Category: Beer in the news

Great articles that you should read.

Posted on

Up, Up and Away

capture
Now this is a cool idea. Mikkeller teamed up with SAS Airlines in taking a beer tasting to the sky. Probably not going to happen when I fly Southwest to NYC but in a traveling world where getting one decent craft beer on a flight is becoming less hard to accomplish, it is high time to keep pushing.

What would really be cool would be to try and test the beer before taking off. Take your notes and grade the beer. Then find your seat onboard and try again at higher altitude and speed and see if the beers taste the same.

I have read many articles on how taste is affected when you are airborne and it would be a fascinating to see if it applied to beer, and if so, how much. Would an IPA be less hoppy and more malty? Would a saison’s subtle notes be lost? Would one beer “win” a taste testing at the terminal but “lose” when you are scrunched into a coach seat?

Posted on

Put a Sticker on It!

capture
Even if craft beer fans fanned out and patrolled grocery stores and beer shops to steer people away from industrial corporate beer (in a nice way, of course), we wouldn’t be able to prevent all beer purchases.

But Mike Van Hall and his Committee on Opprobriations has devised a solution. Stickers. According to the Washington Post, Van Hall who is an artist as well as graphic designer has created stickers that range from “This label is offensive” to “This Beer is Not Craft” or the snarkiest one “Do Not Trust this Product” and then places them on beers that deserve them.

You can follow his adhesive exploits @opprobriations, to see who is getting fact checked.

Posted on

GABF Awards – Re-Cap

Another edition of the Great American Beer Festival is in the books. Here is a curated awards round-up with a focus on LA area based breweries.
capture
Imagine you had 7,227 beers in front of you. Picture that in your mind.  That is the beast that Charlie Papazian has wrought.  He pioneered this festival through 35 years and it was heartening to see Colorado Governor Hickenlooper honor him for his service and all of the many fist bumps that must make his right hand a mess on the Sunday after the awards ceremony.
img_7583
96 categories were contested this year with (7) new categories added for 2016.  Pumpkin /Squash Beer, Finnish Sahti, Swedish Gotlandsricke, Pale and Dark Breslau Schoeps, German Leichtbier and Specialty Saison.
img_7585
Let’s get into the Los Angeles winners shall we?  ABove is Bob Kunz and the Highland Park team which won GOLD with Good Green for American-Style Strong Pale Ale.  El Segundo, known for hops, won for their lager instead, Casa Azul.  The Beachwood Blendery was not in chaos but their friendly Lambic won silver.  Also winning silver was Devon Randall and Arts District Brewing in the Smoke Beer category for Cowboy Curtis.  Also, very impressively Huntington Beach’s Riip Beer Co. took silver in the highly competitive and largest group, IPA with their Super Cali IPA.  An amazing 312 beers were in that category!  Moving down to bronze we find Kinetic Brewing winning that shade in the Chocolate Beer category for 4th Gear,  newbie Iron Triangle started snared the Imperial Stout bronze for Jawbone, reliable winners Smog City got bronze for Sabre-Toothed Squirrel as well.

For reasons unknown to me, the Pabst plant of industrial beer won a pair of medals as well as another Large Brewing Company plaque.  So there is that LA connection too.
img_7582

Big Winners of the morning presentation were (4) medal winners Figueroa Mountain and  Überbrew from Billings, Montana.

Going all statistical, the best results were posted by Wyoming, Hawaii and Virginia.  California picked up 56 medals all told.  IPA’d dominated the amount of submission but coffee beer was a newcomer to the big categories so kudos to California that took silver and bronze in that caffeinated category.

(All photos screenshotted from the Brewers Network livestream of the event.)  Sorry that I again entered in late.  Damn time difference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on

HPB in Chinatown

If you have seen the brewery tucked into the Hermosillo that outputs the fantastic beer from Bob Kunz at Highland Park Brewery, both beer lovers and claustrophobics will be heartened to hear that the time drawing closer for when the brewery will break ground on their 2nd location in Chinatown.
capture
A location that will be very close to the Gold Line on Spring Street in the iconic LA neighborhood will house the new brewing facility, bar + and outdoor patio.

Once the ground is broken, it will probably be around 9 months before the new location opens making it a prime candidate for most anticipated of 2017.

Posted on

What She Said

“I’ll have that too.” apparently isn’t as cool a phrase to utter in craft beer.

That is the conclusion in the book Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger.
invisible_influence_cover
According to an experiment by consumer psychologists Dan Ariely and Jonathan Levav, in which they offered brewery visitors the choice to try a sample of one of four beers: an IPA, a lager, an amber ale, or a wheat beer.

Some groups wrote down their order in private while other groups ordered aloud. The findings? Those who spoke their order were less satisfied with their own choice than those who did not speak their aloud. What was even more interesting was that the “vocal” group was dissatisfied because they had NOT wanted to order the same thing as everyone else.

Now some profess not to care what people think. But we don’t live in a bubble. If I see or hear a few people ordering a beer, I look to see what is going on and possibly order it myself. At times though, I do choose the contrary path (usually to swerve around IPA’s).

