Tag: L.A. Beer Week

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Event Review – Logsdon Farmhouse Night

With the 4th version of L.A. Beer Week nearing it’s climax, certain truths have become evident. Firestone-Walker is creative with their major event theme. Fifty/Fifty Brewing brings some great beer and the Bottle Room in Whittier will dazzle with their food and beer pairings.

Last night was Logsdon Farmhouse Ales night. With head brewer and yeast wrangler, Dave Logsdon in attendance all the way from Hood River, Oregon. And you had a great gamut of his beers to sample….

….to go along with different cheese plates that Tony Alcazar had whipped up for the occasion.

I had a sampler tray of four beers that may have been first poured through the lines and so they didn’t have the same bite and flavors that I remember from the bottled versions of the beer…

…but the hopped Saison was quite nice. Very mild and certainly not an American amped of saison style.

It was great to sit with Kevin and Scott from Artisan Ales who make sure we get the Logsdon beers down here as well as to talk to Dave and Tony. That’s the type of environment that makes a L.A. Beer Week event great….

….all layers of the industry out at the bar talking to the fans and showing off the beer.

You have two more opportunities to go all Logsdon durin the final days of L.A. Beer Week. Tonight at Sunset Beer Co. and Sunday at the Union Station festival. Don’t miss your chance to try a really great cherry beer….

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Event Review – FiftyFifty Night at the Verdugo

One of the annual L.A. Beer Week highlights for me is when Fifty/Fifty brewing makes the trek from Truckee with their rare (in L.A.) beers.

This year they landed at the Verdugo Bar and brought an eclectic mix from their beer line-up.

I went bassackwards and started with the heaviest beer and worked my way down. So first up was B.A.R.T. which is described as, “Barrel Aged Really Tasty. This is a rare one-off beer blended on the brewers whim. The most recent iteration contains a delicious blend of Totality Imperial Stout, Donner Party Porter, and our Summit Barleywine, aged in Oak Bourbon Barrels for 180 days.”

It was smooth and not super boozy. I’m thinking it had more of the regular porter than the Stout or barleywine because the 10% alcohol was well masked. Hopefully, I can try the 2013 version to compare and contrast.

Next up was Rockslide IPA. I had only imperial stouts from this brewery so this was a brand new experience. It was strong and hoppy but wasn’t a muddle like some can get. Nice initial bitter punch that melted away.

Last on the night was 4 Wheat, their American hefeweizen. Maybe the B.A.R.T. and the Rockslide were still on the palate but this tasted kind of strong but in a good way. Really wheat-centric without the banana/clove combo. A grand way to end the night.

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L.A. Beer Week – Odds & Ends


How is your bucket list looking, all you L.A. craft beer geeks? You had better get to work on filling each quadrant with a sticker. Visit that brewery. Eagle Rock or Strand would work. Go to a special beer-centric event like Saturday’s Beer Float Showdown. Once those four stickers are affixed to your sheet, all it will take is four quarters for a bottle of Unity 2012!

Next item:
Federal Bar in North Hollywood through Friday
“Beer week has been super delicious so far! What better way to keep it going then by adding a creamy, tantalizing twist..Cheese! That’s right, The Federal Bar has shipped in the creamiest, most scrumptious,
finger-licking cheeses, specially for this week. We’ve designed the perfect beer tasting with the perfect cheeses and homemade jams. Stop in for some special treats from Firestone Walker. We’ll be tapping DBA,
Double DBA, Union Jack, and Oaktoberfest.”

Middle item:
City Tavern in Culver City tonight!
Black Market Pint Night with some delicious old-standby’s and some new beer too.

Last item:
38 Degrees in Alhambra
Ultimate Flight Night III

“LA Beer Week is back and so is the return of Ultimate Flight Night! This year we are changing it up a bit, well only the beer but not the sexy flight gear! I have invited a few of our favorite breweries to pick their own flights to feature as well as to hang out with us for the evening. We will still feature 15 flights as Clay will mix up the breweries for his own fun as well as feature some rare bottle flights. If you missed the madness last year, dont be left out again.

This years participants are: Kern River Brewing,The Bruery ,Stone ,Eagle Rock ,Beachwood BBQ and Brewing, Bootlegger’s, Ballast Point and Firestone Walker.”

That should keep you busy until October.

