Tag: The Session

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In the Tap Lines for November 2014

header_attractionsLast November this blog went dark as I focused on my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. AKA, National Novel Writing Month.  I will be running that word gauntlet again this year so there will be less posting than usual but enough to keep you informed about great new beers and events in the Los Angeles area.  Plus I will again start my annual Christmas Beer Blog Advent Post Calendar.  AKA, an assortment of Holiday ales from around the country and the world.  But only AFTER Thanksgiving (which is later this year).

~ e-visits to three breweries from cities that may challenge for the NBA crown this year
~ video reviews of two gluten-free beers from the Canadian brewer, Glutenberg
~ two more beers will come up from the BSP cellar to be reviewed.
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 93 will converge bloggers onto a single topic, this month it is beer travel

Here are two events to get your November started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) November 8th Alosta Brewing 1 Year Anniversary
2) November 11th Friends of Local Beer photography exhibit at Mohawk Bend

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Session # 92 – I Made This

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Jeremy Short of Pintwell is the host for the October beer blogging session and here’s the topic to write about, “I Made This!”

As I scanned through the list of the past 91 sessions I found only one about homebrewing. Only one? Well, we are here to rectify that with Session #92. I know that many beer bloggers don’t homebrew, so don’t worry I am going to keep this simple and straightforward.

The idea of this session is how making something changes your relationship with it. For example, when I first started homebrewing I wasn’t a big fan of lagers. After learning to brew I realized how complex and particular lagers were and I came to love them because of that.

It may seem mercenary and/or lazy to say it, but I have come to realize that I find it better to be a “friend” of home brewing than to do it. Once you cultivate friends who home brew, it seems rather redundant to do it yourself when you can show up and get a pint glass or a growler to go when it is ready.

I am not advocating befriending home brewers just to keep your refrigerator stocked with free beer. What I think is more important is being the drinker who isn’t secretly reverse engineering a beer while drinking it. The person who you can watch the game with instead of discussing the versatility of one yeast over the other.

Let’s face it, today’s home brew clubs offer a lot of good advice on what equipment works best, which techniques improve beer and recipe notes. You also have a wealth of information and programs on the interwebs to draw from. What neither offer is that consumer feedback that many will need to learn to decode if they decide to go pro and want to sell a beer to the masses. And even if they don’t want to brew at the next level, and brewing in the basement is just a hobby, someone has to drink the beer that is made so the brewer can fill up the carboy with the next beer.

Sure you can enter brewing competitions. You can bring your beer to the home brew club for review. You can foist the tolerable batches on family and friends but the person that can taste the beer and give constructive criticism that is different from the advice offered by fellow home brewers is important to improving the beer that a home brewer creates. Especially if they already possess a knowledge of craft beer and have the vocabulary to explain the aromas and flavors they encounter when drinking the beer.

That is who I am. I have dipped my toe into home brewing with success (if you are a fan of vinegar) and I know more than a smidgen of information about the brewing process. Enough to talk about it before the discussion gets too deep. I have also watched home brewing in action a few times as well. But I have just not been bitten by the brewing bug. I probably could gain an aptitude and make decent beer but I think my place is with the empty glass held out in anticipation of the next home brewed beer.

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In the Tap Lines for October 2014

header_attractionsOktober is a busy beer month nationally and internationally and though you will not see me in Denver for the Great American Beer Festival or in Munich for their small festival, I will still be on the lookout for great events in L.A. and beyond as well as reviewing the crop of autumn beers.  Plus I have updated the beer book tab & the L.A. Beer resource tab with expanded information.

~ e-visits to three breweries from GABF home, Denver starting with Former Future Brewing, TRVE and Our Mutual Friend
~ video reviews from two pumpkin beers.  Now that it is Oktober, I can officially drink them.
~ two more beers will come up from the BSP cellar to be reviewed.
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 92 will converge bloggers onto a single topic, Home Brewing

Here are two events to get your October started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) October 2nd – Game of Thrones Valar Morghulis release at Plan Check
2) October 18th – Opening Day for Three Weavers Brewing
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Session # 91

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After the haterade that was Session 90, we have moved on to a wide open discussion on Belgian beers for Session 91.

The topic comes to us via our host, Belgian Smaak.

Many of the suggested writing prompts piqued my interest but I thought I would just take a chance and see what Belgian beer I first rated on Ratebeer.

