One of the calmest and tranquil places in Los Angeles is Descanso Gardens. Nestled in the mountains above my home in Glendale, the garden played host to the first LA Beer Week Finale Festival in 2009. And this year they are joining in on the Beer Week festivities with a day devoted to brew, on week from today.
The main attraction is a biergarten from 3-8pm. But there will also be a Home Brew class and how to grow wheat and barley class that you have to sign up for beforehand. It is a great place to stop and smell the roses and listen to your beer as Fred Eckhardt would say.
Session # 56
Here is the topic for this month…from Tale of the Ale
Thanks to the big boys
“What I ‘m looking for is this. Most of us that write about beer do so with the small independent brewery in mind. Often it is along the lines of Micro brew = Good and Macro brew, anything brewed by the large multinationals is evil and should be destroyed. Well I don’t agree with that, though there may be some that are a little evil….
Anyway I want people to pick a large brewery or corporation that owns a lot of breweries. There are many to chose from. Give thanks to them for something they have done. Maybe they produce a beer you do actually like. Maybe they do great things for the cause of beer in general even if their beer is bland and tasteless but enjoyed by millions every day.
If you honestly have nothing good to say about a large brewer, then make something up. Some satire might be nice, It will be a Friday after all.
So remember, October 7th is a celebration of our big mega breweries for the work that they do.”
After reading the assignment, a song lyric (probably mis-remembered) popped into my head. “..what are they good for, absolutely nothing”. Then of course, “Say it again”.
Now on this very blog, I told people not to be scared of Goose Island being sold. I have defended the Quality Control of the watered down lager that the mega-corporations shill. And yes, the BMC do donate scads of money to charity.
But to me, the “big boys” are not part of the brewing community that I know. They are a large amorphous blob that could be in any industry. They could be making fire alarms or fig newtons. They long ago gave up crafting beer and now produce an industrial product.
So I might as well, say nice things about Wal-Mart or ConAgra or Bank of America in this session. They are as much “beer” as ABInBev or MillerCoors. Or I could talk about brewing’s actual big companies like Stone or Sierra Nevada.
But the spirit of the topic is to play nice, so I say this to all the Omnicorp’s and MegaBig Companies of the world who cater to the lowest common denominator, “Thanks for not caring. Thanks for creating such a huge market for quality. Thanks for not responding to shifts in consumer taste by making something even remotely good. And to the BMC specifically, keep making your funny little commercials instead of beer.”
Repoterroir
Repoterroir is a mega-collaboration between:
“A distinct 5.5% ABV session-lager brewed with elemental, native terroir from the following collective of brewers: Sierra Nevada (wild rice, beets, cucumber, mint and carrots), Avery (Colorado alfalfa honey), Allagash (Maine purple potatoes), Dogfish Head (free-range Atlantic Ocean beach wood), and Lost Abbey (cage-free Pacific Ocean beach wood).
Born out of a backroom conversation in a Boulder restaurant and blooming into a full-blown cornucopia of a collaboration, Repoterroir is a coming together of like-minded craft beer compatriots. Brewed at Sierra Nevadas brewery in Chico, CA this sessionable lager beer reclaims the earthbound mantle of terroir from the grape-soaked, buttoned-down world of wine and repurposes it in a new sudsy sense. Featuring natural ingredients contributed by each of the five breweries, this unique and earthy beer is complex and layered but ultimately drinkable. Using the full repertoire of skills from more than 86 combined years of brewing knowledge and skill, this lager combines traditional (and not so traditional) ingredients into an ideal summertime brew.”
As with the first post of the day, I like the idea but it seems two ingredients too much just for the sake of equal representation. I can do without the carrots and beets. Color is the least of my beer judging worries.
Bruery (Faster, Bigger) + Dogfish (Better, Bolder)
Today, I will feature two posts on beers that may very well be excellent but, to me, make me long for a simple pale ale.
“Faster, Bigger, Better, Bolder (Gradually, Quietly, Steadily) is an homage to the contrasting lifestyle views of American excess set against the more humble and traditional ways of Japan. Brewed with kumquats and our own seven spice schichimi togarashi blend along with sake yeast, this is an excessive beer brewed with tradition in mind. $1 from each bottle sale will go towards rebuilding Japanese breweries and households that were destroyed during the recent earthquake.”
I can live with kumquats. Spice is fine. I love sage in beer so it is no problem. But then combine with sake yeast. That is where I start to wonder.
While the beer world was in Denver….