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Prickly Pear Beer Review – Unity 2012


I helped “unwrap” prickly pears on the brew day and then I helped on bottling day as the finished beer filled up bottle after bottle so I am a bit biased about this year’s Unity beer from Eagle Rock Brewery.

And it lived up to it! You get a bright prickly pear flavor right off the bat. The beer then settles into some other exotic fruit notes before finishing with a real cereal grain end. And it is just tart enough and effervescent to really add another layer to a really low ABV beer. This one is under 4%. The only flavor that I didn’t get on the palate was the rye. Maybe it was working in other ways, but I did not pick up much spice but that is a minor quibble with a really strong Berliner Weisse.

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Prickly Pear Beer Review – “Nopal de Trigo”

Prickly Pear is the official ingredient for the 2012 L.A. Beer Week and as I find and taste these special edition beers, I will review them. Some are only Union Station Finale available and will get reviewed later but first out of the gate is Cismontane Brewing and “Nopal de Trigo” a hefeweizen brewed with hand-pressed prickly pear juice.

As the photo shows, this pours a ruby red grapefruit color. The aroma does not include the clove and banana that you normally associate with a German style hefe but what I do get is a clear aloe, green leaf type of smell which is not an aroma that I have picked up on a beer before. The taste veers away from that into more of a strawberry and banana world. It is very fruity with a little bit of bitterness lingering at the back end. This style of beer (and the Berliner Weisse one as well) showcase the pear.

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Event Review – Stone Store in Pasadena

My L.A. Beer Week kicked off in Pasadena at the brand spanking new Stone outpost. An event so popular that they extended the event by a couple of hours to accommodate all the folks who wanted to get a first look at the arrogance.

Upon entering the Del Mar station of the Gold Line. (Yes, it is literally steps away from the train), I got my customary “bracelet” and a ticket for (4) beers and food. Now I could have saved some of the boxes for a growler fill or a tasting flight at a later date but I wanted to try the special beers that had come up from Escondido.

I started off with Ruination dry hopped with Motueka hops. This version tasted softer to me. Which is a good thing. I did not need to have my palate “ruined” one beer in. It still had a hearty kick of bitterness, don’t get me wrong, but a little more fruit notes rose to my attention.

Faithful readers of this blog will know that I prefer the lighter side of beers and I generally disdain the cult of the imperial stout but the beer that I was looking forward to the most was a big beer. Suitable for Cave Aging was created in honor of Danny Williams who passed away this year. He was one of the quirky legends of the craft beer world and I don’t know what his style preferences were but this beer was quite nice. Strong but not overpowering bourbon notes. A little sweetness. Overall a good after dinner sipper.

The other beer of note was an espresso bean version of Sublimely Self-Righteous. That coffeehouse aroma was in evidence but it faded into the beer which was more malt driven than coffee or chocolate. But it went really well with the beer cookies that were offered.

One day down and 10 to go!

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L.A. Beer Week – It has Arrived!


Now is the time to grab your L.A. Beer Week passport and a pocket for bottlecaps so that you can collect the right ones to get a L.A. Beer Week Cap and start hitting events!

Today on FoodGPS, I picked some can’t miss parties for you. And here on my blog, I will delve into how to navigate the 10 days of fun.

First off, you need to generate a list of events. Put each one into either a “must see”, “should see” or “not this year” list. You do that by scoping out the events over at LA Beer Week website then you look at my picks and then cross-checked against what you enjoyed last year.

Now take the “must see” events and put them onto a calendar. If you have one every night, that’s great! But if you want to truly enjoy each event, you may want to scale back and have a couple days to drink water and rest. You do not want to enter the gates of Union Station on that final day, have a couple samples and be filled up because of all that you had before. Trust me, that is what happened to me last year.

The other criteria that I use to whittle down the field are as follows:
~ Is it a one of a kind event? Last year’s Firestone-Walker Deconstructed dinner was epic and this year Firestone is doing a one day Sour beer blitz through L.A.
~ Is the event at a bar or brewery that you haven’t visited? Use the fest as an excuse to hit places that you don’t normally go to.
~ What beer style is on display? You don’t want to have three IPA-centric events in a row. Spice things up. Go Berliner Weisse one day and change up the next.

