Category: Beer in the news

Great articles that you should read.

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Into the Archive

A bit of future history here.  Seems like the craft beer movement is one of the few movements that the do-nothing congress seems to have let happen.

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The Library of Congress which is probably the only part of Congress that I give a &*$(@ about has added the website of the Brewers Association to their historical record:

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Now it may seem that I am using this post as an excuse to pinata on an easy target but it this is the type of small seeming action that is really important.  Craft beer has become so known that we are now part of the public policy conversation and that means that maybe, small brew friendly laws and rulings may be coming.  Plus, like getting into the Smithsonian, means you have to be culturally relevant to not just a niche but to a big set of America.  So mark 2/11/15 on the calendar.  It might be a date to remember.

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Monrovia is Home Brewing

Monrovia now has a shoppe for the home brewing crowd and it is pretty close to a place in Monrovia that craft beer fans already know about, Pacific Plate.

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The Monrovia Homebrew shop will hopefully be an incubator for brewing talent that home brew stores are known for being.  Plus it will be cool to see if they can attract a home brew club to compete with the Yeastsiders, the Falcons and the Pacific Gravity.  They opened on the 3rd so by now the kinks should be worked out,

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Bud App

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As if Bud Light isn’t within an arm’s reach, now you can really make it ubiquitous with the Bud Light Button. A new delivery app that launched in the Washington DC area this month.

But you not only get industrial water lager with eau de corn pops, you might win a prize or what the Bud Light Marketing department calls “Up for Whatever”. Or as the VP of Consumer Connections (WTF), explains: “Some people will get just a little something extra, like Bud Light-branded gear, but once in a while, we’re going to deliver a really over-the-top, amazing experiences…” Which I assume means that lucky people will get a real light lager delivered from a brewer and not the Consumer Connections Crew.

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I’m Just a Bill

Here we go again for the 4th time.  That’s the charm, right?

The Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act – Small BREW Act for short – was re-introduced by Representatives Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Richard E, Neal (D-MA), (That’s both sides of the aisle, how did that happen?)

The goal of the Small BREW Act will help the lower production tiers in the brewery world. The tax rate on a brewery’s first 60,000 barrels goes from $7 to $3.50. If you are between 60,001 and 2 million barrels, the excise tax rate from $18 per barrel to $16 . You do have to brew under 6 million barrels to qualify and anything between the 2 million and 6 uses the current tax rate.

Any tax relief will be of help for those in the affected production brackets.  Those are financially hard areas to break even.  But I wouldn’t hold my breath.  This legislation has gone further than others but still has fallen short.  Maybe it can get attached to a non-attention getting Omnibus bill and slide through that route.

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SF Beer Week..is coming

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Never to early to plan for the massive amount of beer events in San Francisco during their SF Beer Week. The initial calendar is out and ready to be perused by beer fans by the Bay, and us Angelenos too!

Events like:

Festival of Firkins
Magnolia Pub & Brewery, San Francisco
February 12th, 11:00am – 8:00pm

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Blend It

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Why would Gabe Gordon build “a temperature-controlled barrel room inside a 100-year-old downtown Long Beach building”?

Here is the reason: “Starting this fall, Beachwood Blendery will produce beer using ingredients, equipment and brewing methods that are both steeped in tradition and admittedly modern. Gordon, Julian Shrago and Beachwood Blendery’s Barrelmaster Ryan Fields (an award-winning brewer formerly of Lost Abbey and Pizza Port San Clemente) are embarking on an undoubtedly geeky quest to create American-style lambics.”

This grand sour experiment will take time as good lambics do but the wait will be broken up into phases. “The first year will see what will be called the “Propagation Series.” These beers will be made to test how the different yeasts and bacteria preform in the Beachwood Blendery environment. The results of these experiments will factor into what will become their signature lambic-style beers.”

Then the “Blendery will begin producing a contemporary series of flavored lambic-styled beers, flavored not with traditional flavors like cherry (kriek), raspberry (framboise), peach (peche) or blackberry (cassis), but instead tropical fruits and spices inspired by Gordon’s many surf trips around the world.”

Then the coup-de-grace, “three years after opening—an American-made “gueuze”, blended from a selection of one-year-old, two-year-old and three-year-old “lambics”.”

The brewing begins this month with the first releases arriving by mid-2015.

One last quote to ramp up the excitement, “A tasting room attached to the Blendery will open at the same time as the first release, with 10 taps of house beer as well as wine from the vineyards whose barrels were used to ferment the beer.”

With Barrelworks humming up north, the Blendery will add to California’s destination status for aged wild beer. Maybe an appellation is in our future.

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MLS + Beer

With the MLS season concluding today with the Galaxy of Los Angeles taking on the Revolution of New England, it seemed a good time to re-imagine what the jerseys would look like if craft breweries were the shirt sponsors.

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And courtesy of Backheel you can see what it would look like if the Bruery was on the pitch vs. Harpoon.

Of course, I root for team Hair of the Dog……

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City Hall

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Once again Eagle Rock Brewery was hauled downtown to answer for their crime of running a brewery in the City of Los Angeles.

The fourth time in five years. And each visit is preceded by paperwork and fees for the paperwork not to mention time spent away from brewing.

This time, as with all the others, there was no opposition save for a City Hall gadfly who was anti-alcohol only and who all but said that he had never visited the brewery.

Obviously, the tide of support coupled with the impeccable way ERB has conducted itself carried the day. But only in LA could a win seem so ungratifying.

First this hearing only produced a “recommendation”, granted it was the one they wanted but now the paperwork goes to another back logged department to be approved or denied or changed. If it passes as I fully expect it to, ERB will get a determination letter. If no one appeals that letter in 15 days, the ruling will stand.

If all goes as planned (knock on wood), then these hearings will finally cease.

And though the hearing was smoothly run and by the book, the lack of knowledge about the brewing industry was clearly evident. This process needs to change and guess who is doing that too, yup, Eagle Rock.

The city desperately needs to hire someone with knowledge of beer, wine and spirits. An Alcohol Czar, who can rewrite the inane rules that force a brewer to complete a paperwork decathalon just to open. And then doesn’t stop there. This czar could also cut through the paperwork and be a one stop shop. Where the toughness needs to be is afterwards. Bad actors should be fined when they do wrong. Right now, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent. Four times.