Last night was the night for Downtown LA beer to shine. L.A. Beer Hop was shuttling from Boomtown in the North East to Iron Triangle in the South and each brewery in between.
I did not stop at each and everyone but I did get a few pints and here is the report from the LABW8 evening….
Thank God for ½ pours and tasters. A long night stretched ahead starting at Boomtown where Dry River was the guest and where I started my beer ordering with their Cigana Brett IPA. It had a strong does of bitterness which was cut by heavy horse blanket notes. This was old school Brett. Then I moved on to the the other beer on offer, Lady Roja. The first of two red/pink beers that I would have on the evening. It had a lot of pie spice notes and heavy hibiscus but neither was too overbearing.
Then it was over to the Boomtown side of the room to try their Aliso – Belgian Strong Dark. This beer was right on point for me. Nice hit of Candi sugar, bit of bitterness, and it had good strength to it. Probably my favorite of the night. Then it was on the bus to….
Iron Triangle where I picked up a pair of new hoppy samplers starting with the Sluice Gate IPA. Nice. Probably a notch above the vast swath of IPA’s that are just fine. It had good body and aroma and I paired it with the Jawbone Black IPA. Which to me was not so hoppy. More on the dark malt side of the equation. There was a lurking grapefruit flavor in the back but that didn’t match well with the malt to me. I also had a few sips of the Socially Awkward Berliner. There is an initial burst but then the tart fades too quickly. Left with wheat notes.
Then the next stop was….
…Angel City to try the premier of their Strawberry Gose. First off, strawberries are hard to add to beer. This is probably one of the better attempts at utilizing the berry. Now is it a gose? No. But there was a huge aroma and it was very tart and very cloudy pink. It worked for me.
Overall, this was a great way to get people to enjoy the beers at the breweries. There was a couple of things to add for next year. The buses stopped at 10pm and Mumford closed up shop around that time. Each of the LA Beer Hop buses should have had that fact displayed to help people plan. My group was left without a bus at Iron Triangle and had to get back to the center of action via alternate methods. Had we known the closing times, we could have planned our time more effectively. My second thought was that information about the breweries in DTLA could have been on the bus to pass out to. If the goal of the night is to get people to try new breweries, then a little bit of info might be a good sales pitch.
I just wish there had been more time to sneak in one more brewery before the clock struck last call.