Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
A common complaint when going to concerts or sporting events is primarily the price of beer but also finding a good and local craft beer. Baseball and soccer tend to be better than basketball and hockey but concerts and theatre seemed to lag a bit unless you were BYOBing at the Hollywood Bowl.
But if you are a fan of the musical booking at the famed Echoplex, well your choice of beer just got better with….
…Party Beer Co. has very appropriately added to the party.
Sage Brew in Echo Park is giving their bar space a refresh, it is now…
Hard to believe it was only 2017 when Sage Plant Based Bistro expanded into brewing. Picking up a lot of “firsts” in the process . Echo Park’s first brewery. Women owned and brewed. Using local, organic ingredients including hops from their own farm.
Here is the brewery description of their 5 year anniversary beer, “we teamed up with our favorite partners Sow-A-Heart farm to make a saison loaded with fresh persimmons aged with Oak. With a caramel nose this beer is sweet and slightly tart from the persimmons with an oaky finish.”
As the door closes on Sunset Beer, a little ray of light as last week, Button Mash a few blocks down Sunset has re-opened with Tacos 1986 as a new food partner.
That means asada and other treats to go with your craft beer and endless games of Tapper.
I veer into cocktails on occasion, actually bulking up my bar this year for once, so I was excited to try Thunderbolt and their primarily pre-made drinks.
I started with one of two cocktails on the menu that had a charity component to it. $2.00 from the Highball of the Month goes to the Another Round Another Rally fund for hospitality workers. The glass and the slab of ice was very eyecatching with the red/pink of the brambled gin. This is a raspberry drink that you can drink all day.
Next was a final attempt at the famous Negroni. I have had two before this and the strange Campari flavor had left me unfulfilled. The Thunderbolt version was fine but it put the nailin the coffin of me liking Negroni’s.
The location on Temple is done up real well with a dark bar vibe that is pierced by sunlight from two sides. They also have beer and cider but the star is the spirited concoctions.
Can you believe it? Sunset Beer Company is close to their Eighth Anniversary! On Saturday, October 19th, they will unveil a very special tap list. Snacks and Masa Pizza will be available when night rolls in. Raise a glass to a classy independent beer shop.
A long time ago, I briefly mentioned on this blog that the Sage Vegan Bistro in Echo Park was in the process of creating a little brewery at their restaurant thereby brewpub-izing it.
A cursory search did not find the name or background of the brewer but the location now has a full bar with 36 taps and down the road, fairly soon now, we should be seeing Sage beers like a habanero pilsner and a rosemary-beet amber.
A 1st visit will be happening soon with a report to follow.
A few posts back, I talked about Sunset Strip Brewing in the planning process, now there is a brewpub in the planning phase for Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park.
Sage operates a mini-chain of restaurants in the Los Angeles area and is looking to expand their Echo Park corner into a brewpub.
Let’s see if this comes to fruition.
I am not big into video games. I played the old-school games like Donkey Kong, Qbert, Dragon’s Lair and the now hillarious Track & Field game but I never kept up with all the upgrades and new games and Halos and John Madden’s.
Now I can order a beer and play (badly) some of the games from the past. It is quite a nostalgia trip at Button Mash. To see Frogger and Pac Man and an NBA game that featured NBA players from a long ago era was fun.
The space that has a sort of Denny’s layout and shape to it is broken up into four parts. There is a bar, a restaurant sit down area, a pinball machine grouping and then the classic video games in another area. On the night I was there, it was hopping with activity. A birthday party had commandeered one table and the Game of Thrones pinball machine was occupied whenever I looked.
Playing my favorite Star Wars games with the graphics more suited to pre-visualization for big budget movies was a blast. And the tap list was well done. Nice variety with IPA’s to choose from as well as the excellent Amburana Porter from Three Weavers. Cans were also available though at a heftier mark-up than the taps which I consider a skosh on the high side.
Two problems that I see that could be improved upon are that if you buy tokens from the bar, you have to buy in $5 increments. Which is fine in some cases but I don’t see why you couldn’t do any increment at all. Also, if you order at the bar and take a seat at one of the tables, the attentive wait staff can’t take an order until you close out the bar tab and then open up a table tab. There probably is a reason for it but I felt bad for the waitress who could have easily gotten my order and a tip.
Those tweaks aside it is a fun spot for a party and to blow off steam after work by destroying all the Tie Fighters that you can.
Looks like the Echo Park craft corridor has a new stop. The Lost Knight, a British Gastropub, has taken over the long standing Barragan’s restaurant space.
As you can see from the beer menu, they have a nice local mix. I would like to see more exports on the menu because good British beer is certainly a market to exploit in LA.
Further reports to come after I visit.