Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Great articles that you should read.
The Distilling side of Anchor has put out some cool spirits in the past. I myself have bought their Junipero Gin on occasion.
Now they are playing to the hop boom with Hophead Vodka…
Obviously, you would have to be more choosy in cocktail recipes seeing as how hop bitterness might not work in some vodka cocktails but I would try this straight. Maybe they will do single hop versions down the road.
There is going to be a new addition to the beer shelves in California. Adelbert’s Brewery, a Belgian-style brewery based in Austin Texas, is expanding here.
California will be getting the new beer The Traveler, as well as Black Rhino, Philosophizer, Flyin’ Monks, Dancin’ Monks, Tripel B, Scratchin’ Hippo and Naked Nun.
They join Jester King who have been in California in limited amounts for a few years now.
Raise a glass and say, “Prost!” to Widmer Brothers. They are now 30!
And like any brewery worth it’s salt, it will be creating a series of beers all through 2014. “Headlining the brewery’s 30th Anniversary celebration is the 30 Beers for 30 Years Series. Beginning in April, the month Widmer Brothers was founded in 1984, the brewery will brew and release 30 small batch beers, each brewed to commemorate a specific year and beer in the brewery’s 30-year history. The 30 beers will be brewed at the brewery’s 10-barrel pilot brewery at the Rose Quarter in Portland and distributed locally, both on draught and in 22-ounce bottles.”
Plus # 1 – “Widmer Brothers is tapping some of Portland’s best creative talent for the 30 Beers for 30 Years label designs. Thirty different local artists and designers will design label art for the beers in this series based on their interpretations of the beer, making for a unique look at the past 30 years of Widmer Brothers Brewing.”
Plus # 2 Widmer Brothers will be brewing six limited release collaboration beers with six of Oregon’s most innovative breweries to help celebrate the brewery’s 30 years of brewing in Oregon. With Boneyard Beer, Breakside Brewery, 10 Barrel Brewing, Gigantic Brewing, Ninkasi Brewing, and Deschutes Brewery.
I usually don’t just do the “full” cut and paste but this is an issue that needs to be addressed and addressed quickly. So please read the following from the website and see how you can help. Alcohol laws simply need to be simpler and less vague and balance out rights of home brewers while making sure that others don’t abuse it.
Urgent – California Homebrewers Association needs your help!!!
On October 1, 2013, Governor Brown signed into law a Committee Bill that is being interpreted by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to prohibit homebrew festivals like ours.The bill was originally written to allow the donation of home brewed beer and wine to be used for fundraising purposes by worthy non-profit organizations, but excludes groups that “promote home production of beer or wine, or whose membership is composed primarily of home brewers or home winemakers”.
The bill was introduced by the California Assembly Committee on Governmental Organizations, whose intent was to make the sharing of home brewed wine and beer easier, not harder. However, at some point in the process, wording was added that excludes the CHA from conducting our festival for So Cal homebrewers.
Two major issues face us—
1) An amendment to the bill is needed to allow our festival, which is an annual event, and to allow AHA to have their annual convention again in California. We have already started our outreach and will work to have the bill amended.
2) Our 2014 annual event is in jeopardy. We are researching language that was placed in the bill, since we believe that it was not meant to stop well-run events for homebrewers, but was meant to stop event promoters from hiding under non-profit groups in order to make money. We will keep our members informed through local clubs representatives.
What can you do?
1) Read the bill for yourself. It is available on this website.
2) Write your local California Assemblymember and State Senator asking for the bill to be amended and for our 2014 event to be allowed to move forward as planned. Sample letters will be available through your local homebrew clubs. Sample letters are available through your local homebrew club. You can find contact information for the clubs in your area on this website.
3) Donate to the CHA legal fund. Seeing a new bill through the legislative process is a costly endeavor and we need all the help we can get. Please click on the Donate icon below to contribute financially to our cause.
4) DO NOT PROCRASTINATE! We need you to act now!
It seems that mixed packs are all the rage and I have yet to be really tempted, until now….
“Firestone Walker Brewing Company has you covered with the The Lion’s Share, a new mixed 12-pack featuring four distinctively different brews.
The Lion’s Share includes three bottles each of DBA (British pale ale), Pale 31 (California pale ale), Union Jack (West Coast IPA) and 805 (blonde ale).” (Which I still think they shouldn’t sell outside Paso, but that’s just me)
And id 12 FW beers isn’t enough then in March you can purchase the Bear’s Necessities mixed 24-pack!
Onto Round 3 of the BrewDog TV review!
