It’s time to PSL your world! Now that we are in October it is officially BSP sanctioned that you can drink pumpkin beers. It is also Doctor Who season as Jodie Whitaker takes the controls of the Tardis and my Blazers start the 18/19 campaign as well.
~e-visits to three 2018 GABF winning breweries: Cloudburst Brewing, Smylie Brothers Brewing and Wolverine State Brewing ~ special featured reviews of Non-LA beers ~ 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 Miss Subways by David Duchovny ~ 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 5th – Hoptoberfest: West Coast vs New England style IPA at 38 Degrees in Monrovia
2) October 6th – Enegren Oktoberfest 2018
Finally! Hand-Brewed Beer has broken through all the red tape and typical build out delays to get their taproom open. I remember the L.A. Beer Bloggers group making a trek to try out the Beers even before their brewery location was even chosen.
Congratulations on your patience and a first visit to the Chatwsorth brewery is being planned.
In scrolling through the Twitterverse recently, I came across this….
Looks like another SoCal city is getting their own brewery. This time Norwalk with the Norwalk Brew House. More news to come when more info is available.
Up north of us, 14 Cannons is a hybrid showroom and brewery. The Westlake Village location “showcases the industry’s leading vendors while also producing beer by award winning brewer Nic Bortolin.” Basically, they can get you started in your building a brewery process with actual brewing going on.
Here are my initial taster tray choices:
Spice Island Chai Tea Brown Ale
“a traditional English style Brown Ale. Brewed with a
Maris Otter base malt and old-world Brown malt for a great biscuit flavor and rich toasty mouthfeel. We then brewed fresh Chai Tea and added that to the finished beer. Fragrant aromas of ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, clove and black pepper transport this beer across continents and will make you swear you’re sitting in an ancient royal tea house.”
Patient Pilsner
“Pilsner is a centuries old obsession for brewers and beer drinkers alike. 14 Cannonshas boldly and patiently added a true to style Czech Pilsner to their core line-up. Patient Pilsner is brewed with 100% Czech ingredients. First, our reverse osmosis water is engineered to matched to the soft water profile of Pilsen, Czech Republic the birthplace of the modern-day pilsner. Next, floor malted barley is flown halfway around the world to create the classic pale color and clean malt taste. Kazbek hops provide the classic noble spice of a Czech pilsner with refreshing lemon peelovertones. Finally, the beer is laid to rest in our lagering tank, where it rests andtests one’s patience and isn’t served until absolutely ready.”
One Cannon Single Hop IPA
“Hop head alert! Our brewers are notorious hop heads. One Cannon is a new rotating Single Hop IPA series. This is a great way for you and our overzealous brewers to learn about new hops. The first batch of One Cannon featuresIdaho 7 hops. This experimental variety of hops is from Wilder, Idaho.Aroma and flavor characteristics include pungent notes of orange peel and tropical fruit with a dank resiny pine finish.”
Slippery Deck Imperial IPA
“! Hold on to your senses, Slippery Deck Imperial IPA can
overwhelm even the most experienced IPA lover if they’re not prepared for a tropical-boozy- trip off the coast of New Zealand. This heavy hitter clocks in at 10.5% abv although it is deceptively easy to drink. Tropical aromas of pineapple and fresh crushed citrus, from the New Zealand hop Motueka, are expertly paired with a 100% pilsner malt body to create a dangerously drinkable IIPA. Resinous notes of pine on the finish are brought to you by the Zythos hops added to compliment the aroma.”
For round 2 of the L.A. breweries that I have not been to, yet. I do get points for having had a few Wolf Creek beers at multiple venues around Los Angeles. Just not at the brewery itself.
Here are what I would want to try (sometimes for the second or third time)….
El Lobo Amber Ale
“Mexican-style amber lager with a great malty flavor from Vienna malt & balanced with a touch of hops. Aged for six weeks for a smooth, refreshing beer.”
Golden Eagle Blonde Ale
“Our multi-award winning blonde ale has a clean malt flavor combined with mild hop bitterness. A refreshing, drinkable ale with a lot more flavor than mass-produced beers.”
Outlaw IPA
Is the new IPA that was on tap at the Beer Week Kick-Off
or Desperado IPA
“Our West Coast India Pale Ale brewed with a touch of light caramel malt and hopped exclusively with Falconer’s Flight. We then dry-hop Desperado with a combination of Centennial, Columbus, and Falconer’s 7c’s. Lots of big citrus flavor balanced by just enough malt!”
