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Benny Boy Brewing and Cidery is going all Apple Fest in November with all things cider and apples and community. I went last year and seeing the people pressing cider and the smell of cinnamon in the air despite being so close to the 5 Freeway is very cool and a marker for the Los Angeles seasonal year.
If you are like me, there is always another book needed. And if you need more cider info then I have a book recommendation for ya’. It is American Cider by Dan Pucci and Craig Cavallo which gives “a new wave of consumers the tools to taste, talk about, and choose their ciders, along with stories of the many local heroes saving apple culture and producing new varieties.”
I don’t usually go for flavored ciders, I tilt towards just the apple please. But I am intrigued by Benny Boy’s Madame Ruby’s a bourbon barrel-aged cherry cider.
Here is the short description from the brewery / cidery, “10 months in the making, she’s tart, she’s fruity, and slightly boozy.”
Got some C’s for you today. Cranberries and currants from 2 Towns Ciderhouse.
Bliss pours the requisite red, would have been weird otherwise. I like that the aroma is still primarily apple. It needs to be cider with flavors, not just flavors. There is a really nice tartness here. I get the currants more than cranberry but I have a feeling that each drinker will perceive the two in different amounts. Very zippy with a nice hit of carbonation. I can see this paired with a salad with blue cheese very easily.
We are back around the calendar horn. A whole beer year stretches before us. All sorts of new brews and new news are waiting for us craft beer fans. Starting with…..
~ e-visits to (3) breweries from Craft Beer & Brewing’s Best of 2023 Canadian picks.
~ special featured reviews of beers of ciders from 2 Towns Ciderhouse
~Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer Roughhouse Friday by Jaed Coffin
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to The Food Programme from the BBC
~ Sports & A Beer returns with Streaming Sports
~ New Beer Releases and Best Beers of the Month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
There are not too many new ideas out there so when someone breaks the mold and looks at a topic with a new perspective, you should take a look, and that is what Beth Demmon has done with her new book, The Beer Lovers Guide to Cider
Hopefully, you will see the review in the October issue of Beer Paper but I will tease that this book has some of the best food pairing suggestions that I have read.
Mention government to me and it is like letting the air out of those balloony whirlygig things at used car lots. But the Golden State has made a good stride in being brewery friendly with the new Senate Bill 788 that was signed into law by Governor Newsom.
The law states that breweries that produce less than 60,000 barrels of beer annually, in paperwork speak also known as Type 23 licensees will not habe to obtain (and pay for) a separate winegrower’s license to produce ciders. And Perrys too.
Per the press release from the California Craft Brewers Association, “Previously, only large brewers with a Type 01 license and annual production of over 60,00 barrels were permitted to manufacture beer, cider, and perry under the same roof.”
That is one of those pesky rules that bedevil state brewery guilds and was obviously written for either A) giving big donating, big industrial brewers a leg up and / or B) making life hard on smaller competition.
Kudos to the CCBA and board chair Laurie Porter from SoCal’s Smog City Brewing for making brewery business life a bit easier.
Not all cider is apple centered and not all cider is just light and sparkling. Tieton Cider has a pair of bourbon barrel ciders that focus on other fruits to pair with that note of bourbon, they have a peach version as well as …..
Beer is my main beverage but I dabble in gin and bourbon and also cider. Coming this fall is a new book that reaches over the gap between beer and cider from Beth Demmon.
Demmon should be on your list of beer scribes to follow. You can get a taster of her cider writing style HERE.
I used to be in Burbank five days a a week. But now I am WFH so I totally missed that Story Tavern now has The Ciderworks next door.
They have some interesting combos such as cherry/blueberry, pineapple, ginger/lemongrass, strawberry/orange that use fruit fruit from the owner’s home as well.
If you need a cider break, might be a place to check.