Just wanted to pass on some good beer news…
- Enegren Brewing has installed new tanks
- Highland Park Brewing and Smog City are both hiring
- Taprooms are re-opening
May not seem like much but considering 2020, we should take these wins.
Closed
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.
In the Tap Lines for October
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
Keep Up
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.
Broken Bread
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.
Biting Tires
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.
In the Tap Lines for May 2019
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
Closed Triangle
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.
A Book & A Beer – The Library Book
This is a sad but fascinating topic for a book. The 1986 fire at the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. Books burnt, books waterlogged and so much knowledge lost. Thankfully Susan Orlean is more than up to the task with The Library Book.
The book toggles from Orlean’s library memories, to the possible culprit of the fire, to the City of Los Angeles library history and to the fire itself. The book is nimble and still easy to follow. I found the roster of head librarians to be the most fascinating section of the story followed by how the main branch recovered to become the low slung showplace that it is today which I still try to walk through whenever I am close enough to it.
Since we didn’t really have a brewery downtown in the time frame that the fire occurred, I will have to pick from current spots.
First up is the close by Karl Straus DTLA outpost. Wreck Alley Imperial Stout. The stacks of books had to be sent to industrial food warehouses and kept cold to keep mold out. I can imagine aisles of wrecked biographies and mysteries.
There are beers named Library. Such as Hopworks Urban Brewery and their Library Lager, or The Local Library German Pils from Books & Brews in Indiana. But maybe, and not to be morbid, you should find a smoke beer to sip while reading this fascinating slice of Los Angeles history.
In the Tap Lines for November 2018
As Los Angeles makes the slow transition from summer to late summer before heading to early summer, we can start to look at the bigger beers, the snifter beers. While also searching for the perfect beer to go with the fall sports season. Stay tuned for both this month.
~ e-visits to three breweries in NBA cities.
~ special featured reviews of beers over 10% ABV
~ 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 Big Game by Mark Leibovich
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
Here are two events to get your November started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) November 10 – Three Weavers 4th Anniversary
2) November 16 to 18 – Brewery Draconum 1st Anniversary