Speaking of the most popular style, I have to think that the runaway popularity had to create problems for any scientific study. Amber is not exactly a popular style, and neither is wheat unless it is hopped up. That leaves pilsner as the only “real” competition and that has to skew the results in my mind.

The next time you are in a brewery, sit near where the beers are ordered and see if an informal, unscientific polling proves or disproves this point.

Posted on

Tinyfield

tinyfieldweb
I read about Tinyfield Roofhop Farm in the latest Beer Advocate magazine (which also talked about the nascent efforts of Angel City to grow hops in the heat of DTLA)

This NYC rooftop farm grows “microgreens, salad greens, edible flowers, and hops in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.”

The farm began growing in 2015. More may come because the Farm Brewery Bill of the State of New York requires craft brewers to brew beer made primarily from NY grown farm products. By 2018, they need to use at least 60% state hops and other ingredients with the number growing to 90% by 2024. So supply will need to meet demand.

Now if California had a similar bill, maybe we can have places like Tinyfield which have 100 Cascade Hop plants up on the roof.

Posted on

On the Rise

Draft Magazine did another one of their numerical issues. The twist this time around is that it was the 25 Breweries on the Rise.
draft
Two L.A. breweries made the list: Monkish Brewing and Phantom Carriage. Below are the blurbs on each one.

Monkish Brewing Co. – Torrance, California
“This summer, the popular four-year-old brewery ditched its distributor and moved to primarily brewery-only releases. To offset the risk, co-owner Henry Nguyen started brewing what he initially swore he wouldn’t: IPAs. Those have crept up in RateBeer scores alongside upper-90s-rated Monkish saisons Haiku de Saison and Rara Avis. “We didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing,” Nguyen says. “But we’d been thinking: ‘What would a Monkish IPA look like?’” The answer: cloudy, creamy, low in bitterness. “When we first made these, brewers here were telling me to my face these beers were ugly and not really IPAs,” he says. “Now after a few releases, they’ve seen the lines [of customers], and they’re asking me which yeasts we’re using.”

Phantom Carriage Brewery & Blendery – Carson, California
“Phantom Carriage’s taproom is worth a visit, even if just to experience the decor: Based just outside of LA in Carson, California, the brewery has a horror-show vibe (“Spooky but not kitschy,” says brewery co-founder Martin Svab) with scythes and other rusty farm implements stabbed into the walls; candles glowing inside fake human and animal skulls; and the “Phantom Theater,” playing a rotating lineup of scary movies. “I’ve always been into these old scary movies that unfortunately, this day and age, are being forgotten,” Svab says. “They’re just so beautiful. So the entire brewery’s just an homage to the old horror cinema.” That goes right down to its name: “The Phantom Carriage” was a Swedish film produced in 1921, notable for its early use of special effects and for certain scenes so iconic that Stanley Kubrick remade them in his own horror film, “The Shining.” (The famous axe-through-the-door scene? “The Phantom Carriage” did it first.) Come for the fear, stay for the beer: Inside the dark confines of the brewery’s taproom, nearly 400 oak barrels are filled with the creations of head blender Simon Ford, who was well-known in the LA homebrew scene for his downright fantastic sour beers long before joining the Phantom Carriage team. His skills are just as potent in the big leagues: Muis, a Belgian blonde ale melding honeydew melon, guava, spearmint and onion skin aromas with musty lemon and white pepper flavors, is one of the better 100% Brettanomyces fermented beers we’ve ever tasted, and beers like the Simcoe-hopped Annalee grisette and Broadacres Berliner weisse exhibit complex, slightly wild flavors that, like the environs in which they’re served, are scary-good.”

Posted on

The End of History – Again

th
Some of you may remember the lovable little feud that led to ever escalating ABV beers including Brewdog’s End of History which got up to 55%. A number considerably higher than the bottles of beer that were released.

Now the End of History returns as the first beer brewed at the upcoming American Brewdog brewing facility in Ohio. Quite possibly as a nod to the fact that Ohio recently repealed a law that prevented beer over 12% ABV to be sold in the Buckeye state.
Even though it will be brewed here, the rarity of it will probably be just as high depending of course on if they decide to used taxidermy specimens this time around.

Posted on

A Beer in the Barber Chair

XXX_7946_1307303004_1
Rarely do you see a vote that is unanimous but apparently those elected to serve in Sacramento like a free glass of beer (or wine) with their haircuts.

The State Assembly voted 79-0 to legalize a practice that some salons and barbershops are doing illegally. Giving a complimentary glass while in the chair.

Under proposed law AB1322, businesses could offer one free serving of beer or wine per customer, during normal business hours only, if they remain in good standing with the barbering and cosmetology board.

Expect SABInBev to monopolize the taps at barber shops like they do with ballparks and airports.

Posted on

Swab the Chair

roald-dahl-writing-at-hom-006
#SomeYeastIsTooWild

A British brewery 40FT is trying to one-up Rogue Ales and their Beard Beer (which I am still a little wary of).

Apparently the author, Roald Dahl is almost as famous the chair that Roald Dahl the author wrote from. So much so that someone went all science-y and swabbed up some wild yeast from said chair (perhaps while also scavenging for spare change) to use in making a beer to celebrate the 100th birthday of the BFG himself.

Probably won’t skip the pond to us and for that I am thankful.