Beware that tasseled hat skull!
The Unjust Incarceration barrel-aged Baltic Porter is no in pre-order phase. Head HERE to order up a little Four Roses and Buffalo Trace bourbon barrel magic from MacLeod Ales before its release on September 30th.
Not Closed
There will be music and an art installation and even a climbing wall but what is most significant for the Glendale – Open Arts Music will be the….
⊹ CRAFT BEER GARDEN at the Alex Theatre Forecourt ⊹
which will feature:
Brewyard Beer Company LLC
Eagle Rock Brewery
MacLeod Ale Brewing Co.
Pacific Plate Brewing Co.
Might make for a great explore Glendale day. Or you could condo comparison shop, we have a lot of those.
Cask Cans
Everywhere you look, there are can releases in L.A. And MacLeod’s is in on the act with a double can release this Saturday. You can purchase 16oz cans/4-packs of London Lager and Scottish Sparkling Ale. These are both limited release items.
Can Cask
The folks at MacLeod’s have done a bit of bottling in the past. It was good to see low ABV, British styled beers in bombers.
Now, they are embarking on a run of cans….
Perhaps 16oz cans will take off and start a cask can revolution.
3 MacLeod’s
June 18th, just one day into L.A. Beer Week you can help MacLeod’s celebrate their 3rd Anniversary serving cask ale in Van Nuys.
There will be guest casks from breweries around the area (20+ overall), a panel discussion,British pub fare and live music!
Join us for our THIRD anniversary! We are celebrating the only way we know how…with a mega Cask Ale Festival! We will be featuring 20+ casks from some of the best breweries in California. This is a great chance to check out a rare cask offering from many of your favorite So Cal breweries!
There will also be 15 MacLeod Ale beers available on cask and draught, some of which will be one-of-a-kind releases. In addition there will be a full lineup of staff-brewed beers from the MacLeod staff batch program.
VIP admission 12pm – 5pm and general admission from 1pm – 5pm
Proceeds to benefit the Pasadena Scottish Pipes & Drums!
In the Tap Lines for December 2016
The holiday beers have been rolling onto the site fast. And it will continue until the Big Day arrives. Enjoy our last holiday season before the dark times
~ e-visits to three breweries from Iceland. Olgerdin, Olvisholt Brugghus & Vifilfell. Don’t forget about Einstock too.
~ special featured reviews of (wait for it) Christmas 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 Valiant Ambition about George Washington & Benedict Arnold
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world.
Here are two events to get your December started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) December 7th – Far Bar hosts a ‘retirement’ party for Firestone Walker beers that are being discontinued.
2) December 14th – MacLeod Ales C.U.P. Hearing
Fill the C.U.P.
Beer fans in L.A. have become all too familiar with the acronym C.U.P. But having to really support your local brewery by attending a hearing or writing your support also connects you to the beer.
So, you can help MacLeod Ale’s stay open longer, add an outdoor spot and get a live entertainment license by writing a letter of support.
Either click this LINK or write to the CCU at the address below:
CCU
Attn: Jose Elias
Re: [ZA-2016-3245-CUB]
201 N. Figueroa Street, 5th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Eventually the city might come to understand the power of craft beer.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1n0C0Z5uzEq1ITA9jkxg3z6ysZ3cxgCqP3rqmy9F7pws/prefill
A Book & A Beer – The Maintenance of Headway
The Maintenance of Headway is slight book is the London bus driver equivalent of The Office (take your pick of British or US versions). Droll, quiet and quietly funny on each and every page. Anybody who has worked with weirdos and the rules from above will be bookmarking pages to talk about. Our narrator takes us through some sorta eventful days in the life of a bus driver in London. The ending is a quiet (again with that word) shocker but really in tune with what has happened before. A gem of a book.
So this is set in London, so for us Angeleno’s when we talk British, that means MacLeod’s from Van Nuys and since the theme of the Underground is “Mind the Gap”, I would start with The Session Gap. An Ordinary Bitter at 3.5% that would not be out of place in the hand of one of the gents from the book.
And since tea is a big part of the book, my second pick would be from Noble Ale Works. Earl Grey Dinghy. Now I know that is a seasonal but Evan Price has been doing some cool British inspired beers so maybe check out The Londoner, a fun English Porter.
Or, you could just randomly choose a British beer (preferably from a shoppe that has a good turnover, because foreign beer suffers getting here). I would look for something from Meantime like their London Lager.
Review – Session Gap (in bottles)
All Starburst rants aside, I was intrigued to see that MacLeod’s was bottling. Brewer Andy Black is protective of his beer and rightfully so because it really shines when presented right. That right being on cask at the right temperature.
But the attractive label lured me in and now it is time to see how the bottled version compares.
And there is quite a difference. There is zero lacing on this beer. Absolutely none. Plus it is many shades nuttier than what I remember. There is a nice hit of bitterness here that seems stronger than on cask as well. Sort of a tea/lemonade mix going on. Normally I would say this was a thin beer but because MacLeod Ales generally are on the less strident side, this isn’t much different to me.
I would hazard a guess that the darker, maltier beers like Jackie Tar would fare better with the bottle treatment.
Beer Dinner Review – Simmzy’s + MacLeod Ales
When I saw the phrase, “Five Course Beer Dinner”, I blanched a bit. Being honest, I am not the stuff till you burst kind of eater. But then I saw that the beer was from MacLeod’s and the food was from Simmzy’s Burbank outpost. So my mood brightened and I RSVP’ed.
First good thing. The food courses were right-sized. By that I mean, you weren’t subject to Flinstone-ian portions of food. Tapas like to an extent.
Second good thing. My suspicion that MacLeod beers would pair wonderfully with food were confirmed. Nothing against big and bold beers but those pairings can be epic battles. The low ABV but high flavors of Andy Black’s British inspired ales add to food without becoming a battle royale.
My favorite of the night was the beef stew with Jackie Tar. That was an easy choice but it was well done. Meat and sunchokes and a delicious gravy were magic with the beer. The curry shrimp with the Little Spree was delightful too and that is coming from a non-curry fan. The toasted barley was excellent as an sidekick.
The beer revelation was the Middling Spree a Belgian-esque pilsner type of hybrid that was all over the place but just might be my new favorite MacLeod beer. And I have a lot of favorite MacLeod beers. The only down note was the dessert. Double Kings Taxes was a bit too syrupy and sweet for me, the cardamom in the whipped cream helped but the burnt note from the caramel sauce made everything taste tinny to me. Four out of five ain’t bad though.
More dinners may be on the horizon and at $48 a person, it is a steal. You get 5 beers (we got a bonus beer for six) plus the food and the education from the brewer. When more of these become scheduled, I will post it here.