Now is the time to grab your L.A. Beer Week passport and a pocket for bottlecaps so that you can collect the right ones to get a L.A. Beer Week Cap and start hitting events!
Today on FoodGPS, I picked some can’t miss parties for you. And here on my blog, I will delve into how to navigate the 10 days of fun.
First off, you need to generate a list of events. Put each one into either a “must see”, “should see” or “not this year” list. You do that by scoping out the events over at LA Beer Week website then you look at my picks and then cross-checked against what you enjoyed last year.
Now take the “must see” events and put them onto a calendar. If you have one every night, that’s great! But if you want to truly enjoy each event, you may want to scale back and have a couple days to drink water and rest. You do not want to enter the gates of Union Station on that final day, have a couple samples and be filled up because of all that you had before. Trust me, that is what happened to me last year.
The other criteria that I use to whittle down the field are as follows:
~ Is it a one of a kind event? Last year’s Firestone-Walker Deconstructed dinner was epic and this year Firestone is doing a one day Sour beer blitz through L.A.
~ Is the event at a bar or brewery that you haven’t visited? Use the fest as an excuse to hit places that you don’t normally go to.
~ What beer style is on display? You don’t want to have three IPA-centric events in a row. Spice things up. Go Berliner Weisse one day and change up the next.
Use my suggestions or your own criteria and then as a final step, make sure you have back-ups for some events. You may be tired or traffic is awful (405 closure time coincides with the final weekend) and you may have to go to a Plan B that is either closer to home or work.
But whether you attend 1 event or 10, have fun. As famous publican Don Younger put it, “It’s not about the beer. It’s about the beer.”
Iike a boss