone from….

…to this…

…and soon ….

So many questions – Are County beers next? Did the area code idea fizzle? Will someone crazed completist try to acquire all 50 cans?

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Pulls Have Been Stopped

The City of Los Angeles would probably have a much higher number of breweries if the government knew how to handle permitting a brewery. In my 8 years of blogging about beer in L.A., that has yet to happen. There is either no political will to do so or the inertia is just too much.

To counter that indifference that borders on hostility, breweries have been liberal about pulling temporary permits. It is a loophole that has been used in DTLA but apparently somewhere in the bowels of the city, someone noticed a spike in these permits and grew wise to what was being done.

That is my best guess. The optics for a municipal government to drop the hammer and appear pro-active rather than letting things slide by are obvious. Especially when it comes to alcohol. I had a bad feeling that if it was done too much that this would happen, but perhaps this can be the impetus for change because both Cellador and Hand Brewed are in craft beer areas that are underserved and they deserve better for their hard work.

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Water and the Documentary

I don’t normally talk about Stella Artois on this blog. But they are using their being big to help out with the crucial need for water by teaming with National Geographic on Crystal Moselle’s documentary “Our Dream of Water” – with the cheery topic of the global water crisis. It will premiere on National Geographic on March 22nd (aka World Water Day) at 6:00 p.m.

Stella Artois has already crafted the “Buy A Lady A Drink” campaign with Water.org in an effort to provide clean water, which is vital (still) in many parts of the world.

Featured in the documentary are women in Haiti, Peru and Kenya and how they are affected by a lack of available water. Seeing as how the U.S. has an EPA head who don’t give a F… about water safety, this isn’t just a topic for people in other parts of the globe.

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Fined, Not Dandy

Cheating is usually not spectacular. It is usually nicked at the edges. Slowly rolling through a stop sign in a quiet neighborhood and not speeding through a red light on a busy boulevard.

But you can get dinged by the authorities for either. Especially if you keep going back to the well. Which is what happened here in SoCal recently as Anheuser-Busch, LLC wholesalers settled a case for $400K (plus all the lawyering they had to pay for). In addition, Straub Distributing Company who distributes AB products in Orange County settled for $10K

They and numerous retailers were flagged for “Unfair Business Practices”. The distributors for paying for items and the retailers for accepting said items for either no cost or only partial cost.

The investigation started back in 2015 by the ABC’s Trade Enforcement Unit and resulted in one of the “largest penalty fines imposed in the history of ABC…” They will also have to install training programs for employees and anyone who has been to one of those, know what a time suck they can be as well as costly.

An additional fun fact is that, “In exchange for suspension of $200,000 of the fine, Anheuser-Busch, LLC agreed to extend the conditions of discipline to all Anheuser-Busch, LLC wholesalers in the state.” Why AB would want the $200K and make the disciplinary action statewide? Pre-empting further legal action? They need whatever amount of that $200K to pay the lawyers?

All I know is that this company is better at skirting rules and avoiding punishment. Much better than beer making for sure.