Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
In case you forgot to check out the fantastic food coverage on the Food GPS website, then you may have not seen the beer coverage either.
Here is your handy link spot to read what I covered in Brew & You in March….
March 7th – Beer in Temecula, Border X + Dry River Triple Can release.
March 21st– Monrovia Beer, the Cellador Famille + 8 Bit in K-Town.
Small beers are few and far between. Simple table beers can be excellent adjustments for the palate that has been wrecked by hops or puckered by sour. Want an example? Famille a Small Oat Saison from Cellador Ales.
Here is the backstory on this beer from the brewery, “Brewed with Pilsner Malt that was grown in California, and malted in Alameda by Admiral Maltings. We also used California grown un-hulled French Black Oats from Tehachapi Grain Project. This is a very simple and light beer, brewed to showcase the flavors of high quality California grown ingredients along with our house mixed-cultures. We call it the Pilsner of wild ales. It has a very restrained acidity and high drinkability.”
In case you forgot to check out the fantastic food coverage on the Food GPS website, then you may have not seen the beer coverage either.
Here is your handy link spot to read them….
October 4th – Calidad Beer, Oakspire and Frogtown beers and Cellador’s 2nd Anniversary
October 18th – The San Fernando Craft Corridor, Field to Ferment Fresh Hops and the SoCal Cerverceros.
Imagine my surprise to wander into one of my favorite L.A. beer makers, Cellador to find that they have a lovely new-ish seating arena…
…the entry has new signage on the window, groovy wallpaper is up to set the mood, there are really comfortable chairs and prints on the wall that take parts of their well-designed labels and blown up sections of them into abstract art.
The beer menus have been redesigned and the order desk, while still mobile, looks more updated and professional than before.
The space is now matching the excellence of the wild and tart Beers being poured.
Mark Saturday, October 6th on your calendar as the sour and wild Cellador Ales celebrates their second birthday with not just one but possibly two anniversary beers.
The tasting room & outside patio will be open withe multiple pouring stations. Expect some fun and weird beers on tap and from their distinctively labeled bottles. Kogi BBQ will be there in the afternoon and Pacific Pizza Co. at night
It will be a cash only event and your first pour will include glassware (at additional cost). The first 250 people will receive an exclusive Anniversary glass.
In the run-up to L.A. Beer Week, I am highlighting a different event a day that you should consider. Here is # 1…
From Cellador Ales comes the S. CA Sour Friends Fest
Here are the details:
“Join us Saturday, June 23rd for the first S. CA Sour Friends Festival, in partnership with Angel City Pit Bulls!
From 12:30p to 4:30p, you’ll have access from unlimited 2oz pours from the following breweries:”
Mark your calendar for Saturday, October 14th. Cellador Ales will celebrate their first anniversary with Seconds. Not time or more food.
“Seconds is a double fruited apricot sour, and is one of the first to be bottled in our 375ml green Belgium-style bottles.”
First, the details:
ADMISSION TO OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY
Admission will be available to anyone that purchases our First Anniversary Beer, Seconds. Seconds will only be available for pick up at the Anniversary Party on October 14th, and the 90 day pick up window for non-members will not apply to this release. Member pick up & shipping policies will still apply to this release. NO shipments will be allowed for this release unless you are a member.
1 bottle of Seconds = 1 Admission, 3 bottles of Seconds = 3 admissions (under that order name)
SECONDS RELEASE DATES
Seconds will be pre-released to our members on Tuesday, October 3rd.
Seconds will be released to the public on Friday, October 6th.
More news to come on the party portion but this looks to be a beer not to be missed.
There are some fruits that get all the beer love, melon is not one of them. But I have seen a recent uptick in their use and now I have two to compare.
First up is from Lucky Luke, Billie a cantaloupe Gose…
… which has a light cantaloupe sweetness. That first sip is quite zippy. Good balance of salt to tart. Has a bit of melon rind smell tucked in as well. Finishes a bit velvety and a touch sugary.
Second is the Melon Saison from Cellador Ales…
… which pours a fizzy yellow. The Saison overflowed once the cap came off. Light honeydew taste is there at the back. Layer of acid and some farmhouse textures. Some barn leather notes. Melon sugar/water can’t balance the tart though.
Of the two, the Billie from Lucky Luke struck the right balance of tart to sweet. The Cellador Saison was good but was too puckery tart for me.
It is pronounced (shoo-shoo-mah). It means Saison of Whispers and it is the latest series of beers coming from Cellador Ales. Four variants in total. But not the usual fruit suspects.
Instead there will be a base saison followed by Cherimoya, Melon and Pears.
The Melon sounds the most intriguing to me.
The City of Los Angeles would probably have a much higher number of breweries if the government knew how to handle permitting a brewery. In my 8 years of blogging about beer in L.A., that has yet to happen. There is either no political will to do so or the inertia is just too much.
To counter that indifference that borders on hostility, breweries have been liberal about pulling temporary permits. It is a loophole that has been used in DTLA but apparently somewhere in the bowels of the city, someone noticed a spike in these permits and grew wise to what was being done.
That is my best guess. The optics for a municipal government to drop the hammer and appear pro-active rather than letting things slide by are obvious. Especially when it comes to alcohol. I had a bad feeling that if it was done too much that this would happen, but perhaps this can be the impetus for change because both Cellador and Hand Brewed are in craft beer areas that are underserved and they deserve better for their hard work.