And I found it within five ticks, Golden Valley French Prairie Blanche. A witbier brewed in my ol’ college town of McMinnville (Go Wildcats!). Sure a saison from Portland favorite Upright followed soon after and the requisite Bruery beers were there in the early days of craft beer fandom. But what some may call a starter Belgian was the first for me.

My brief thoughts back in 2009 were as follows, “Nice spice smell on this one. Possibly a little too dark for a wit. The taste is spot on. Light with many different notes.” I gave it a score of 3.8 out of 5.0.

Nowadays, I am more apt to drink a tripel or an American tinged Saison then I am to have a Witbier. But the wit style, along with the German Hefeweizen have flavor profiles that I can easily identify and enjoy. The coriander from one and the clove of the other are familiar guideposts to lean on.

Whereas a Belgian Strong ale may be too heavy on the palate or a Belgian IPA may be tilted too far towards yeast in one direction or hops to the other. The simpler Wit along with the Belgian single seem to always work, if I can generalize.

And I say that after participating in a Wit Bier tasting.

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In the Tap Lines for September 2014

header_attractionsSeptember means L.A. Beer Week.  Last month was inundated with all things Sierra Nevada and this month will be filled with info on happenings during our SoCal salute to local craft beer.

~ e-visits to three breweries from the BC (British Columbia) Bad Tattoo, Four Mile and Deep Cove
~ video reviews (returns) with two beers picked up in San Diego at this year’s Beer Blogger Conference
~ two more beers will come up from the BSP cellar to be reviewed. This month there will be no theme.  I will sort of randomly select two.
~ Heads-Up on Los Angeles Beer Events (like a little thing called L.A. Beer Week)
~ Three suggested beers to buy this month. One light, one medium and one dark
~ I will tap the Firkin and give my no holds barred opinion on the craft beer world
~ … and Session # 91 will converge bloggers onto a single topic, this month My First Belgian

Here are two events to get your September started in the Los Angeles craft beer world:
1) Friday, 9/5 – Shmaltz Brewing Reunion Ale Charity at Surly Goat
2) Sunday, 9/14 – Rock & Brews (El Segundo) 4th Annual Local Craft Beer Fest, 12-5pm

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Session # 87

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The session for April is hosted by the The Tale of Ale. And it means getting into a TARDIS or a Wayback Machine or a DeLorean.  Here is the writing challenge…..

 “In Session 87, I want you to give your readers a history lesson about a local brewery. That’s a physical brewery and not brewing company by the way. The brewery doesn’t need to still exist today, perhaps you had a local brewery that closed down before you were even born. Or you could pick one that has been producing beer on the same site for centuries.

Stipulations?
The only thing I ask is that the brewery existed for at least 20 years so don’t pick the local craft brewery that opened two or three years ago. This will exclude most small craft breweries but not all. The reason? There’s not much history in a brewery that has only existed for a few years.

Also, when I say local, I mean within about 8 hours’ drive from where you live. That should cover most bases for the average blogger and in many, allow you to pick one further away if you don’t want to talk about a closer one. “

Craft beer in the City of Angels has a small history.  We have Craftsman and Mark Jilg but the latest change started with Eagle Rock Brewery a mere 4 years ago and as interesting as both of those stories are, I still think of them in the present tense since they are still creatively brewing and affecting the local scene.

So I am taking a different tack and it may get my craft beer card revoked but the history of beer in Los Angeles has one place that really intrigues me more than Brew 102 or Pabst.  It is the Busch Gardens in the tourist mecca known as Van Nuys.  Which I read about in a post on LAistory a few years ago if memory serves.

That is no knock on Van Nuys by the way.  There are more places in Los Angeles that are not tourist areas then ones that are. If you come here (and please do), you will probably see Pasadena and Disneyland for starters.  Both of which figure into this narrative.

To begin,  Adolphus Busch had a home in Pasadena with luxuriant gardens.  So palatial that people would visit and the King of Beers allowed it!  When Budweiser built it’s monstrous brewing plant up the freeway in Van Nuys they decided to move the birds and foliage and added a Busch Gardens to a then modern brewery.  Reports on admission prices are are varied but there was a boat ride.  Loads of birds.  To the point where they had over a 1,000 with bird education classes.  There were lagoons and waterfalls and a monorail that swung by the brewing facility so you could see the beer being brewed and bottled. Imagine taking the bird section of the San Diego Zoo and attaching it to a section of Disneyland then welding on a massive brewery.  That was the park.  And it was right off the 405 freeway!

