You can cleverly disguise yourself as a Scottish bandit with MacLeod’s new bandana which sports that traditional design along with a few MacLeod touches. Safe and stylish. They also come in blue.
Beer Bandana
The Firkin for May 2016
To be upfront, I have no qualm with a brewery evolving. Styles and tastes do change in brewers as well as customers.
If an English-style mild is being outsold by an IPA, then it makes prudent business sense to make more IPA and to make the mild a specialty to drive up interest. I also understand that a Belgian-style brewery will eventually head into IPA country. I saw the crowds that were drawn in by it. Again just solid business sense.
Where I start to get queasy is when the diversity starts vanishing like Marty McFly’s siblings. As a snapshot, two weeks ago my drinking list included 4 IPA’s, 1 DIPA, a hemp ale, 2 Belgian blondes, 3 Saisons, a milk stout, an imperial wit, wine barrel aged Saison and a craft pilsner. Now that is still heavily weighted to hops but that is partially because the marketplace is heavily driven by IPA’s.
So when I see that eateries like Laurel Tavern (which I like and haven’t been to in a long time) and Forman’s (which I have not visited) and their overarching restaurant group have teamed up with MacLeod’s for a beer that is described as an “English inspired, west coast driven pale ale they named Tasty Cold Beer.” I cringe a little because I want to see a drive towards more truer English styles, more cask ales and not away from it.
Nothing against MacLeod’s or their new brewer Josiah. And maybe it is just the name of the beer and the shortened TCB moniker that rankles me. I will be tasting it before passing any final judgement. I mean, it is still Yorkshire yeast and just Mt. Hood and Crystal hops, and certainly not a West Coast hop bomb at 31 IBU’s but I guess I sorta don’t need more hoppy pales or hoppy pilsners or hoppy Belgians or hoppy ciders. The underlying styles are being dosed too liberally with hops (and then the hops with fruit, but that is another rant).
I don’t mean to sound too much like the cranky grandpa, other beer writers have that doomy & gloomy beat covered, but I guess I wish there was business room for a brewery to thrive brewing the styles that are often overlooked and under bought. Or maybe I need to lead by example and take the dive into a hopless month or a hopless week each month.
MacLeod Ales – Part the 2nd
I had visited the newest LA brewery (love typing that) a couple weeks back, I only got to sample one beer, so I headed back with beer buddy Rich to see what the other beers were like.
Here is what I found during Round 2 at MacLeod’s Ale Brewing….
…a nice sized crowd. The bar stools all taken. Quick and attentive service. And three new beers to try.
I hopscotched across the styles starting with the 60 Shilling, then the Ordinary Bitter and lastly the Brown Stout. The Bagpipe tune names, you can see in the above photo.
My favorite and my top choice is The Session Gap. It is ordinary in name only. Lots of grain taste here. Crisp with some citrus notes to it. And like all four beers, it is way easy to be halfway done with a pint before you know it.
The Kings Taxes and Jackie Tar are both on the darker side but are still worlds apart from other dark beers. Even with the added creamy mouthfeel from the hand pump, these two are not viscous or over chocolate/coffee tasting. I keep coming back to the fact that the malt bill is the star here. The Yorkshire yeast is background and the hops are off stage somewhere.
And that is a refreshing change for an over IPA’d LA market.
I strongly recommend visiting their taproom which is open Wednesday through Sunday and look for their beers to be on tap at places like Story Tavern and Glendale Tap in the coming months.
