Category: Monthly Features

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In the Tap Lines for October 2024

We have entered Q4 of 2024. As always, the year just swings by before you know it. Before the calendar switches, we need to pack in fun like a trip to Colorado, which I will be posting about later.

~ e-visits to (3) breweries that won at this year’s GABF

~ special featured reviews of Halloween inspired beers

~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events

~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark

~ A Book & A Beer reads The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Blocks with Neal Brennan

~ Sports & A Beer returns with WNBA and NBA expansion to Portland and maybe Seattle

~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month

~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.

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A Podcast & A Beer – NPR Student Podcast Challenge

Back when I was in the fourth grade, I was most certainly not making podcasts with my classmates. But here in 2024, NPR can run a challenge for best fourth grade podcast and find some really good ones.

So follow this link HERE and dive into some topics ranging from murals to recovery to the American Revolution.

It would be a touch inappropriate to suggest drinking a beer for this particular set of podcasts so why not a craft root beer or cream soda from such purveyors as Rocky Mountain Soda or a local brewery that dabbles in soda.

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A Book & A Beer – The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

When I started reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley, I had no idea it was book one of what is a three book series so far.

And I do not think that I will be taking in books two and three. This book is set in Victorian England approximately and we follow a government worker, Nathaniel (annoyingly called Thaniel) along with Grace Carrow a physics student at Oxford and Keita Mori, the titled watchmaker formerly of Japan.

The story has a bomb plot and a supernatural plot and an HG Welles mechanical invention side plot and none really coalesce into a hole. Oh and Gilbert and Sullivan make an appearance too. All that would make for a fine ramble but the characters are just sketches expect for Nathaniel who is just a dithering lump who makes book plot choices and not strong character choices.

For beer, be on the lookout for a brewery doing a series of beers. Be it in a variety pack or a quarterly series and crack one open and do your best to forget the book and that you have other beers and see if based on the one beer, you would order up the rest.

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Sports & A Beer – Beer Prices

In July, I went to Providence Park in Portland to see the Thorns V Wrexham in a friendly. I would have enjoyed having a beer at the game but even a vending machine 12oz can of Pub Beer from 10 Barrel was $8.00 and draft options were around $12.00.

Fast forward and I see the average beer prices for Premier League clubs and I nearly fell out of my chair.

Even at a $1.31 exchange rate, the high end is about $8.00. The high end. $8.00 ain’t getting me a half a soda at the new Intuit Dome here in Los Angeles. Everything about attending professional sports in the U.S. is expensive and I get that overcharging beer leads to less drunken and rowdy behavior during the game but it also leads to fans drinking it all before the game at tailgates.

If the Premier League can do it, so to other leagues.

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The Firkin for August 2024

The slushie machine era must be nearing an end because I see those swirling machines at pretty much every brewery taproom that I visit.

And that gets me to thinking about two things:

A. the slushie machine salesman is getting big checks

B. when are breweries going to stop chasing after trends and get back to being a trend?

I don’t mean to throw too much shade with point B but I do feel that the more hard seltzers and slushies one puts on offer is a lost opportunity to do something innovative in the beer space. Each alternative drink sold cements a customers relationship, not to beer or your brewery, but to sugary, bubbly treats.

Much like coffee shops that sell iced diabetes bombs that contain zero coffee, a brewery that is just selling hard slurpees are stealing from their core brand. I can understand that a group of people may acquiesce to going to a brewery if there are more options but it starts to look like the brewery isn’t the destination. Much like the group of friends who end up at an Olive Garden because it is the least offensive choice.

Time to sell the slushie machine or at least make a fresh hop slushie.

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A Podcast & A Beer – The Ringer-verse / Deadpool & Wolverine

The long anticipated and long hyped Deadpool 3 is in theaters now and for this month’s edition of A Podcast & A Beer, instead of focusing on an ongoing series or a podcast season, the featured podcast is just that, one podcast.

It is the Ringer-verse and the story of how Deadpool and Wolverine is the summer of 2024 blockbuster.  Ringer staff writer Daniel Chin does a deep dive on these two iconic (now fellow MCU) characters.

For an 1 1/2 podcast, the pacing is brisk with, thankfully, minimal commercial breaks for Mint Mobile.  The timeline is laid out well so that even a non comics fan can follow from point D to point W.  And there is also a good though discussion of why Marvel is at a low point and could really use that Deadpool mystique.