Use my suggestions or your own criteria and then as a final step, make sure you have back-ups for some events. You may be tired or traffic is awful (405 closure time coincides with the final weekend) and you may have to go to a Plan B that is either closer to home or work.

But whether you attend 1 event or 10, have fun. As famous publican Don Younger put it, “It’s not about the beer. It’s about the beer.”

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before L.A. Beer Week starts

As if L.A. Beer Week needed to be any more fun, here are 3 more ale-ventures to accomplish between the 20th and 30th this month.

From the fine folks behindL.A. Beer Week:

1. CAPS FOR CAPS INITIATIVE
We’ve got some awesome local breweries with some beautiful looking bottle caps emblazoned with their logos. Homies like Eagle Rock Brewery, Hangar 24 Craft Brewery, The Bruery, Black Market Brewing, and Brouwerij West. If you can collect a dozen of those bottle caps, you can trade em in for an official LABW hat at the LA Beer Week Festival. (Hat = cap. Bottle cap. Caps for Caps… see what we did there?)

And for those local breweries who aren’t yet marking their bottle caps with their logo, we’ve partnered with local bottle shops/LABW sponsors to place special stickers on those caps to help spread the love and make this little program even more of a happy success. Look for the stickers at these fine potent potable purveyors:

Wally’s Wine and Spirits (West LA)
K&L Wine Merchants (Hollywood)
The Oaks Gourmet Market (Los Feliz)
Red Carpet Wine (Glendale)
Co-Opportunity (Santa Monica)

If for some unknown reason you aren’t attending the LA Beer Week Festival, you can bring said 12 caps to Eagle Rock Brewery or Beer Belly to claim your superfly sombrero.

2. THE LA BEER WEEK BUCKET LIST
As an added incentive to head out to multiple events this year (as if the events themselves weren’t incentive enough), we’ve devised the brilliant LA Beer Week Bucket List to help steer you in a few adventurous directions. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to collect special stickers by participating in certain types of events: visiting local breweries, attending a beer education seminar, moseying out to one of our highlighted shindigs, and seeking out an extra special, rare beer. Those who complete this most noble quest, collecting all four stickers and bringing their finished Bucket List to the LA Beer Week Festival are then entitled to a bottle of the official LABW beer, Unity, from Eagle Rock Brewery! It also gets you into a drawing for free tickets to the amazing BAM Fest (Beer, Art, and Music) on Oct. 6th in Santa Monica!

3. LA BEER WEEK BADGE ON UNTAPPD
The true craft beer cognoscenti are using Untappd to check-in to their favorite beers, a newfangled 21st century kind of way to drink socially, if you will. Users of the free app can receive the official Untappd LA Beer Week badge simply by checking into any beer between Sept. 20-30, with their location geotagged anywhere within Los Angeles or Orange County. Not using Untappd yet? Well, what are you waiting for?! Head to untappd.com on your smartphone to get started.

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Two Twists to L.A. Beer Week


It is now September and the celebration of all things craft beer in L.A. starts in less than three weeks!

This year there will be two special programs running during the extended week. First is a L.A. Beer Week passport. And anyone who is considering or has already bought tickets for the finale festival at Union Station should get in on this. All you have to do is have fun and drink beer at four types of LA Beer Week events. Visit a brewery. Get a sticker for your passport. Attend a special beer event. Get another sticker for your passport. And if you complete this mission (not impossible by the way), all you have to do is turn in your completed passport at the Union Station festival to receive a token for a $1 bottle of Unity 2012. Seriously! One Dollar for a full bottle of Prickly Pear Rye Berliner Weisse.

Secondly is “Caps for Caps”! A fun bottle cap hunt. Visit participating bottle shops in the L.A. area and pick up a beer from the cooler that has the LA Beer Week sticker on it. Or save a bottle cap from a brewery based here in L.A. County. Collect 12 and you can turn them in for a rockin’ LA Beer Week hat either at the festival or at Beer Belly or Eagle Rock Brewery. (Where they have really great beer that tastes even better with the “official” hat on.)

More information on these special promotions will be coming shortly including the link to print a passport and a list of the stores that will be participating in “Caps for Caps”.

Thanks in advance for talking about L.A. Beer Week on your blogs, your Twitter feeds or Facebook pages and get as many people out to events as you can. And please pass the information on to anyone who you think would benefit from it and/or can spread the word to people not “inside” the craft beer world.