Last week this time, Smog City Brewing unveiled a new more charitable Gorilla.
Combining with Crowns & Hops and their 8 Trill Initiative and the mission of achieving racial equity in craft beer and supporting up and coming black owned breweries is….
“This colossal Double IPA draws inspiration from our OG ape Amarilla Gorilla, the 8 Trilla Gorilla turns everything up to eleven and beyond. A ferocious infusion of Strata, Simcoe, and Citra hops rampage out of your glass with every sip. Strap in and prepare for an onslaught of amazing grapefruit, passionfruit, and fresh resinous pine so fresh you’ll swear you’re drinking hops straight from the bine.”
Now here is a throwback beer for ya’. Little Beast Brewing has teamed with Funky Fauna from Sisters, Oregon, to create a Brett IPA. “Story Forest was primarily fermented with Chico ale yeast, then aged with Brettanomyces anomalus var. clausenii (widely called Brett C) for several months. To bring out more flavor, we dry-hopped it with Nectaron and HBC 586 to add the final touch to this new elixir.”
As, maybe?, promised. Here is my review of Aaron Goldfarb’s Dusty Booze.
By the time you reach the end of Dusty Booze, you will not at all be surprised that there are people who collect famous distillery water. Not a rare spirit, no, but vintage waters.
This fascinating look into one corner of the collectors niche has two things going for it. One is the through spine about a collection of liquor from an old Howard Hughes office that had sat untouched for years. Second is the inclusion of a how to or what to collect if you wanted to start “dusty hunting”.
Now I should go back and explain what that term means. It is the art of finding old and therefore probably dusty bottles of vintage spirits. And some of these are old. From different eras of distillery ownership to grains grown using older agricultural methods to the type of heat source used.
It is about connecting a liquid time capsule of the time that the bottle was filled and the years preceding that it was aging.
This book is filled with characters. But the one drawback of the book was that most of them were of the same ilk. A person with a collectors mentality, who had time and money to be able to spend thousands of dollars to buy, for example, eight thousand miniature liquor bottles and then pick out the five hundred that interested them and selling the rest. Each individual dusty hunter seemed, well not at all individualistic.
But on other hand the diversity in the spirits was wide. Cognac, gin and even creme de menthe were covered. And the world was covered too. Scotland to Japan to Germany and the U.S. all played a part in this craze.
Goldfarb is funny and personal and sarcastic throughout the book and that side-eye style works really well to puncture the fact that this is a book about booze.
And that Howard Hughes office. Well, it was in the same building as the long gone Hollywood Brewery.
Recently the beer ticker app Untappd unveiled a new badge, the Century Club. You would earn this commendation when you checked into the same beer 100 times.
I might be close via Sierra Nevada Pale Ale but other than that, I cannot name another beer that would even threaten that triple digit number. I reckon that over 20 would be a high number for me.
I think it is both a sign of my reduced use of the app and my curiosity that will bar me from getting this badge and I think I am OK with that.
If you want to hear a little BTS of a brewery here in Los Angeles then you give this short under five minute segment from Marketplace with Brown Soul Brewing of South Gate.
“LA is not only blessed with great beer but is also surrounded by agriculture and a great way to showcase how those two factors meet is with Cellador’s sour beer program. We’ll have a selection of beers never before seen at Southland, and Cellador will be in the house telling the stories behind those beers.”
On tap:
Oogum Boogum – Wild Ale with Murray Limequats, Fukushu Kumquats, 2nd use late harvest Masumoto Le Grand Nectarines, vanilla & elderflower.
Raspberry Beer – Wild Ale with Raspberry, Blood Orange and 2nd-Use Nectarines and Apricots
Bottles:
15 Petals – Wild Ale with Roses and Masumoto Rose Diamond Nectarines
Nouvelle Pêche – Tart Saison with Masumoto Baby Crawford Peaches
L.A. Beer Week Collective Brew – join the team and be a party of the brewing process. Brew with them, smell the hops and vote on your favorite and get your signature on the can.
Come out and support your community of 20+ local artists and vendors. There will be so much good food, live music, DJ’s and of course, special beer releases!
Sunday, June 23rd – King of the Kolsch
Arts District Brewing hosts Wave 2 of their Kolsch contest between L.A. brewers starting at Noon
As we have seen in Arizona most recently, there be a lot of just batshit crazy laws on the books and nowhere is that more true than when it comes to alcohol. Anything with a whiff of fun must be morally wrong for others to do.
Case in point, in the 1950’s if you boarded a plane you probably got a free drink and as many as you needed. But, if you were flying over a dry county or municipality, you could not be served a drink even though you were up in the air.
The rationale being that the dryness extended all the way up into the sky. Even though a few minutes later you could get a drink. Flight attendants then, and now had to deal with oddness.
After the trials and tribulations of the last 4+ years, MacLeod Ales has hung on and has reached the double digit milestone of 10 years. That achievement alone should push you to a trip to Van Nuys to have a pint, maybe even a cask ale.
Los Angles has a few sister cities all over the world, less than I thought, so this month for L.A. Beer Week, I thought it is time to visit some and our first Sister City to visit is Split, Croatia and the Tap B Brewpub.
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Split, is the second largest city in Croatia and is a seaport/ resort city in southern Croatia. Located on a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea and best known for the ruins of the Palace of Diocletian.
You can start here with Trapula, an American styled Pale Ale and then move on to then dial back to their GAD Pilsner or their Lito Blonde Ale before hitting the hops again with Mirakul IPA.
