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More beer podcasts for y’all to listen to…
Here is the 411, “The Brewing After Hours Podcast is hosted by Homebrewer and Digital Creator Sarah Flora, also known as Flora Brewing on Instagram and YouTube where she dives into the technical aspects of brewing beer at her home in Los Angeles. Brewing After Hours is going to take a different look at the history and stories behind beer as well as feature conversations with industry professionals and homebrewers.”
July is the summer month for me. A time to try to keep cool, have a staycation, visit the beach, use that accrued vacation time. Two out of four ain’t bad. But hopefully, I can brighten the world with news and fun about our favorite beverage.
~ e-visits to (3) breweries from across our nation to celebrate Independence Day and independence from bland beer
~ special featured reviews of beers from new Glendale brewery Paperback Brewing
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events (Far in the future events)
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ A Book & A Beer reads American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Heaven Bent
~ Great Beer names and Best Beers of the Month
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
Just wanted to pass on some good beer news…
May not seem like much but considering 2020, we should take these wins.
If you were told to go home today, and not return to work until April, without pay, could you do it?
What if the return date was unknown?
Well, Los Angeles bars and restaurants have been forced into that choice by the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles.
After those paragraphs, you might be surprised that I am for the halt. What I am fully against is not having any other part to the plan. If a restaurant chain lays off or furloughs their staff or is at a small margin and cannot survive a week off, then the results will be massive. And not in a good economic way.
Your favorite restaurant might be gone. Or breweries will close and not just temporarily. Without a second part to this plan, that involves supplementing income for both affected businesses and workers, then we will be forced into an economic panic and we have seen that Americans will panic and panic hard.
Closing bars and restaurants will put even more pressure on grocery stores and speaking as someone who waited 1 1/2 hours just to enter a well run Trader Joe’s and also saw the empty shelves at Amazon/Whole Foods can attest, that pressure is going to be too much. Then we expect underpaid gig economy workers to deliver food and groceries! Until one gets the virus, of course.
There needs to be a full multi-pronged effort. Even if the details are not ready, it should be made crystal fucking clear that restitution will absolutely be made. Or that a the very least that delays in payments will be vigorously enforced as business practice for now. All there is now is vague promises of support.
Health now is vital. But to sacrifice tomorrow in the process is just a Ponzi scheme. One that individuals and small business should not have to shoulder the cost of without a promise of having that favor be returned.
Have we entered Fall? L.A. has seen 90+ then practically shady temps, then back up again. The weather whipsaw might be best suited to those lighter Oktoberfest beers. Now onto what is coming up this month….
~ e-visits to three breweries from Ohio (see A Book & A Beer below)
~ special featured reviews of the Firestone Walker Hoppy Lion Variety Pack
~ 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 reads Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
~ A Podcast & A Beer listens to Eaters Digest
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
Here are two events to get your October started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) October 1st – MacLeod Ale night at Tony’s Darts Away
2) October 13th – DTLA Brewers United Fest
Not to toot my own beer horn or to impose my L.A. brewery bona fides but I recently did a little Excel work to keep track of the breweries that I have visited of the Official (currently) 90 breweries in the L.A. County Brewers Guild orbit.
Here are the statistical takeaways…
As Los Angeles draws closer to the century mark in breweries, it will probably mean an increase in the “just once” category and I expect the not visited yet total to stay around the 10 mark since many will probably head the way of selling from their taproom only. Of course this does not count the breweries not part of the guild that I have been to or the bottle shops frequented. There is room for improvement. I hope to knock off a couple from the unvisited list before summer is over.
I don’t talk to often about the non beer related life but since this is also a Los Angeles centered blog that also touches on food, I feel I am within boundaries to give a recommendation to the KCET/Tastemade/Roy Choi show, Broken Bread.
If you are not hooked by the first two episodes then, I do not know what to say. Food is the common language but the issues are all tied together in such a way that it seems they cannot be untied. But Choi has found people really making a difference and he got the Mayor to talk in non sound bites too. Check it out.
Every once in a while, a beer menu for an unknown new brewery explains in ways that vagueness elsewhere on a website does not. Such is the case with Tirebiter Brewery which came onto my radar via Hopped LA.
Notice the SABInBev stable of beers. Tirebiter made a distributor happy with the easy order. Also notice the high prices. Who would pay $8 for Spacedust when you can get at least 8 bottles of it at almost any grocery store in SoCal. Dollars to donuts, this place has no physical brewing space. Not that contract brewing is bad but I have a feeling this place ain’t gonna lure people from the DTLA core to USC.
Yesterday, I re-capped the 3rd Anniversary of the Propagator branch of Firestone Walker and that was just a small taste of the FWIBF coverage that will appear in the run up to the 2019 festival as well as my coverage of the actual fest itself.
~ e-visits to three breweries that will be pouring at FWIBF 2019
~ special featured reviews of from Four Corners Brewing
~ 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 reads The Best Mystery Stories of 2018
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
Here are two events to get your May started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) May 4th – Yorkshire Square 2nd Anniversary
2) May 15th – May 22nd – Naja’s Place IPA Festival
Yesterday it was reported that Iron Triangle Brewing was looking for a buyer. If I was macabre enough to have a list of Los Angeles breweries that would make such an announcement, Iron Triangle would have been on it from the beginning.
Not that the beers were bad. They were fine. Their Belgian Pale was my favorite due to the relative Hefe shortage in a time of IPA. And that is where I think they stumbled and fell. Mumford has the collabs and the hazy’s. Boomtown has the artist series of IPA’s. Angel City has Sunbather. IT had?
Blame can be laid at the turbulent start. A brewery that encounters roughness out of the gate with the beer nerds will be a step behind but I think that it is very telling that the reason being given for selling is that as told to The Full Pint was, “The owners have decided that their capital would be better invested in their other businesses.” That reads as we thought craft beer would make us money but it is still costing us money three years in and we are getting out while there is still a window of opportunity to sell.
It is a great space on the inside. Foot traffic, nearby condos and location aren’t horrible. They are nowhere near Arts District levels but other breweries have nothing. It is large but with reconfiguring it could be used for multiple events
Let’s hope the next chapter is a longer and fruitful one for this location.