Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
We are going to stick to SoCal but let the styles wander all over the place this month.
Ogopogo Outnumber the Downs Pilsner – 4.5% – A West Coast Pilsner brewed with Northern Pine Brewing.
Trademark Morning Drive Coffee Cream Ale – 5% – “light in body with an aromatic coffee punch.”
Societe Flashback Time IPA – 7.2% – “a virtual collision of juicy flavors and hoppy infatuation.”
I was reading the paltry food coverage in the Sacramento Bee thinking that there has got to be more and fun food news out there, and there is if you listen to Ringer Food.
Hosted by Juliet Litman and David Jacoby, you get a fast paced on the clock round up of news about food. What’s up with a theft of Cadbury Eggs, why did the guy bring ribs onto a flight? Taste tests and more.
Mostly it is fun banter between two people who enjoy food and sharing their viewpoints. You might even find out why some people call ketchup Tommy K.
For beer, no need to don your chef’s toque and apron, instead look for a fun beer. Maybe the label is fun like a Pizza Port IPA with the surf and sand on it, or a wild ale with some crazy ingredient in it. The goal being to keep craft beer fun. Whichever beer does that works.
The book for April is not by Ian Fleming, it is by Percival Everett, and it is a clever modern day re-imagining of the old take over the world plot.
Dr. No introduces us to three main characters, Wala Kitu, Eigen Vector and villain John Sill) plus a very important dog named Trigo. And it is a rollicking read about nothing. More specifically, finding nothing and the power of nothing.
Now I am no philosopher nor do I like math but Everett makes both really interesting and thought provoking. And his dive into the character of Wala is fascinating because you don’t get a lead who is on the spectrum get to be both broad but also deep.
The elevator pitch for this book would be Bond meets Dr. Strangelove with a hearty dose of metaphysics. And I highly recommend it.
This would be the perfect time to break out the N/A beers since they are both beer and not beer at the same time. I would suggest finding the weirdest beer you could like a glitter N/A beer.
We just have to get few the April Beer Fool’s Day and then we can re-focus on the search for great beers here in Los Angeles and beyond, along with the following…
~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the State of Washington
~ special featured reviews of whatever is new in my ‘fridge
~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 Dr. No by Percival Everett
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Ringer Food News
~ Sports & A Beer returns for month three with Tanking talk
~ 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.
Is it more wither sour and wild ale or whither?
At the recent California Craft Beer Summit, it seemed this style was more a past thought than a future one. Russian River Brewing is transitioning their sour space to hold more lager and pilsner production. Sierra Nevada is in the kombucha space and now also energy drinks. New Belgium is going hard into the VooDoo.
More local, Cellador Ales has moved into a space at Smog City while looking at their own taproom but are currently bottles and cans and before that move they had released one (or two) more seltzer-y items.
Personally, I think that the American palate that leans into nearly diabetic sugar territory is primarily to blame. There was never going to be a big market for Wild/Sour to start. Second, the cost is amongst the highest in craft even with the proliferation of $20+ 4-packs.
Small market and high price seems fine economically. But add in tough times and slow to no growth and you have a style that you move away from in search for profit, and I don’t mean profit in a bad way. Just that a labor intensive, ingredient intensive, time intensive beers are a luxury.
I was excited for the California Craft Beer Summit because I had a few breweries on my list that I wanted to visit and though I had some really good beer whilst at the state capitol. Overall, was a bit disappointed.
But there were some gems to be found. The Urban Roots 10Degree Czech Lager was perfect with BBQ and served in a hulking dimpled glass added luster to it. I was also taken by the IPA’s at Alaro Brewing. Both Castillo, their West Coast and Avenida, their Modern IPA. Their label artwork is also some of the classiest that I have seen.
But best goes to Wild Fields. I tasted their IPL, Montana de Oro which was crisp with a nice bite to it as well as a splash of their brown ale, Pine Mountain Monolith. Both were at the sweet spot of simple but complex.
Last month, I listened to comedians trying to come up with a plausible Sci-Fi pilot. Well, that same team has released (on Valentine’s Day of course), Let’s Make a Rom-Com.
Ryan Beil, Maddy Kelly, and Mark Chavez are appealing as hosts / romance writers and because they are both really trying to write a romantic comedy while simultaneously learning about why and how one clicks makes the podcast really work.
For beer, I would head to chocolate. Chocolate stouts. German chocolate pastry beer. Bottle Logic in Orange County has a plethora of beers like that. Or if you want to dig deeper, pick a past or current relationship and where you “met cute” and pick a beer from that city.
This month’s trio is brought to you by the letter S for Spring. Also the letter C for California.
Riip Brewing Solo Triip IPA – 6.8% – “The next adventure in our single hop series focuses on one of the most ubiquitous hops in the world, Mosaic.”
Beachwood / Urban Roots Steely Jam IPA – 7.1% – “A collaboration between Beachwood and Urban Roots, Steely Jam is a hoptacular riffage using sustained chords of Strata, Mosaic and Mosaic Cryo hops.”
HiDef Brewing Spring Reverb – 7.45% – “Barrel aged mixed culture fruited sour with a mild pleasant funk, tart and crisp. Fruited with peach, raspberry and passion fruit.”
Faux celebrity and fifteen minutes of fame is the underlying theme of How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann and the author goes to some dark and stark places to bring a new perspective to popularity and its side effects.
Here is the GoodReads synopsis, it’s a doozy, “In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina’s love story will shock them all.”
This was a wild book. Just weirdness on every page. The fairy tale aspects didn’t work for me as much as the more reality show aspects. But it sure wasn’t a dull read at all. And I will certainly be on the lookout for future work when wandering in a bookstore.
On to the beer choices, I would try to find beers for each of the women in the group. Maybe something with rose hips or hibiscus for Ashlee. A dark Czech lager for Ruby. A pastry stout for Gretel. A black IPA for Bernice. And for Raina, maybe a beer with the label removed so you don’t know and have to guess.
March, where the national holidays are sparse but a big ol’ beer drinking holiday is smack dab in the middle of the month. Also smack dab is the California Craft Brewers Conference. I will be in Sacramento covering CA Craft from my point of view.
~ e-visits to (3) breweries from around the Golden State
~ special featured reviews of Sacramento brewery 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 How To Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Let’s Make a RomCom
~ Sports & A Beer returns for month three with
~ 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.