And of course you could get beer there.  You could get a 10 ounce cup in each of the five pavilions around the gardens.  There was a Busch German Pavilion.  A Michelob Terrace and of course a Budweiser Pavilion.  And employees could imbibe as well up into the 1980’s when due to an accident that was halted.

Eventually they needed more room for the brewing and the park became less financially viable so it was torn down and the birds were shipped off to zoos.  But I am amazed at how a major company could have water attractions and beer and kids and birds and not get hit with a million and one lawsuits.  If you wanted to do that today, you would be under the scrutiny of so many different agencies that you would need a full time legal staff and make everyone wear protective clothing when entering the garden.

When I think of our major film and TV industry and our nascent craft beer now, I can’t help but think about what could come in our future.  An animatronic Lincoln extolling craft beer?  Star Tours with Alderaan Ale served at the end.  Samichlaus and the Matterhorn?  I’ll stop before Disney’s lawyers come a calling.

 

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Session # 85

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The topic for March comes to us from Baltimore Bistros and Beer.  And here is the topic…..

“There are plenty of people out there who wish that alcohol consumption ceased to take place and would be happy for prohibition to rear it’s ugly head once again. Others, while not looking to ban alcohol altogether, are quick to judge those of us who drink more than what they would consider a proper amount. As I get older, I’ve lost the urge to defend my life decisions, but there was a time when judgment about the liquids I chose to put in my mouth made me feel self-conscious.

And that’s where my idea for this month’s Session topic came from. It’s easy to find article after article on the internet telling us that alcohol is bad. As beer bloggers it’s safe to say we all disagree. Let’s take the opportunity as a group to tell people why we do drink and how it improves our life for the better. I know the default answer a lot of us fall back on is “it’s nice to sit back with a good beer after a stressful day of work”, and while that’s true, I’m looking for answers that aren’t so obvious to people who aren’t fans of our hobby. Beer is bigger than a liquid “chill pill” or we wouldn’t have gone about setting up a blog and dedicating so much of our time discussing it. So, what is it that compels you to drink and what would your life be missing if beer was no longer an option for you?”

Why does anyone choose a <blank> and then pushes ever deeper while others simply enjoy the <blank>.

You could fill in the Mad Lib with anything from needlepoint to collecting Hummel figurines.  But I believe that there is a primal urge in all of us to investigate, to learn all we want to about a subject.  It’s just that it is devilishly hard to pinpoint just one reason why one thing grabs us by the lapels while another leaves us cold. Though I can say with near 100% certainty the two things that put me into position to later become a beer blogger.

If I was to analyze myself, living near Portland, Oregon with parents who visited wineries frequently and restaurants even more was certainly a behavior that I was modeling even though I substituted beer for wine in a minor act of rebellion.  So by sheer fact of DNA and GPS, I was going to have a proclivity for at least knowing more about craft beer than the average.

Secondly, I was laid off in 2009 just as blogging was becoming available to the masses and not just to niche early adopters.  So, I had not only time to drink and to write but a place to put that writing other than a dream journal and as the peanut butter said to the chocolate, the rest is history.

But the more interesting why is, why have I stuck with it for 5 years? There are plenty of reasons to have stopped. I cannot drink to excess without being awakened with a throbbing temple that will not fade and there is a wee bit of family history in the over indulging category, to put it mildly. It sure doesn’t pay anything so that motivation is gone.  The novelty has worn off, I am now not a weirdo with a beer blog in Los Angeles.  I am one of many, as other weirdos have joined in and are doing great and we have even formed a group with “Summit” meetings and hashtags.

And if forced to go into the Witness Protection Program, I could probably give up writing a beer blog (though I would still want to read them).  But I can’t even picture a time when my ‘fridge doesn’t have craft beer inside.  What else would fill the gap?  Herbal tea?  I am of course assuming that is was not imbibing beer that I would also be restricted from having cocktails or wine.  I simply can’t drink that much coffee which is the other hand crafted type of drink out there.  I would have to replace craft beer with some food like artisan jerky.  But none would hold the allure of a 4pack of the latest SoCal IPA.

