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my humble and correct opinion
A great Thanksgiving for me is an unstressed Thanksgiving. No worries about cooking a turkey, no who to invite or not, no traveling through a packed airport.
Give me a turkey sandwich and a side and I am good.
And a few beers too.
However you best enjoy the day, enjoy it. Give thanks for the last 11 months and thanks for the next 11. We all need it.
Cheers!
I know that the glitter beer trend has come and gone and also gotten a bit of shade thrown at it in the process but if you are still looking to fancy up your beer then you can look into well, Fancy Edible Glitter. It is an edible glitter that has been “formulated for both food and drink”.
It is crazy to think that this upcoming year will only be the 7th anniversary of the now annual Pink Boots Blend of hops. The partnership with Yakima Chief Hops creates a new “blend each year with a portion of the proceeds benefitting Pink Boots Society, the non-profit organization whose mission is to assist, inspire, and encourage women and non-binary individuals in the fermented/alcoholic beverage industry to advance their careers through education. YCH will donate $3 from each pound sold of the Pink Boots Blend directly to PBS, helping them to further their mission.”
This year, “the hop varieties in the 7th Annual Pink Boots Blend were collaboratively selected by PBS members through a combination of mailed kits and in-person voting during the Great American Beer Festival. This year’s distinctive combination features a harmonious melody of HBC 638, El Dorado®, Ahtanum®, and Idaho 7®.”
Next year, you will start seeing Pink Boots beers and I highly suggest tasting as many as you can.
America has a sweet tooth. And boy, howdy, it is a big one. That craving for sugar is well ensconced in craft beer just like the rest of the U.S. foodways.
Yes, I am calling for at least a moratorium on the hyper sweetened beers. As I have said before and will say again, creativity and boundary pushing is fantastic but we have reached the boundary and it is time to proceed in a new direction.
I am hoping that a new path is already being charted by intrepid brewers and breweries and it will only be a matter of time before that path becomes a clear trend.
But in the meantime, let’s pause it with pancake stouts, stop the sugary seltzers, cancel cacao coffee and eliminate excess eclair beers. We get it. Or at least I do. I want to see what else you can brew.
The 2023/2024 season starts, for me, with the Portland Trailblazers and our three S’s (Simons, Sharpe and Scoot) vs the Los Angeles Clippers.
The pre-season finished at 1-3 with the only W coming against a team from New Zealand but that was to be expected with only two returning starters and an average age of just shy of 24. But this season should be fun for a few reasons:
Yes, this is not a beer-centric post but for years, I have kinda dreaded watching the Blazers knowing that the balance wasn’t right no matter the effort but now I can sit back and look for progress with a session beer or maybe a Widmer Hefeweizen and enjoy without getting tense. Plus, who knows, maybe Portland breweries are already concocting beers with Blazer themes for this new team.
King Harbor Returns?
Everyone follows a social media account which enjoys being cryptic instead of letting the info just rip. Earlier this month the King Harbor Brewing account posted…..
…with no other hints or clues. So, I waited to see if some real news would pop up and last week it became soft official that Trusted Gut Brewing from Long Beach had taken over the space, spruced it up a bit and were pouring beer and kombucha at the main brewing location on 182nd. I have not tasted their beers nor even seen them in my neck of the beer shopping woods and I have to assume from the name that kombucha would be their lead with beer and seltzer a lesser focus.
Some small good news from the crappy Sapporo handling of Anchor Brewing, per the NAGBW, “At the end of September, the National Museum of American History collected the business records and other artifacts from the recently shuttered Anchor brewery to preserve and make them accessible to researchers and the public into the future. The items include tools from the brewhouse and lab, a barrel that transported steam beer to 19th-century taverns, books from Fritz Maytag’s library, and more.”
Plucking those items combined with, the pluck and zeal of former employees and the recent book about Anchor’s history will go a long way to helping unfreeze the actual Steam Beer out of carbonite. More will need to be pried out of Sapporo’s hands if a new age of Anchor is to really happen.
I do not remember which brewery finally put me over the top but this month, I am officially done with photos and videos of spilled beer.
First is was the glamour shots of beer caught in freeze frame like a reverse waterfall flying up out of a glass, then it was the varied and sundry contests where beer ended up on the floor and lately it has been brewery staff drinking from a can but ending up with more on them and their clothes.
Maybe it is a sign of approaching geezerhood but as craft beer prices rise, wasting beer for a few digital thumbs up seems wrong. As a viewer, I wonder how many takes were needed for these videos. And as someone in a drought zone, I am heavily conscious of the amount of water it takes to brew beer and then add in the water needed to clean up after each Tik Tok stunt.
Then I break out my list of things breweries should do before uploading these videos like have an up to date tap list available, have your opening hours consistent on all platforms, keeping your website updated. Ya’ know, the basics.
I know that stuff is boring admin and doing video shoots is more fun and doesn’t seem so much like work but this beer fan is going to scroll right by spilt beer because that shit is sticky.
Here are the centered around Los Angeles winners from today’s award ceremony in Denver….
Golds
Common Space Sonrisa – American style lager
Highland Park Hand of Josh – International Pale Ale
Claremont Craft Ales Triple IPA – Imperial IPA
Highland Park DDH Pillow – Imperial Hazy
Silvers
Angel City Apple Pomace Puncheon – Experimental beer
Beachwood Hoppa Emeritus – American black ale
Bronzes
HopSaint Random Acts of Greatness – other Strong Ale
Firestone Walker Propagator Extra Pale Ale – International Pale Ale
Beachwood Glenlongbeach – Scottish-style ale
Angel City Trois Annees Cuvee – Belgian Style sour
IPA Winners
WC IPA – Westbound & Down Westbound Select
Hazy IPA – 1852 Brew Co Away Days
Best Beer Name
Ain’t Afraid of No Goats my favorite beer name – bock of course
Courtney Iseman who writes Hugging the Bar brought up an interesting topic on her substack recently about brewery taprooms having no menus.
And while there is nothing more satisfying to me, than flipping through a beer menu, the idea has some interesting benefits to it in my mind.
First, you won’t default as quickly to a safe beer or your typical order. Secondly, you have to improve your descriptions of what you like. You just can’t say hoppy. You will need to give more specifics like grassy or peach or soft. Thirdly, you just might find a beertender who is on your taste wavelength and you will be able to find a new favorite beer.
I think it would be cool if a taproom had a no menu Monday to encourage those three items.