For beer, well you could skip beer and find bottles of red or yellow branded Aviation Gin but I would suggest looking to the year 2009 when X-Men Origins: Wolverine arrived and brought them together for the first time.  It might take a little sleuthing where you live and it might bring back memories of long lost breweries but the easy thing to look for is a brewery that just turned 15.

For Los Angeles that would have been Eagle Rock Brewery and Ladyface Brewing.  The former just called it quits but you might find some last remainig cans around.  So instead head to Agoura Hills and Ladyface to have a draft and a 4-pack.

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A Book & A Beer – You Like It Darker by Stephen King

This is not the first Stephen King book featured in this monthly post and it will probably not be the last as he shows no signs of slowing down.

The latest is a collection of short stories…

The headliner of the piece is The Answer Man (also my favorite piece) where a young man looking to his possible future encounters the Answer Man on the side of the road, then encounters him again many years later and then a third and final time. It has classic King. Witty dialogue, melancholy and coulda – woulda – shoulda too.

The next anticipates piece is a sequel of sorts to Cujo except for snakes instead of a big, big dog. It was fine but I much preferred the punchy and short The Turbulence Expert about a man with a very specific safety job. I also quite enjoyed The Dreamers about sleep experiments gone wrong.

Many of the stories are set in Florida so if you can get a Florida Weisse style beer that would be a start. Or playing off the title, find something darker. Maybe a dark Bock beer.

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Sports & A Beer – Hard Knocks

Since the Hard Knocks documentary series has come to HBO streaming ( gonna pass on the dumb Max name ), I have become a fan. And the roster of shows keeps expanding with pre- season and in-season now joined by off-season.

We only follow the team over five episodes and by team, I mean the back of house team. The GM, the owner, the scouts. Players are not far from mind, but they are not the focus. The ultimate episode is the draft which is a bit anti-climactic since the Giants basically got the wide receiver they wanted as well as a defensive free agent they coveted as well.

Future seasons may have more action to them, but this one, though illuminating pales in comparison to the pre-season version.

For beer, you can go two ways. Find any New Jersey beers you can or failing that, New York. Or you can pull out the biggest abv beer that you have on hand and wake up the next morning like you had been hit by a linebacker.

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The Firkin for July 2024

I love imagining what my perfect beer bar would be and so to counteract the existential dread in the air, let’s dream for a while instead.

First, there would be inside and outside seating with the outside being a calm garden center zen zone. Inside would be a mix of bar seating and booths because I like comfortable seating. There would be no TVs. I think it pulls focus from the beers and sports bars do a better job of it anyway.

There would be a total of 12 taps. I think that is manageable in both keeping social media and your own bad menu updated. And that churn would keep coming back to see the new beers.

In regards to the beers, six would be from a guest brewery for the month ( stolen from Function PDX ). That leaves me to have two lighter beers, to IPAs and two stouts. Depending on the guest brewery, the local taps might switch to lighter beers heavy for example.

There would be a little bit of food but nothing fussy or hard to make. Chips and salsa. Cheese plates. Little plates that can be high quality. Outside food would be encouraged as well so that instead of spending time booking food trucks, that time could be spent on beer selections.

I would also have a few single cans in a fridge to-go as well. A curated selection of beers that I find fun.

There is my current idea.

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A Book & A Beer – The Napoleon of Crime by Ben MacIntyre

Fiction sometimes echoes facts and such is the case with James Moriarty, arch nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. He was partially based on an American gentleman thief named Adam Worth. And his story is told in The Napoleon of Crime by Ben MacIntyre.

From faking his own death in the Civil War to London, Paris, New York and Johannesburg, Adam Worth live a full life despite not making it to 57 years old. He stole diamonds, money, pickpocketed and ran a gambling den but is most famous for s more spur of the theft of the famous Gainsborough painting, The Duchess of Devonshire.

With each chapter you wonder who else can be stuffed into his man’s adventure. The Pinkertons, Scotland Yard, Pierpont Morgan, criminal nicknames galore and Sherlock Holmes. The face you see on the book jacket provided the idea for Moriarty. Now famous as the ultimate arch nemesis. But he was a gentleman through and through. Barely resorting to violence and always striving and always spending his ill gotten gains as fast as he took them.

It is a fast paced book with a lot of twists and turns, highs and lows and a lot of transatlantic boat travel.

To beer pair with this historical tale, I would suggest selecting beers that say they are on style but really are something else. A good example being Widmee Hefeweizen which is actually a really good wheat beer. Or perhaps there is a DIPA that is a really a Triple IPA.