So you could make a case that I like the thrill of the new, that I am a contrarian who cuts against the grain (pun intended) or that I need to express myself in introverted ways. But again those are not craft beer centric.  That could be me buying actual physical books in a time of e-readers.  And those reasons are more negative than positive.

What positive jolt do I get from having a bottle opener in one hand and a full bottle in the other? (And yes, I know that was the initial question.  I am working my way slowly to the answer.) I like the tangential things like gathering at a bar or brewery, I like talking about beer issues or discussing the merits or demerits of a particular beer but mostly, I enjoy the taste.  Much like having a good cup of coffee after a week of office cold swill or having an In ‘n’ Out burger instead of a flattened McDonald’s “thing”.

A note of Nelson Sauvin brings my palate alive.  I love the taste of a funky saison.  A crisp pilsner on a warm day is refreshing.  It just tastes good.  And that’s why I buy and buy more and more craft beer.  To get that burst of neurons firing in my brain.  And as long as brewers keep firing up their brew kettles then I will be there waiting.

 

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Session # 84

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As befits a blog with the moniker of Literature & Libation, the Session this month has either a lit bent or is bent because of the author being lit.  Either way, I had a hard time coming up with something so please forgive any weirdness in interpreting the assignment.

“We, as beer bloggers, tend to get caught up in this beer appreciation thing, forever chasing an invisible dragon of taste, doing our best to catalog our experiences on the page or in a database. We get obsessed with the idea of quantifying our experience – either so we can remember specifics ad infinitum or use the data as a point of comparison for other beers – and often forget that beer is just as much art and entertainment as it is critic-worthy foodstuff.

So for my turn hosting The Session, I ask all of you to review a beer. Any beer. Of your choosing even! There’s a catch though, just one eentsy, tiny rule that you have to adhere to: you cannot review the beer. 

I know it sounds like the yeast finally got to my brain, but hear me out: I mean that you can’t write about SRM color, or mouthfeel, or head retention. Absolutely no discussion of malt backbones or hop profiles allowed. Lacing and aroma descriptions are right out. Don’t even think about rating the beer out of ten possible points.

But, to balance that, you can literally do anything else you want. I mean it. Go beernuts. Uncap your muse and let the beer guide your creativity.”

Occlude no envelope. Ordinary fall. Migraine yes. Frequent available verses of random ideas times eleven. Banish ethereal even remotely sir.  Isotope string. Lord ask genteel underlings nothing if they accept sarcasm. So universal can kids seem. Before yawning. Lance agonizing gashes under necktie in time as sentenced.  Beneath reams eternal with individual notes graceful.  Inside node. Proud elevated tantrums are luminescent unless made angry, Can altitude lift insects from orbs riding neon invisible arrays.

Hello island going huge.  Another bread vehicle.  Back ultimate target.  Men of some type leer yearly.  Vote entire row yours.  Citizens intemperate tough rogue usable sans yelling. Acrobat nods sleepily. Sociable hacks are repentant people.  Wow it tortures help.  Allons-y.  Get rooting elves another tool.  Leave arcs softly towards infinite normality growing. Ban international testing tricks eventually reversing needless elementary sieve sliding.

Individuals. Will inevitably stoke humor. Icon token.  Worry about something.  Nevermore orbit Titan.  Jury uselessness sans tort.  Absolutely.  Society exists aura stands on neutral antipodes legally.  Oftentimes feral felines error religously in not growling.

 

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Session # 81

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“Women and Beer: Scary Beer Feminists or a Healthy Growing Demographic?”

Tasting Nitch has come up with a great topic for healthy debate in this month’s session:

In a nutshell, “As the saintly Mr. M. Jackson created ‘beer culture’ by focusing on the people behind brewing, let us too take one blog post to contemplate the cultural shift that gender is taking in the beer world.”

The first two words that I thought of when I read the topic, “carrots and sticks.”  It is a quaint way to start an economic or political conversation on how to change the behavior of a group of people.  But I think it is valid here as well.

Because it is obvious that women and minorities are under represented in craft brewing in both the brewing and drinking parts of the equation.  So, how do we go about shifting the balance?

Bear in mind, this is coming from a male perspective, so you may want to weigh more heavily the female voices who respond to this session.  But I think change begins with more women in the brewing community.  The world of craft beer is predicated on choice but in the case of what women want, that choice may be constrained because some styles are not brewed in enough quantity by people who can truly empathize with that under served market.

