Category: Monthly Features

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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.

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Sports & A Beer – Caps and Aprons

I was going to talk about climate change and how that would affect attendance at sporting events but decided to tackle a far sexier topic. Player salaries.

I am A-OK with players fleecing team owners (especially if they donate some of it to charity). But the arcane rules and breaking the spirit but not letter of the law is a bit crazy now.

I got started on this because July 1st is Bobby Bonilla Day. Every July 1st until 2034, The New York Mets Baseball Club pays him 1.1 Million Dollars. Not bad to just pay that, you might say, except for the fact that Mr. Bonilla has been retired since 2002.

And once that contract finally expires, the Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Club will start paying Shohei Ohtani north of 65 Million a year whether or not he is playing for them or anyone. Deferred payments.

Not to pick on my least favorite sport of baseball. My Chelsea FC is addicted to 10 year contracts simply to skirt yearly wage bill limits set by the Premiere League in Britain. Also, just this year, my Portland Trailblazers made the final payment to a player who hadn’t ever suited up for them in a trade so long ago there was considerably less gray hairs on my head.

Every league is trying to promote parity even while some owners are parsimonious to the Nth degree. See Colorado Rockies and Sterling era Los Angeles Clippers.

No matter what salary caps you put into place or tax aprons you add, there will be a math guru finding a way around it. So how about let the owners pay what they want and if they hit a tax threshold, put that money into the local schools or homeless shelters or food banks.

For a beer, you can go one of two ways. You can buy something barrel-aged and exclusive or you can find bargain gems. Either way, I want you to fill out a six-pack roster within a budget of $50.

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A Podcast & A Beer – Finally! A Show About Women That Isn’t Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare

Do not shy away from Finally! A Show About Women That Isn’t Just a Thinly Veiled Aspirational Nightmare because despite the lengthy name this is a simple podcast premise. 

Produced by Jane Marie, of “This American Life”, and Joanna Solotaroff, of “2 Dope Queens”, Finally! are half-hour episodes that follow a day in the life of a wide swath of American women. From people who sing or skydive.  Catch cats or catch the final moments of life.  These are portraits of people and what they do and it is quite affecting.

Your beer choice is just as straightforward.  Find a beer brewed by a woman or a brewery owned by a woman and have one of their beers.  Preferably a simple, straightforward beer style such as a porter or an amber to match the simplicity of the show.

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The Firkin for June 2024

Are building landlords the biggest problem for breweries now and is it more of a problem in higher cost Los Angeles?

When an industry reeling a bit and breweries closing, the first suspects through the door are ingredient and labor costs and / or shrinking customer base.  The former pushes raising the cost of a pint and the latter scares you away from doing that so as not to lose more customers.

But rarely is the cost of the physical space invoked. Is it not an issue?

As I write this, there is an empty apartment in the building next door.  My building has had extended periods without a tenant in one of the four units because my landlord is quite rigorous in her selection process but throughout the fair city of Glendale there is plenty with a capital P office space, plenty of business space in one of the many with a capital M condominiums in town and even quite regular space open at the fancy Americana mall.

It seems a math question of possible future returns vs steady now money.  But the value of a current tenant does not seem to have risen very much if at all while the allure of some dream tenant walking in and paying double as far-fetched as it may or may not be seems to be in vogue.

I do not know how pervasive it is in the Los Angeles rental market for breweries but I have seen it mentioned a fair bit and I saw it play out with the beloved Sunset Beer Co. which was intentionally priced out of their space.  Even though literally across the street was a new and very empty development that was mostly graffiti.  

How does a landlord see that and go, now is the time to look for higher paying tenants? Do they have the cash reserves to pay for a building not getting rented out?  

I know that the stereotype of a landlord is not great even though I have a great one and others do as well.  That perception should lead to landlords differentiating themselves by being really good.  By selecting a business that they can have for the long term and work with so that BOTH succeed.  Why is that not the norm?