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Traveling with beer

Beer West magazine had a writing contest last month. And a contest is like catnip to me. So I wrote a little piece and sent it in. Since I don’t know if it will get published either in print or online, I decided to put it up here too. Please enjoy.

When I hear the words “beer travel”, I do not immediately envision hopping the next flight to the beer halls of Munich, a dark pub in Ireland or even the Lucky Labrador taps at the Portland airport.
No, the phrase “beer travel” takes my mind in a different direction completely: shipping beer from my travel destination to my home sweet home (or vice versa). Or in the blood pressure spiking tale that follows, how to get some Southern California beer to a beer blogging conference in Colorado.

I am not a great air traveler even if all that is being transported is myself and the clothes on my back. When you add in turbulent winds, my palms sweat as if I was running on a treadmill for hours. Then sprinkle in fear that the special bottle purchased at The Bruery is going to break and malt-ily moisten the box it was in, or, god forbid, more than one bottle bursts and the entire cargo hold gets spritzed. Combine all of those factors together and I am one frayed nerve waiting to pop.

Once the plane lands, all I have to do is grab my box of beer and find two fellow bloggers at the shuttle desk to whisk us to Boulder. Everything is falling into place. I look ahead to what my first beer will be when we reach Boulder. I stand with my fellow passengers who did not seem nearly as agitated by the ride as I was but that is normally the case. I start to emulate their relaxed state. The carousel spins. And keeps spinning. Luggage of all shapes and colors are whisked off the conveyor belt. Soon, I am the only one there. Without my box of beer. I feel the sweat return.

My mind immediately thinks that one of the TSA agents is a certified cicerone who x-rayed the box, saw the bounty within, and took off. Perhaps worse – that security has impounded my box thinking that I am some shady craft beer smuggler.

I tell myself to – calmly – check the nearby baggage spinners in case my box came out the wrong chute. No luck. I try to call my waiting blogger companions but my signal keeps getting cut off. With diminishing hope, I trudge to my airline’s lost luggage counter. Lo and behold, sitting off to the right, completely unattended, is my box. How it ended up stranded in a no man’s land between the counter and the carousel is a mystery to me to this very day.

I kneel down and check for any telltale wetness at the bottom of the box. It comes up dry. There are no special stickers or note on the box that would give me a clue as to what happened when the box was taken off the plane.

Time is now of the essence. I look left and right and grab the box and head off. I am sure a very amused security guard was watching the camera feed wondering what in the hell I was doing with that box and why. Weirder activities must take place because I was not escorted to a windowless room. I locate the shuttle and met up with my fellow bloggers (late but not LATE) and had a fine time in Boulder.

Three days later, I fill my trusty box with Colorado beer and cart it back to Los Angeles without incident.
I still have that box and I will continue to travel with it until it is more tape than cardboard.

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Applestroop it!

Stillwater and Emelisse have collaborated on the cheekily named ’Holland Oats’. A beer that is created with toasted oats & applestroop.

Now applestroop is a Dutch syrup or jelly made ​​from combining apples and sugar . Apparently, it is mainly used as sandwich filling which sounds odd to me, but it also can be used as an ingredient in recipes for hot and/or cold dishes. It is certainly not the weirdest ingredient that I have seen used.

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The Beer Allowance – January

One of my gifts from Christmas 2011 was an “extra” beer allowance of $20 a month. And I have promised to chronicle what I have bought and then I will come back and add tasting notes when (if), I drink them. Some might go into my expanding beer cellar.

So this month I got two beers with my twenty. With a little to roll over into February!

Pretty Things has been sending more and more beer out to the west coast. At first, all I could find was the Jack D’Or saison but now we have Hedgerow Bitter, Field Mouse Farewell and last night I had the Our Finest Regards barleywine. All distinctively Pretty in character. And so when I saw the Sylvan Stout at Whole Foods, I decided to spend on that. But what would the second beer be?

I decided that I wanted to try a Belgian ale. So I went to the middle Rochefort that was available and grabbed the 8. I usually do not buy these beers because they are pricy for the size and I can get a variety of quality Belgians on tap at Lucky Baldwin’s here in L.A. if the mood strikes. But now, maybe, I will pick up 6 and 10 and the Bruin as well over the next few months.

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Critical Hit

What do you get when you let Ninkasi go wild with 11 hops?

This: CRITICAL HIT BARLEY WINE “comes with a warning – It is hopped to high heaven. 11 varieties of Hops. Two-hundred and twenty pounds of them, for only 17 barrels of beer! Its high gravity nature has been mellowing for a year to warm the cheeks and soul. Critical Hit will be released for the first time in limited release 22oz bombers and draft. Available Jan, 2012 100 IBUs 11.7% abv”

And to learn about other Ninkasi beer releases head to the excellent Brewpublic site.

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In the Tap Lines for January 2012


Happy New Year!! Let’s ring it in with beer! And with blog posts about beer!

~ e-visits to three North Carolina breweries
~ video reviews of three California brewed beers
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 59 will converge bloggers onto a single topic
~ plus many more posts about new beers, beer products and breweries

Here are two events to get your January started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) January 9th at Steingarten LA – Bootlegger’s Brewery Night
2) January 19th at the Surly Goat – Ballast Point Tiki Night

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The Final Firkin of 2011


I am not going to talk about craft beer in this month’s firkin. Because I think it is important to step back and talk about all BETTER food and drink for a moment before rushing headlong into 2012.