This month, since it is just about L.A. Beer Week time, I figured it would be time to focus on the breweries that I still need to visit and we start down near SpaceX way, where craft exploration is going on at Ximix.
Here are what I will be looking at adding to my initial taster tray….
Sach Trois – “Golden ale fermented with Sach Trois giving it a slightly fruity and acidic taste.”
The Lost Astronaut – “Dry hopped strong pale ale with Simcoe, Citra, Galena, and Glacier.”
Pale Belgian Strong Ale – “Our take on a pale belgian strong fermented with a classic yeast strain from a legendary brewery. Instead of using traditional sugar to dry the beer out, we used orange blossom honey to take this bad boy straight to 11.”
Pilonchillo Stout – “Dry stout brewed with pale chocolate malts and hit with a nice dose of pilonchillo mexican cane sugar. Notes of molasses, cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate.”
The World Beer Cup returned and SoCal and the rest of California showed up well. Focusing in on my neck of the extended woods.
The two big, big winners were (and this will shock no one) Beachwood and their growing empire and Firestone Walker. Beachwood picked up (3) silvers and a bronze locking down the coffee categories with Pablo Escobeer and Mocha Machine. FW was really golden with wins for DBA, C-Hops Pale Ale and STiVO Kellerbier along with silver fro Krieky Bones.
MacLeod has had a good awards season so far in 2018 and that continued with Van Ice picking up silver in the light lager category. Speaking of streaks, Figueroa Mountain also scored a brace of awards for their dunkel and Oatmeal stout.
Notable in Orange County was both Green Cheek and Noble Ale Works winning in the IPA and Imperial IPA categories respectively and newcomer Brewery Rex getting the bronze for their Raspberry Rickey in the Berliner Weisse group.
Before we check out the medal counts for Los Angeles, some numbers to toss by you and a disclaimer because of those numbers.
There were 7,923 entries submitted for judging this year. Just think about how you would organize that amount of kegs and people to rate them.
2,217 breweries were represented out of 5,200+ total. That means that if you have two favorite breweries. One of them, on average, did not send in a beer to be judged.
That means anything can happen. Even a marriage proposal right in front of Charlie Papazian and the whole crowd.
The LACBG leader, Fran on stage with Ohana’s medal.
Seven medals will be heading back to Los Angeles this week. Beachwood (again) leads the pack with two. One GOLD for their Ghost, the band, inspired Black IPA, Hoppa Emeritus and one BRONZE from their sour side, Dia de los Mangos in the Chili Beer category. Ohana picked up BRONZE for Spa Water Saison, Sanctum won SILVER for their Solar Helles. Also on the SILVER side was Three Weavers for their Seafarer Kolsch and HopSaint for their Pure Intention Pale Ale. Last, but not least, Claremont Craft Ales and their Jacaranda Rye IPA picked up BRONZE.
Congratulations to all the winners and to our L.A. brewers and to all those who watched all 98 categories get medals. Three Weavers and Seafarer Kolsch other notes:
Packinghouse Brewing of Riverside picked up a silver and bronze this year. Winning once is hard, twice is a really good year. Saint Arnold of Texas was the big winner with 3 medals and a Mid-Size brewery award.
Speaking of big winners, Figueroa Mountain had another dazzling year with three total medals.
The Firestone Walker folk got a pair of medals for 10 Buck Chuck and for Pivo.
A shout out to Zoiglhaus of Portland and brewer Alan Taylor who took home a Gold for Zoigl-Pils. Is this the first ever GABF medal for a Linfield College alum? I think so.
#QuadGoals was my favorite name from 515 Brewing.
No wins for Hazy. Maybe GABF did not get in line fast enough.
Only one category was deemed not gold worthy. An improvement from 2016.
Los Angeles already is home to large breweries from Bud in Van Nuys to Miller off the 210 in Irwindale as well as Pabst in Los Angeles. Add to the big list, the Philippine-based San Miguel Brewery. The international brewery announced plans for its first US production site somewhere in Los Angeles.
San Miguel is on a spending spree to increase their capacity at home and will be plunking down around $150 million for this SoCal site which will take 2-3 years to build.
According to San Miguel president Ramon Ang, “The reason we are going to build a brewery in the US is because the volume of exports today in America can now warrant us to put up the brewery to support that volume,”.
They must think that the market for beer is robust enough not only in L.A. but on the West Coast as well to warrant the expense.
