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Beer Book Review – Filthy Queens

Combine history and beer and I am in and I quickly pre-ordered Filthy Queens by Dr. Christina Wade that covers the history of beer in Ireland.

My overriding history book guide is that if it is textbooky then it is not good. History, when written well, can be electric. Most school taught history though is dry as dust.

Preamble aside, Wade has put fun into this gallop through Ireland and its brewing history from 300 AD up to 1900. I mean gallop because it is under 200 pages. Part of the reason is that back just over a century ago, a fire broke out in Dublin and the flames consumed a lot of historical documents. Making a hard task even harder and necessitating comparing other countries and making leaps and guesses as to what could have happened in Ireland.

I knew that I was in good hands when an Untappd joke appears on the pages of this book. Wade doesn’t bog you down with dates and instead finds little personal moments where people and beer intersected through the years.

The only down note is that the book ends at 1900. I know I wasn’t going to get modern craft beer in Ireland but I think the boundary end could have been up to pre-WW2 where there are more sources and info that could be passed on.

Every chapter of Filthy Queens had a nugget of learning, if not more and I am sure I will be referencing this book in the future.

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Review – Lucky Chicken Red IPA from Kizakura Sake Brewing

I will admit that a cute label occasionally overrides my normal beer buying thinking, it doesn’t hurt if the beer style is left of center too. Such was the case with the Lucky Chicken Red IPA from Lucky Brew aka Kizakura Sake Brewing.

This is from Kyoto, Japan and who knows how fresh this will be so take the following review with a grain of malt. It pours a real dark brown color with a worty malt smell that comes on hard. Sorta tastes old to me which doesn’t jibe with the aroma. Not locating much in the way of hops and in fact, this tastes more English than anything.

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Since 1984

This month I have been focused on new Oregon breweries but let’s flip that around and head over to the great New School Beer site to read HERE about the oldest breweries in Oregon.

Glad to see that Goldwn Valley from my college town of McMinnville is in the top 12.

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Beer in the Bluesky

Well before the pandemic, well before Nazi Musk bought it, I had seen enough of Twitter.  (If you call it X, I can’t help you.)  Considering that I barely saw the tip of that nasty iceberg tells you the distaste I found.

After that, I was hesitant to jump to whatever the next ship was preferring the still troublesome but less loathsome Meta twins of Facebook and Instagram.  But I thought that I should check out the latest big thing in Bluesky to see if craft beer fans might find community and information there.

But for me, there just isn’t much there. I want beer news and beer views but if you type in Firestone Walker there is no official account, just random people who have mentioned 805 or tires. I searched for a few L.A. breweries and nothing. Yes, there are beer writers and cool people there like the North American Guild of Beer Writers but the whole set-up is not intuitive with loads of dead ends and separates items into groups instead of letting me curate stuff. One is called BeerSky which seems to link mostly to posts about beer pong.

Maybe I am just not built for this or Twitter. Your mileage may vary but it is not helpful to me.

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Not Fully Spent

Spent grain from the brewing process ends up in the bellies of happy farm animals in the best case scenario but what if, we gave the piggies a break and instead used that as a natural insulation in houses?  

Take a watch of this video HERE and see how that works.

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A Specific Suggestion

Earlier today, I gave out three suggested beers to buy but now let me get even more specific with West Specific a new hoppy Pilsner from Stone Brewing with a low 4.7% ABV that uses Simcoe, Peacharine, Vista and El Dorado hops.  Stone fans may remember that it was previously brewed at their Liberty Station location last year.

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Sean Suggests for February 2025

This month, gonna keep this an all We Love L.A. edition of the beer shopping list.

Crowns & Hops Heritage Amber Lager – 5.6% – “our special release beer brewed for Black History Month to celebrate the history and current contributions of African Americans.”

Trademark Brewing Ocean Thunder West Coast IPA – 7% – a Double Dry-Hopped IPA featuring Nelson, Citra and Strata hops.

Beachwood Brewing Jukebox Jammer IPA – 7.1% – “this West Coast IPA is packed with a bold, dank four-hop blend (Mosaic Dynaboost, Columbus Cryo, Mosaic, Talus) that hits all the right notes!”

And here is a wee bonus option that you might want to track down….

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A Book & A Beer – Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

This is my first real big book in a while. Nearly 600 pages for Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez.

This is a supernatural / horror genre book with locales in South America and England and Africa for a tiny bit too. For a long novel, it moves pretty swiftly snd considering the time jumps from section to section and lead voice changes, is easy to follow along with.

The book is centered on Juan and his son Gaspar in the days and then years following the death of the wife and mother., Rosario who was born into a truly weird cult whose members thinks they can find eternal life from the Darkness. But you do not want to mess with the manifestation of it because it will take fingers, arms or eat you alive.

Juan is the medium from which the Darkness is summoned but being that middle man is killing him and he does not want that for his son which is the main plot driver.

I would give Our Share of Night a mild recommendation. If you can get past the inescapable fact that the father does not communicate to his son anything that would help him against the cult then you will be OK. So many events could have been avoided with a simple five minute conversation. The other big issue for me was the rushed ending. A book this long shouldn’t have to speed through the action at the end and then just abruptly end.

You will need a few different beers for this one and my main choice would be to try a couple things. First, look for a raspberry or cherry chocolate stout. Blood and darkness. You could also do a Guinness blend with the Irish stout with a fruited wheat beer or if you want to get experimental, a fruited sour.