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If you prefer to look at the glass half full instead of we are all doomed than made look for Ce N’est Pas La Fin du Monde from Unibroue – “This deliciously hoppy golden ale combines the complexity of a Belgian tripel with the power of New World IPAs. It’s cultural fusion at its best.”
MadeWest has a new Raspberry IPA out on the market and I am of two minds about it. I think IPAs with added fruit should be the actual juicy IPAs but that you really have to choose the fruit and hops carefully to avoid one flavor set overwhelming the other. This beer should be a good one to review either way.
Pints for Prostates will be holding an online beer auction until 3/17 (aka St. Padraig’s Day) There are some interesting beers to bid on as well as experiences and merchyswag. Take a look right HERE
Get tropical in Hawthorne as Los Angeles Ale Works will celebrate their 7th anniversary or thereabouts with all sorts of Tiki treats and a new IPA for the occasion.
Benny Boy will be celebrating their 2nd year at the tank farm with their anniversary celebrations on March 30th.
Check out the info HERE or just carefully scrutinize the artwork for clues.
Ambitious Ales is coming up on anniversary # 5. They have a lovely taproom in the Bixby beer corridor that you should really visit, especially if you are an IPA fan or a fan of fives.
Yesterday, I joined Firestone Walker brewers Jordan Ziegler and Sam Tierney, to see the “many faces Parabola can take on through adjuncts..” There were over seven tastes of new experimental variants of the imperial stout, some only available for very short times.
This event at The Propgator brought together members of the Brewmasters Collective, an enthusiastic group of Firestone fans ready to taste Parabola in its newest incarnation as well as learn about the nuts and bolts of adjuncts in an imperial stout.
It starts with an inspiration. New Orleans offered Ziegler ideas as did the plane ride when the snack was a Stroop Waffle cookie. Then it goes to small bench tests where you try adding adjuncts and seeing what works and doesn’t. Fig was fine in tests but really called for an accompaniment so Ancho Chili was brought in to make a duet.
From there, it becomes how best to get a flavor punch. Thai bananas are good but lacked that Cavendish appeal. (sorry) The way you toast coconut and then deciding if circulating the beer through it or steeping it in the beer is a better preparation.
Mix in that Parabola is aged in differing bourbon barrels from super wet Elijah Craig to reliable Heaven Hill just adds another level of complexity. Then you have to make sure the resulting beer has a Firestone house taste to it as well.
For me, the plain 2014 Parabola was the best. You got a nice bourbon and oak note on top of a luxurious stout but the real action was deciding what of the flavored beers ranked highest. To me it was the Thai Bananas Foster. The interplay of fruit and stout just worked. Second was Coconut closely followed by the Peanut Butter (really peanut flour) with the Fig and Stroop Waffle in a lower tier of interesting and Mixed Berry bringing up the far back.
Oh and another plus, we got a taste of the newly reformulated XPA as well which I thought was a bright and hoppy addition to the line-up.
If you needed a temptation to join the Brewmasters Collective, this type of event would fit the bill.
Time to head East for the U.P. to find some beer on the Yooper Ale Trail.
This handy guide by Jon Stott and Mikel Classen covers the Upper Peninsula in Michigan and the first thing that I thought was smart was how each of the eight trails had no more than four stops listed and many were less than. (There was one with five but one brewery on it had not opened at time of writing). It makes for achievable adventures.
The second smart thing was that for many breweries, the author visited twice and could show the evolution of the brewery from new brewers to new beers. It is something that I haven’t seen employed in guidebooks before and I liked it.
Other fun facts are that blueberry beers are pretty much a required beer menu item. The style can change, though most were wheat beer based. If that berry is your favorite, I would say head up because blueberry ain’t seen much outside muffin pastry beers.
Also, because outdoor activities are the main tourist draw, the beers skew to the lower ABV since folks are hiking and biking and paddling and can’t be downing Quad IPAs.
On the new book cover, the book lists two authors but the book doesn’t really differentiate who wrote what which is fine in fiction but here, I would like to get a bead on who wrote what. I think that Stott wrote the majority and I like his folksy writing style but I can’t know for sure.
Another dent is the fact that after reading the really informative brewery summaries, there is a whole appendix listing contact info, beer lists and whether they had food or not. Format wise, that could have been folded into the main book fairly easily instead. There was also an appendix of beer styles and I would have preferred more about favorite Michigan beer styles.
I would say though, I usually hate the capsule brewing process chapter and I inwardly groaned when I saw it in the book, but it was much better here. It was more like having a friend explaining brewing than a manual.
Overall, a guide should help beer fans find new breweries and Stott and/or Classen do that really well. This book will help.
Brewjeria in Pico Rivera has news. As in a new location. And it is a bit of a drive from their comfy original location. B2 will be in Chula Vista, which I have to admit, I have never been to in all my SoCal years.
Good to see the Brewjeria folks are expanding.
The pandemic caused a lot of hidebound rules and regulations to be looked at with a more critical eye and even now in 2024, laws are being questioned.
One such piece of legislation, is Senate Bill 969, which would allow municipalities and counties, starting in 2025, to designate “entertainment zones” where drinking “alcoholic beverages on public streets, sidewalks, or public rights of way” would be legalized. This is similar to when outdoor – streets and sidewalk seating was greenlit.
It means of you and a brewery are in “the zone” that you can buy a beer and take it outside and drink it on the street. The bill was proposed by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) who is quoted saying, “We have these very strict alcohol laws in California that sometimes need to be made more flexible.”
I am all for flexible. There are far too many rules for any business, let alone a business that sells alcohol. But I am not seeing how wandering around with a plastic cup of beer is all that great. And where are the boundaries of this zone? Can you get a beer and wander into a bookstore? Or cross a busy street? Creating an outdoor seating oasis on a street near restaurants and bars (and breweries) seems a better idea for a bigger group of people to me.