If you are a true beer geek, you need to also be a wine geek, a cheese geek, a tangerine geek. You get the picture. All of us who write about beer and even those who evangelize in person need to be cognizant that it isn’t enough to love craft beer and then wolf down a McWich of unknown provenance. We are of a same tribe and we should give props to those who create something delicious.

Let me get two caveats out of the way first. One, everyone has bad frozen pizza now and then. A twinkie from the ’80s may pass our lips as well. That’s fine as long as it isn’t the normal routine. Second, you do not have to know “everything” and become the cicerone of each different food and drink. You can be a rank amateur. That is fine.

What I am requiring is that we use the same criteria that we do when we purchase beer, when we buy everything else we eat. To me that means looking for food that is “whole”, un-chemicallized (new word), and local. Your criteria may differ. Just apply your own beer rules when you are choosing between two different offerings at a store.

I think this is important because not only will you be healthier if you are eating a higher quality of food without so many chemicals but it will also send a financial ripple through the food system. Just think of your big ticket monthly expenditures. Groceries are probably up there in the top five. And if you take that money and spend it on better stuff. That impact will be felt. In my case, the big grocery chains have lost 80% of my business. Because I simply find ice cream that is made better and with less additives elsewhere. Same with fruits and vegetables. I get those at a Farmer’s Market.

If enough people make the switch, then more “good” foodstuff’s will be made and we will get more choices and lower prices due to competition. Maybe prices won’t go as low as Cheeze Whizz, but when you factor in the better for you angle and better tasting angle (as it is with craft beer), then the price may not seem so high anymore.

This doesn’t need to get all frou-frou either. You don’t need to be holier than thou and have a burger that is completely cruelty free with micro-arugla. Just make your own burger instead of getting a “fast” one. Instead of ordering a pizza from the Hut. Go to a local pizzeria that makes a fresh pie. Don’t call out ABInBev then buy cheap industrial vodka from a slick marketing campaign.

When faced with a choice. Remember WWCBD. What would Craft Beer do?

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Beer Search Party – The Year in Photos

There are all sorts of great shots at breweries. I like the tap handles next to the Atticus mug behind the scenes at Strand Brewing

At a meet the brewer event at Rock n Brews with the Head man at Bruton.

Quite a few breweries are tucked into industrial parks and are pretty drab on the outside but the hop vines out front of Cismontane liven up the spot.

Historic L.A. brewing cans from the long gone Eastside Brewery

Shots of beer in a glass can get really static and boring. But the mason jars at Bootlegger's make for interesting points of view.

The FIRST ever Craftsman bottle! and FIRST ever Eagle Rock bottle too.

I had never heard of this quote but it is my new favorite beer-ism.

Love seeing the blog name next to the iconic Stone logo!

What is more blue? Not me! More breweries in L.A.

Scratch a Sean Paxton dinner off of my bucket list!

Ballast Point Victory at Candy Cane Cove shot through candy canes with a nice garnish.

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Beer Search Party – The Year in Review

Even though I did not go to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver or the Holiday Ale Festival in Portland and missed many, many events in the Southland area, 2011 was still a busy beer year for me.

Here is what I will remember most from the year that was(in no particular order):

1. CANFEST
There are good days and bad but when you get an e-mail that says that you have won a free trip to a beer festival. That is a great day times twenty. And getting a limo ride was cool, a tour of Reno beer spots from Doug at Buckbean was cool and best of all. The actual festival exceeded my expectations. I was floored by the geographic variety of breweries that can from across the country.

2. LA BEER WEEK
This year, I was not sick during the festival and I needed to be in peak condition. I was at an event almost every night. But the best of the two week fest was the Firestone-Walker Deconstructed party. One of my craft beer bucket list items was having a Sean Paxton special beer dinner. Check that off. The idea of trying all the components of the XV was brilliant.

3. GOLDEN ROAD
I have been lucky enough to be here in Los Angeles as craft beer has finally gotten off the ground. I got to walk around Eagle Rock Brewery before it became the beer destination that it is today and this year, I got to do the same thing with Golden Road Brewing. I had the honor of being at several media days at the brewery and to see the rapid growth is amazing. I am a lucky camper to have both ERB and Golden Road within 10 minutes of my apartment.

4. BEER BLOGGERS CONFERENCE
Any time I can get to Portland for beer is a good time and would make a year end list. But what really vaults this trip to the 2nd Beer Bloggers Conference into the top tier was a traffic ridden trip to the farm, the hop farm. I really loved touring through the in production Goschie Farms. The scent of hops in the air. Little green snowflakes flying. Seeing the hop bines. Just tremendous. Not to diss the rest of the conference, but those little green cones are scene stealers.

5. Stone Brewing
2011 will go down for me as the year where I truly felt like a member of the L.A. craft beer media. And when did I know this? When I and quite a few others in the beer trade are being squired around the San Diego area with Greg Koch and the Stone gang (including the awesome Randy Clemens). I got to visit Stone Farms and eat awesome food that was grown steps away, went to the Liberty Station site, learned about the Stone store in South Park and have Stone beer at each stop. A great way to spend a day.