Tag: Highland Park

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Sean Suggests for June 2025

This month, it is all about collaborations and it includes at least one Los Angeles brewery in the mix in honor of L.A. Beer Week.  

Ambitious Ales / Solaris 6 FT Nachos 12° Czech Style Pilsner  – 5% – “Using only Floor Malted Bohemian Malt, a pseudo-decoction method, and a healthy dose of 100% Czech Saaz Hops. 6 FT Nachos pours a beautifully clear gold color, showcasing marvelous foam, a soft mouthfeel and firm bitterness all backed up with a zesty floral hop character.”

Smog City / Fremont Highway Hypnosis West Coast IPA – 6.8% – “cruises through orange zest, yuzu, peach, melon, and a smooth twist of coconut and pineapple.”

Highland Park / Monkish Light Eaters Triple Dry-Hopped Hazy DIPA – 8.3% – “with Abstrax Citra Quantum, Citra Hyperboost, Citra T90, Galaxy, Citra Cryo and Krush Cryo.”

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Gnome and Wizards and Cheese

Highland Park Brewery has an on again, off again dark lager with the funny name of Bortz, that they now refer to as a “Dark Gnome Wizard Lager” described as “a beautiful dark mahogany appearance & roasty aromas of dark chocolate, bread crust, while remaining extra refreshing & crisp.”

Now Indianal’s Tulip Tree Creamery, is using Bortz in their latest For their Hops cheese series where they collaborate with different breweries.  The Bortz cheese is a semi-soft double-cream cheese infused with Bortz.

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R.I.P. – MacLeod Ale Brewing Company

There were some troubling signs from MacLeod Ale Brewing Company in recent days but today the hammer came down as they announced the closure of both the original Van Nuys brewing operation and the just recently opened satellite pizza and bar in Highland Park.

The reasons cited for the closures:

1] We’re over budget in several categories
2] We have too much debt due to expansion
3] Sudden crash of sales [down 15% in Oct, 21% in November! Bad timing!]
4] Our 2nd location opened too late and is underperforming.

You have to be a risk taker to brew beer commercially and you also need angel investors to backstop when good bets go wrong. Hopefully a new chapter can emerge from the brewery and it employees.

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Tonight and Tonight and Tonight

It is hot here in SoCal but we gotta stout up, eve in the triple digits, so Highland Park Brewery has us covered.

“Tonight Tonight Tonight is an 11% ABV imperial stout with coconut & vanilla. This beer is thiccc! The amount of coconut & vanilla in this beer will have you thinking you’re drinking a Mounds Bar with each sip.”

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A Highland Park Fling

You may remember Maximilliano, the restaurant that was an interesting an unofficial Craftsman Brewing outlet. That concept closed but the next tenant will keep the restaurant with a side of beer theme.

MacLeod Ales will be taking over the space and hope to open this time next year. Their pizza business next door to their Van Nuys brewery was a great success and now they will try to replicate it.

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Barcade HP

Today marks the opening of the Retro arcade with beer, wine, cocktails, food and Mead too! I saw my favorite Star Wars game from waaaay back in the day in one of the photos of the brick walled space and can’t wait to head over and see what beers are on tap. Will see if Barcade brings an A beer game.

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The Backyard

If you want to say backyard in German, then you say: Hinterhof.  It is also what you say when you want to go to a Germanic all-vegan restaurant with beer in Highland Park.  

The spot had a start date of January 5th on the York Boulevard portion of HP.  There is an outdoor patio for outdoor drinking from the 12 local tap choices, plus beer from abroad (hopefully German like say, Kloster Andechs. A re-influx of foreign beer would be quite welcome.