I headed down by the partially demolished 6th Street Bridge to see the future home of Indie Brewing in Boyle Heights south of the Arts District. Connor Forbes was my tour guide and patiently answered my questions.
Indie Brewing is hidden in a gem of a building that most people would just drive by. Nothing much to look at from the outside but once inside there is a long, cool corridor that in the future may house restaurants and other shops
Inside the brewery is in pre-tasting room mode. Space that will be tables and chairs houses equipment, boxes and the like. This isn’t one of those 24 hour a day brewing operations. Until the tap room is humming along and until a distribution deal is inked, the amount of beer being made is lower with the focus being on canning the XPA and getting the 7th Street Saison and Port(er) of Los Angeles into 22oz bombers.
I tasted both the Superfood Saison as well as both a can and off the fermenter Eastside XPA. The Saison had notes of blackberry underneath but a gripping and strong (to me) Saison base. There is a juice bar of ingredients in the beer but the actual style still leads the way. The XPA was more IPA to me but was tasting quite nice, especially fresh.
The coolest take-away from the afternoon was that Forbes (like many brew people) was complimentary about the growing group of brewers in DTLA and was excited about a DTLA event that would include all of the brewers showing off their beers.