Sean Suggests for March 2024

Staying local for March and also canvassing a wide array of styles so that your palate does not get stuck.  And yes, I do not approve of green beer and the first selection is a green hued beer, but, in my defense, it is also a sour.  So that means less of a points deduction.

Far Field Made With Luck Sour  – 4.1% – “As  luck would have it, your favorite clover-green sour ale returns to our shelves and draft lines just ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.”

Creature Comforts Spring Belgian-Style White Ale – 5.1% – “We’ve got Spring Fever. Our fresh take on the classic Belgian-Style White Ale is brewed with orange peel, coriander, and local wheat from Day Spring Farms.”

Enegren Brewing Doppel Valkyrie – 8.2% – “a double version of our beloved flagship altbier, Valkyrie and a throwback to some of our first anniversary beers.  This strong, dark ale has rich flavors of dark fruits with hints of dark chocolate and rum, balanced with just a touch of Mt. Hood and Herkules hops.

A Podcast & A Beer – Heritage Mezcal

This month we listen to stories of Mezcal at Heritage Mezcal with host Chava Peribán.

It is a unique spirits podcast in that the coverage is wide ranging and not just mezcal. Rum and coffee are talked about but so is overall happiness and logistics and just the general vibe around mezcal.

Peribán has a good solid agave knowledge and is very enthusiastic to the point of partially getting in the way of some interviews but in a charming way. He even sometimes asks questions and says you don’t have to answer.

To pair with this podcast, I would be as eclectic and bubbly in the beer selections. Have a sparkly pilsner and then a rum barrel-aged beer or pick up a Mexican craft beer or a cocktail beer. Anything goes.

Wish I Could Try – Luck of the Dragon from Guinness Open Gate

The Maryland outpost of Guinness has had some drinks that made me want to be on the East Coast and one such brew is Luck of the Dragon, brewed for Lunar New Year.  It is a “5.0% ABV ale is infused with dragon fruit powder and orange purée, giving it this stunning fuchsia color.”

If that wasn’t reason enough, sales of the lucky beer goes “to support the extraordinary artists at Baltimore’s Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, a nonprofit organization dedicated to using art to promote the representation of Asian Americans in everyday life and build connections across communities.”

In the Tap Lines for March 2024

Springtime in SoCal as we move into what I jokingly call “early summer”. Hoping to find some bock beers, either strong or dopple would be nice plus the following features this month….

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from the newer cities in the NWSL

~ special featured reviews of a potpourri of 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 Trees by Percival Everett

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Heritage Mezcal

~ Sports & A Beer returns with Thoughts on March Madness

~ 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.

Sports & A Beer – What are sports anyway? 

I have been over the Olympics for many cycles now.  Corruption played a part.  NBC never not showing figure skating, even during the summer games a part. But another aspect was the fringe competitions that popped up and then disappeared.  I’m looking at you, flag football.

Ever since Dodgeball the Movie introduced us to ESPN8, The Ocho, it seems your cornhole, your darts, your curling are now considered athletic competitions.  Now before you say I am clinging to an outmoded way of sports thought, they are competitions sure.  It takes skill to throw a dart with pinpoint accuracy but it also is more math as you need to know where to throw it to get the right point total.  

Flag Football is a competition but it is more an anti-concussion one.  And curling is literally sweeping meets ice Bocce Ball.  What’s next, axe throwing as sport?  I know that the streaming platforms are desperate for sports content because unlike the Harry Potter movies that have been on every platform, sometimes at the same time, sports are unique individual events. But they are not going to boost the subscriber base with a mega niche offering like Quidditch.

I have to say that these outliers may be fun, but you will never see Usher playing the halftime show of the Cornhole Super Bowl.

This is an easy beer pairing because we won’t be pairing these psedo-sports with beer.  The next time a dodgeball contest is on and you are watching because you were intimidated by the nearly three hour run time of Part 1 of Mission Impossible, grab yourself a hard seltzer or a smoothie beer that pours like a slurpee from 7-11 and enjoy the weirdness that is the “sports” landscape in 2024. Or you could really zag and find a beer/wine hybrid, that would be the classy way.

A Book & A Beer – Black AF History by Michael Harriot

I have said it before and I will probably say it a million more times but there is so much more to history than the boring incantations of specific dates and the cookie cutter history written by the victors.

I wish that Michael Harriot’s book Black AF History had been on my history class reading list because I would have been well entertained while also learning.

Harriot is funny but underneath that funny are some cutting remarks and bringing some well known historical figures down a peg as you can see from the cover of the book. But this history is more about giving time in the spotlight to people from history that you should go and Google right now like Juan Garrido, Musa I and Ida B. Wells. And you need to go over the study questions at the end of each chapter. It is a clever way the author reinforces points made. If you want to study American History, this had better be part of the curriculum.

No weird style or new trendy beer for this book. Go out and buy a 4-pack from a local black-owned brewery. Here in Los Angeles it would be Crowns & Hops but a quick (second) Google search will find one in your local area or one that you can buy from further away.

A Podcast & A Beer – True Detective: Night Country

True Detective is back in creepy form with the 4th installment, aka Night Country. The sign of a good show and a talked about one is when the streamer also plumps for a podcast as well.

And care has been taken from the jump by having an indigenous member of the Alaskan community serve as host. Alice Qannik Glenn is an activist and podcaster and does a good job moving each episode along and pulling information about both the process of creating this show as well as additional information about Alaska and its peoples. I kinda wish they would delve a bit deeper into the Easter Eggs and possibilities of what’s to come but it is a small quibble about a good companion piece to the show.

Obviously, the best choice would be something from Anchorage Brewing or Alaskan Brewing but we hear in SoCal do not see much of those brands. Ditto for anything from Iceland where the series was filmed. The next obvious choice would be to have a new cold IPA each episode to match the corpse-sicles in the show.

That leaves me thinking about the dark, since the show is set when the sun is not shining. Russia has made weird claims on Alaska recently plus Putin is a dick so we will steer away from a Russian Imperial stout and instead look for Baltic Porters.

Needed or Not? – Part 2 – Beer Mints

Marketing folks must get really bored or have an idea quota because some of the stuff they come up with is just bonkers. Here is exhibit A….

Forgoing the easy, mints that taste like water joke, why would anyone pop a Lite beer mint? My guess is that it is a co-packaged mint with no beer from whomever bulk manufactures mints for dirt cheap.

Pass, so very hard.

Needed or Not? – Part 1 – DDH Hop Water

Setting aside “adaptagens” and “nootropics”, do we need sparkling water to be both double hopped and dry hopped? And who in the sparkling water customer base is going to see that and yank it from the shelves?

What I find extra funny is that the hops are not even labeled but they had room to write “for extra bold flavor”.

Not Needed!

In the Tap Lines for February 2024

Another trip around the sun for this here beer blogger. Time to celebrate with an extra day and some extra special beers along with the usual posts such as….

~ e-visits to (3) breweries from Washington State in honor of George’s birthday that he shares with me

~ special featured review my chosen birthday beer

~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 Black AF History by Michael Harriot

~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to True Detective – Night Country

~ Sports & A Beer returns with What are sports now anyway?

~ 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.