Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Perhaps the haze craze has reached the tail (perhaps a long one that can regenerate) of the IPA buying beast. More and more entrants are popping up, especially the more mature breweries like the ones above and below.
To some, Sam Adams seems to be the bellwether for full market saturation but these two seem closer to the end of easy growth in cloudy IPA’s. The final nail will be the next IPA hybrid that is waiting to blow up.
BBQ and craft beer both have passionate adherents and divergent styles and preparation methods. And for both, all it takes is to step a foot into a brewery or a BBQ restaurant and then another and you realize that wealth of differences.
All hokey preamble to a quick night spent at Barrel & Ashes in Studio City near the CBS lot. There is a great smokey smell inside the small place that has a nice big window onto busy all-the-time Ventura Boulevard.
I was there to sample the unique collaboration of Wolf Creek Brewing putting their Timber Wolf Red Ale into a Buffalo Trace whiskey barrel. Used but not in the normal way of being, this particular barrel had been dispensing whiskey at the restaurant. B&A is one of the rare six spots in Los Angeles that gets an actual barrel that held whiskey. (Along with an allotment of bottles too)They are allowed to taste and pick what whiskey they like from a selection to be their “house” drink. Sometimes they go oaky. Sometimes mineral.
Due to the laws of beer and distribution, layered with spirits regulation. B&A couldn’t just ask a brewery to fill it and pay for the beer. Nope, had to find a brewery who A) self-distributed, B) that they liked and had a relationship with. Enter Wolf Creek, who has been hit or miss for me in the past but they have thought outside the box and added a red ale to the barrel.
The resulting beer pours a muddy red/brown color. Big whiskey aroma and taste to it. Vanilla and wood are the dominant notes. 7.3% is the final ABV and there is a light mouthfeel to it while some sweetness sneaks in at the tail end.
The beer menu has a good mix of craft beers to choose from and beers to please your cranky non-craft, just here for BBQ friends. It is one of the rare spots that has regular taps. Not all are rotating. And if you need an excuse to visit then on September 10th, B&A will be hosting a Sixpoint. Night. Meet members of the NY based brewery team and try their beers.
Looks like a former keg only beer has hopped to cans with Tesla, a “hopped lager with a notable wheat component.”
From the Sixpoint Mad Scientists labs comes a new canned, “Electrified Wheat Lager.”
We shall see if it makes its way to us.