Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Have another Beer Paper party inbound. GameCraft Brewing in Laguna Hills , a flagship advertiser of the paper, is the host for the Beer Paper 10th Anniversary party. Held on Saturday, November 18 from 4-8 pm.
Celebrate one of the few remaining actual physical beer-iodicals out there.
Get your calendars out, Naja’s IPA Fest is back and as a special inducement, Wednesday, October 11th is Beer Paper Night. So head on down to the harbor and get your hops and the October issue in one fell swoop.
This will be sort of a mini-re-hash of the Firestone Walker Invitational at the start of the month. When you have that many good breweries together, you are going to run across something stellar. But I will highlight one other beer from the rest of the month.
For me, what stood out was the Leeds based brewery Northern Monk. Their Very Stable Genius hoppy lager from their Patrons Archive was just bright and tasty which is saying something because the festival is home to a ton of fantastic pilsners and lagers.
Second was the Wild Pirate tiki-esque sour from the BarrelWorks program at Firestone Walker. It had a nice balance of vanilla sweet and fruit sour to be a hybrid of both.
Lastly, no homer-ism but I really took to the Artifex Beer Paper Pale Ale. Yes, I contribute the odd piece to the beer periodical but the beer itself was flavorful and 3-D.
I saw and spoke with Beer Paper impresario Daniel Drennon a few times at the Firestone Walker Invitational but forgot completely to ask about this beer with Artifex Brewing…
….I don’t see this coming up to Los Angeles in distribution but maybe I will get lucky.
On your next brewery taproom visit, look for the May edition of Beer Paper LA. Why? ‘Cause I am in it!
I wrote a piece about the Spoke Bicycle Cafe in the Frogtown neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Beer Paper LA has made a triumphant print return and I have a beer book review tucked inside…
Read up without adding more glare to your eyes! Lots of other good reads so grab a copy!
I admit it. I am an unabashed fan boy of Firestone Walker. I have the latest Luponic Distortion in my ‘fridge right now. So yeah, I will be tuning in to hear David Walker chat. As substitutes for an anniversary party goes, this is a good one.
Just to keep you “in the loop” here are the links to my other beer writing…
Label Design Q&A on Beer Paper LA
Ficklewood CiderWorks on Food GPS
Hit them links!
If you see this…
…at your local tap room or bar, then turn to page 20 to read my review / prescription for future breweries in Los Angeles…
And yes, those are a few of my beer books in the background.
I wrote a piece for the January edition of Beer Paper LA about a distribution company called Guest Brewer that brings in beers from breweries for short bursts of product and time and it got me to thinking about what other breweries that I think this would work well for and also selfishly, the ones that I want to try.
So far parts of California have seen Surly from Minnesota, Ska from Colorado, Goodlife from Oregon, and DuClaw from Maryland. Captain Lawrence from New York, and Evil Genius from Pennsylvania will also make brief apperances. I haven’t seen any of these yet but they all would be welcome in my ‘fridge.
I would love to see a few Oregon breweries head our way like Upright and their Saisons and wild beers. Cloudburst from Seattle is on my list. Bierstadt Lagerhaus from Colorado and more Fonta Flora from the East Coast would be lovely too.
Either way, operations like Guest Brewer are filling a need that was really only available to traders up until now.