Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Over the last weekend in July and the first in August, Cosmic Brewery finally opened its doors for a soft opening of their Torrance taproom.
And it comes with a serve yourself system too!
There will be a full review when I can find some spare time to drive to the South Bay and re-acquaint myself to the beers that haven’t been readily available for awhile now.
My first visit to Glendale’s Brewyard was for an interview sans beer. Now, I can say that I know more since I have been back and tasted the tap offerings in their Western Avene tap room.
You walk into the industrial space underneath the Western Avenue overpass and you immediately see a design theme. I had a similar feeling when walking into Phantom Carriage. In the case of Brewyard, it is a prohibition old-time feel to it with the centerpiece being an old truck with a flat-bed that can be used as a central gathering place. The brick makes the space comfy as well as make the bathroom almost look like a jail building from a western.
Three beers were on tap covering a wide swath of styles. I started with the Soul Cal, a hoppy California Common. It had a nice earthy bitterness to it and like all the other beers was easy to drink. My second beer was my favorite the Black Sunrise dark lager had a lovely malt taste, was light and very thirst-quenching. Nothing fancy. Last on the docket was the Tropico Saison, named for a long ago neighborhood in Glendale. This Saison was full of passionfruit. The aroma had a green/young fruit nose to it which faded into a really fruit forward beer. In time, with a lighter fruit touch, I could see this being a fan favorite. An IPL was also in the works but not quite ready. Oh, and root beer was on tap too. Yup, they made their own.
You never really know if a new brewery will be good. My initial hope is that the beers are better than just OK. It is disheartening to see a brewery start below that and know that they have a lot of work to dial in a recipe. That is not the case here. To have a really good beer and two that with tweaks could rise quickly is where you want to be.
I had the chance to sample a pair of Boomtown Brewery beers during the L.A. Beer Week bash and came away encouraged. Did they blow me away? No. But they tasted further ahead then some breweries at that point in the process so when Josh from Food GPS alerted me to a soft opening at their downtown LA location, I jumped at the chance to see the place.
Despite the oppressive heat and impressive crowd was on hand as I rolled in at 7pm. The space is not taproom ready at this point but if they and Angel City and Mumford can coordinate walking tours, you could easily walk all three on an afternoon of craft beer drinking.
I ordered up a Nose Job IPA since that will eventually be a line-up regular and was semi-pleased. Pretty dank to me but not heavy or over bitter. It doesn’t break new ground but is solid. I followed that up with B-Side a hoppy red that started off to sweet but started tasting better as the full set of flavors started working together.
I am glad to see that they are doing a mix of Belgian and American styles and I think that this could be a solid player in the industry.