I don’t believe that men and women are drastically different in taste perceptions but I think we do pick up different aromas and flavors.  Then how do you deliver to that market? And no knock on male brewers, but they simply may not be able to bridge that particular divide with their recipes.  Whereas, someone of the other gender may be able to.

With that thesis in mind, how do we get more women brewing? I don’t think a still fairly young industry needs the “Stick”, but some “carrots” would make sense.  I think brewers guilds on the state and national level should be allied with the Pink Boots Society to create a superfund that pays a portion of the salary of female brewers hired by breweries.  To induce breweries into hiring more women, as not only brewers but as cellarpeople, QC and in scientific positions too.

Then once that happens, it us up to all of us in the craft beer fan community to at the very least sample what comes out of those taps.  If we continue to drink a duo-culture of IPA’s and Imperial Stouts, then we will narrow our options by sheer force of economics.

Then bloggers like us need to write about the beer and the brewers behind them to create some momentum going forward so that more women will see brewing as a viable career path.

I hope that the ratios of men to women in this industry get closer so that more and different beer can hit the market.  Without that first step of getting more women mashing in, the last two (easier and more fun) steps will just be so much spinning of wheels because if the female brewed beer can’t be found, then people will become frustrated and stop looking for it.

Or you could just follow this depressing link.

 

 

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Session # 80

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From Derek Harrison’s Beer Blog, It’s Not Just the Alcohol Talking, we get another hot topic in the beer world. Will the bubble deflate or is their a bubble at all. The bubble not being housing or internet stocks but our beloved craft beer. From checking out Harrison’s blog and reading his post for Session # 79, it should be a well moderated debate and not just provocative for the pleasure some take in “keepin’ it real.”

Here is the assignment:

Session #80 – Is Craft Beer a Bubble?

It’s a good time to be in the craft beer industry. The big brewers are watching their market share get chipped away by the purveyors of well-made lagers and ales. Craft breweries are popping up like weeds.

This growth begs the question: is craft beer a bubble? Many in the industry are starting to wonder when, and more importantly how, the growth is going to stop. Is craft beer going to reach equilibrium and stabilize, or is the bubble just going to keep growing until it bursts?

You hear the tone and see the head shake and you know you are in the presence of a fatalist. We have all run into the guy who says that we have too many breweries. It is unsustainable for the customer base. So on, ad infinitum.  Why would someone be negative when we are living in a golden age of great beer?

Me, I see the pint glass as more than half full though. I am not so naive as to expect double digit growth forever, in fact, I expect a shakeout or two in the next few years but nothing on the scale of the microbrewery implosion that we have already bounced back from remarkably.

I base my non bursting bubble assumption on the fact that there are states in America still playing catch up to craft beer and many countries around the world yet to enter the game too.

The southern states are just now easing laws on brewing. Texas is a big and only partially tapped market. Same with my current city, Los Angeles. We are just now getting a head of steam going in the new brewery department. There is room to grow.  It may not be in markets like Portland or Denver but even those cities are creating more beer each year.

Spain, Greece and the Scandanavian countries could easily enter the game as well. Not to mention China and its current wine buying binge that could translate into beer too. Just think if it became cool in China to buy up Black Tuesday from The Bruery.  It might end of up $100 a bottle.

Another aspect that craft beer has going for it is that the customer base is strong, vocal and entrenched. Poor quality beer will not be bought out of pity, so some places will have to change or go bye-bye. Just like in any niche market And it means, also, that current craft consumers ain’t gonna buy Bud-Miller-Coors ever again.  So even if the momentum completely shudders to a stop everywhere and at once, we will be in a 10% to 15% craft market depending on which stats you want to believe.

And some pundits may mark a certain percentage as the end of the line or the bottlecap ceiling but that says they can tell you that the market will top off at point A is only making a guess.  Whose to say that the market isn’t 25% or 30%?  I see the Big Brewers losing market share and I don’t see them making craft beer so I see potential in the 85% of America that doesn’t buy it yet.  I was just at a bar in North Hollywood that has a good set of regular non-rotating handles.  They do occasional special nights but nothing fancy to make a beer snobs heart pitter patter.  But two of the bartenders admitted that they drank crap before and that they can’t now.  These little leaks of customers will continue as far as I can see.

In the end my slightly educated guess is that craft beer will keep growing.