So the craft beer world was tilted towards Colorado, I didn’t sit on the couch grousing that I wasn’t there. Especially since my football team was winning (Go Linfield!)
I took to the road and visited 4 SoCal breweries. The first stop was Cismontane for the release of their Double Rainbow DIPA….
We got to sample the “regular” version of Double Rainbow….
Cismontane even grows a few hops outside their pleasant little industrial park tasting room….
Next stop is the fairly new Anaheim Brewing. Another pretty interior in which to drink beer and aside from me in the foreground…
I will have to sample more to make a complete assessment of their creations…
Richard and I sampled the Tavern Ale and the Oktoberfest both of which were underwhelming in comparison to Cismontane.
Our final stop was a quick jaunt to Eagle Rock Brewery to get a taster of Populist and to buy a small growler. Then home to sleep!
The Great American Beer Festival – The Results Show
I wish that more people would pay attention to the results of the Great American Beer Festival but alas the other 95% as I call them seem more interested in people (who are purported to be stars dancing) or people who can’t sing singing.
The best place to check out a digestible set of results for me has been the Brookston Beer Bulletin. So check out his summary HERE.
Suffice it say that I am glad that California (adopted home is # 1) and that my ancestral home of Oregon was 3rd.
Ken Burn’s Prohibition
One of my favorite books of the last couple year’s was Daniel Okrent’s Last Call. And that is the jumping off point for the new Ken Burns series with the name of Prohibition.
Premieres October 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 2011 at 8 PM on PBS. But check your local PBS station for more information.
In the Tap Lines for October 2011
Here at BSP headquarters, we are working on these posts for the ghoulish month of October. Ghoulish because of the morning’s after all the L.A. Beer Week events.
Also, again thanks to Charissa Santos, for the above logo. If you like the look of it, check out her site HERE. She does branding, print and web design and she is easy to work with and she really made me take a hard look at where I am going and what my design does to help me get there.
~ e-visits to three breweries in Australia
~ video reviews of Halloween themed beers
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 56 will converge bloggers onto a single topic
~ plus many more posts about new beers, beer products and breweries
Here are three events to get your October started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) October 9 – B.A.M. Beer-Art-Music in Santa Monica
2) October 10 – L.A. Beer Week kick-off at Naja’s Place
3) October 18th – Oskar Blues TenFidy tasting at Boneyard Bistro
The Firkin for September 2011
Above is the third of three new logos designed for me by Charissa Santos. If you like the look of it, check out her site HEREstory on the black market for craft beer.
What caught my attention were the last two paragraphs, “Last September, Russian River released Framboise for a Cure, a raspberry-flavored beer that it sold for $12 per bottle to raise money for a local breast cancer treatment center. The beer sold out in a day, and soon somebody sold a bottle on eBay for $400. Then someone else put one up for sale. “We contacted that person,” Cilurzo says, “and we said, ‘This is absolutely ridiculous, because we donated 100 percent of this for charity.’”
The seller didn’t budge. “The guy said, ‘I have to support my habit somehow.’ ” Not heroin or cocaine. He meant craft beer.”
I do not think that I am going out on a limb to say that this guy will not be served good beer in the afterlife and that he forfeited ALL of his good karma as well.
Anyone who thinks that working the e-bay alcohol sale loophole to their benefit need to be stopped. And it shouldn’t fall onto a brewer to scour the listings and devise strategies to get a limited amount of beer to the maximum amount of people. E-Bay needs to forbid the selling of beer unless it is done by the brewery or the brewery’s distributor. Or if they wanted to go all “Leverage” on these sellers, they could allow the sale to go through but divert all but the original cost of the beer to the intended charity. Do that enough and people will stop.
But this wink-wink “collectible” rule would only benefit these sellers if there are people buying. So. Here is my plea to all those in the beer world who are dying to try the “it” beer of the moment. STOP! Get on the internet, befriend people in other parts of the country and trade with them if you cannot live without Pliny the Younger or Black Tuesday.
Yes, those are excellent beers but American in 2011 is filled with great beer everywhere and I will bet that the fresh beer at your local will be BETTER than a PtY of dubious provenance. And if that doesn’t halt your craving then fly out to California or to Indiana or Minnesota and get the beer there. If you are buying overpriced beer, then a plane ticket isn’t that much more expensive.
The upshot of this? I want the brewers brewing. Not playing police.
Oregon Beer Review # 3 – Super Dog from Lucky Labrador
Our final Oregon beer is from the growing Lucky Labrador Brewery, the beer is Super Dog…..