Night number two and on to Echo Park to walk and drink. Just not at the same time. Here are my thoughts on the Musical Beer Crawl…
which coincided with a beautiful SoCal night. I thought the passport idea was grand because you need one to navigate LA at times. You had your map and the specials in a handy pocket sized guide. And more importantly, I thought the walk and number of establishments was good. Too much more and the amount of walking and drinking would discourage people from doing the whole route.
My other beer bloggin’ friend Richard and I started at Sunset Beer since he had not visited the store before. Started with the Populist IPA from Eagle Rock (see above). At 6pm, we were some of the first crawlers.
We next went to Short Stop (a first time visit for me) where no one knew about the crawl despite being on the map and they certainly did not know about the special keg or special prices either. Though the barkeep did remedy the last part. This could have been avoided with a pre-visit to all the locations by the organizers. So we moved past Lot 1 which wasn’t open and on to El Prado where I had a Duvel Single (see above) and Richard had a $5 Angel’s Share. You read that right $5. El Prado is my kind of place. Chill with good beer choices. I will be returning there. (I totally forgot to give a shout-out to Two Boots Pizza. Two-for-One slices that were really good)
We hadn’t planned on visiting Mohawk Bend because our plan was to visit places we hadn’t been to before. We looked in on City Sip but we didn’t see any of the Stone beers that we thought were supposed to be on tap. So we headed back to a now busier Sunset Beer and had a nightcap.
Overall, this was a good way to introduce people to the craft beer in the area. It would have been better if crawl volunteers could have been posted along the route to assist and make sure events and kegs were working and/or some more signage delineating spots that were stops on the crawl. But for a first year event, pretty well done, and I didn’t even partake of the music.
Tomorrow is the epic DECONSTRUCTED dinner. Gotta pace myself.
Thanks for the insights and feedback. Though there were unforeseen circumstances that lead to some spots having to change their game plan at the last minute, next year will be a blast. Volunteers would be a great contribution to the event, as its debut was a total one-man show. Let’s dance together next year!!
And I hope you get dance earlier next year too!