Sadly this was the final show of the year. Why no visits to Chicago or New York? Or Glendale? A bit of a stretch but why not come to Eagle Rock or Golden Road. Enough ranting, on to the review…
For some reason, the season finale in Boston was full of sexual innuendo and innuendo +, Over ten by my count starting with a Hummer Limo crack. The other oddity was the beer. This was, by far, the weirdest of the beers. And that is counting the Declaration of Independence thing. Lobster and clam with sour mash on top of a chassis of Scotch Ale. Doesn’t sound very appetizing to me. And again they took to the water to brew it because they hadn’t learned their lesson in the Portland episode.
But the like a good sports team, when one segment is flat the others pick up the slack. The oyster pairing section was delightful and it is great to see seafood getting into the conversation with beer. And the fact that they didn’t do the wine vs beer and instead made it wine vs. beer, cocktail vs. beer and spirit vs. beer was a great idea. Also the locales for the craft beer virgins were unexpected but part of the community, a boxing ring and a bocce court. Really cool.
Jim Koch from Boston Beer was game the entire episode and it was fun to see him be just as crazy as the Scots. It made the episode pop a little more like when a great guest star arrives on a TV sitcom.
Now if I could just get the hot tub of beer image out of my head, I could give it a proper rating.
It looks like for all you Dry River backers and craft beer fans that happenings are afoot! Here is the latest Kickstarter update from the (hopefully) soon to come brewery!
“We’ve been busy-busy-busy since our last update, pursuing locations, working with lawyers and accountants, preparing to raise money for the build-out, all the fun parts of opening a brewery… And we’ve hit a major milestone and we wanted you to be the first ones to hear – we hired our brew-master!
Naga Reshi comes to us from Wynwood Brewing in Miami, but he’s been brewing professionally all over the world since 2007. Brazil, Holland, you name it – he’s probably brewed there. And he brings tons of Green brewing cred to the table. He designed, built, managed and sold a production brewery in Brazil that ran entirely off of solar power! Plus his recipes are super creative and he’s awesome at using local ingredients, like he did with his barrel-aged jungle-fruit Lambic series in Brazil…
We have a proposal in on a great space, right on the river, so we hope we’ll have a positive update there soon as well.
Dogfish Head brewery has announced plans to open a hotel, the Dogfish Inn, sometime in or around spring 2014.
Each room will have a mini-fridge that you can fill along with beer glasses and a bottle opener on the wall. This is a trend that I think will accelerate in the coming years. Craft Beer tourism is big. McMenamin’s runs a few boutique hotels and resorts. (I even had my wedding reception at one!) Rogue has their own Beer and Breakfast. And Stone has been toying with the idea as well. Much like a casino wanting it’s whales on the premises, a brewery wants its fans close by too.
Maybe you can stay the night and try their Moondust beer.
Looks like that Cismontane is starting a science project and we will be the beneficiaries!
It is a Single Malt Series, let the brewers talk about it, “Years ago I conceived a project that would captivate the scientific and artistic mind of the brewer: single malt beers. I’m very happy to say that we are finally doing it.
· Water: We will add water to the kettle to have 16bbl of beer before we transfer to the fermenter.
I am a big proponent of tests and experiments like these. They really open the eyes to what a single ingredient change can do to a beer. Mikkeller has done it with hops, yeast, barrels. White Labs does different yeast strains in their brewery and now Cismontane.
While I was whiling the beer hours away at various spots in Portland, some major SoCal news hit. Not that I would have scooped anybody but I would feel remiss if I didn’t weigh in on Firestone Walker’s announcement that they are heading to a location in Venice which depending on traffic may still be as far away as Firestone Walker in Buellton.
So it won’t be perched on the canals. Probably not enough parking for that. But this is where it will be, “The property is located on West Washington Boulevard near Lincoln Boulevard. Adam and David selected this site after more than two years of searching. It’s not a main street or restaurant row, but it’s still accessible.”
The goal being to “establish a third leg along the coast, complementing our existing locations in Paso Robles and Buellton.” I am all for Firestone being here but it wasn’t as if I felt neglected by them at all. Part of the joy of visiting them was the excuse to visit the majestic new BarrelWorks in Buellton or hit up Paso and the surrounding sights. Now will people take them for granted? To a certain extent, some beers like Solace and regular Union Jack and DBA get short shrift in the rush for barrel aged products and double this and that.
Best case scenario is this new spot becomes the hub for the off-the-wall events like Deconstructed or Walker’s Wild Ride that have been high points in my beer experiences in LA. Hopefully it can be a center for food and beer pairings. Sour seminars and the like would be great too.
The best sign about this move is that our fair city (adopted or native) is getting the attention of breweries.