Twilight Tasting Returns to Lyon Air Museum: Promo Code
Taste of Brews Twilight Tasting 2015
Breweries from Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego County and the Inland Empire will be featured as well as a few from Northern California, Vermont, Illinois and even Iceland. Local breweries scheduled to be on-hand include Beach City Brewery, Four Sons Brewing, Barley Forge, Bootlegger’s, Phantom Ales, Left Coast, Coronado, Karl Strauss, Stone Brewing, Mission Brewery, Hangar 24 and Absolution Brewing. Other, not so local breweries featured in the lineup include Firestone Walker, Drake’s, Einstok, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada and Goose Island. The growing hard cider community will be represented by Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider and Woodchuck Cider. Continue reading
Brewtopia at Abigaile: Sunday, March 8
Join the Fun at Brewtopia – March 8, 2015
The breweries scheduled to attend include Absolution, Alosta, Angel City, Beachwood, Bootlegger’s, Bravery, The Bruery, Eagle Rock, El Segundo, Golden Road, Kinetic, King Harbor, Ladyface, Monkish, MacLeod, Noble, Phantom, Progress, Smog City, Strand, Timeless Pints, The Dudes’ and Three Weavers. The food menu includes short-ribs, skewers, sliders, garlic knots and a lot more. If you have ever been to an Abigaile event you know the special treats that Chef Tin comes up with; if you have not, you are in for a special treat. I could tell you that the skewers will be made up of Katsu glazed salmon or Korean beef coconut or curry chicken sate; or that there will be Chilled Peanut Somen Noodle but the names, as exotic as they are, will fall short in describing the tasty foods you will experience if you show up at Brewtopia.
Brewtopia Beer Garden featuring 23 local craft breweries
Moab Brewery: Moab, Utah
I feel quite fortunate in that I have been able to drive around most of this country with Alaska and New England being the only areas I have not visited yet. I am a fifth generation Californian and I am very proud of this fact and I think California is the most beautiful of all the states I have visited. That being said, Utah definitely ranks as the second most scenic state and I could spend weeks at a time traveling through it. We have spent days just trying to get out of Utah but there is something amazing around every turn that always seemed to keep us around a few more hours.
In April of 2011 I had an event to photograph in Tempe, Arizona and since it was close to Tanya’s birthday we decided we were going to spend a few more days in Utah, specifically in the Arches National Park area. We decided to stay in Moab the night before entering Arches and that is where we discovered Moab Brewery. Continue reading
Snake River Brewing – Jackson, Wyoming
When I left off the other day, I was reminiscing about a cross-country tour I took with a cousin in July 2011. After leaving Red Lodge Ales we drove through the Beartooth Mountains before dropping down into Wyoming where we were able to attend the Cody Nite Rodeo, then onto visit the Buffalo Bill Dam, Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Teton National Park. I had not been to Yellowstone in well over 40 years and happened to get to Old Faithful a few minutes before it erupted, so that was pretty cool. By the time we got to Grand Teton National Park we were losing daylight so we could not wander too much. We decided to call it a day when we arrived in Jackson, Wyoming. After finding a place to stay we were guided to Snake River Brewery & Restaurant.
One thing I failed to mention was that my cousin has Celiac disease; this means he is one of the people that really cannot have anything with gluten in it. As you might imagine, having a severe reaction to gluten does not make it easy when it comes to enjoying the craft beer experience. Snake River Brewery offers gluten free pasta, which was pretty tasty and my cousin enjoyed it a lot. When I look through the Snake River Brewing list of beers past and present I see that they list a gluten free beer but it was not available the night we were there.
I had a flight of the eight beers they had on tap that night; Guido’s Kolnerbrau (a Kölsch), Golden Buck Ale, Hoback Hefeweizen, Danimal’s Farmhouse Ale, Snake River Pale Ale, Pako’s IPA, Snake River Lager and Zonker Stout. If I am honest with myself, my craft beer palate was still pretty uneducated but I enjoyed everything I tried. Continue reading
Pliny Fights Cancer Charity Raffle at Beachwood BBQ & Brewing
This morning, Beachwood BBQ & Brewing held their drawing for the 4th Annual Pliny Fights Cancer Charity Raffle at their Long Beach location. To enter the contest, one merely paid $5.00 for a chance at a full pint of the 2015 Pliny the Younger. This year Beachwood raised about $11,600 from the ticket sales which equates to about $40,000 being donated over the course of four years to the beneficiary of the raffle, the Melanoma Research Foundation. The drawing was streamed live via the Four Brewers podcast and 140 winners were picked; to my surprise, I actually was one of the winners and I rarely ever win raffles.
For those that were unable to watch the Four Brewers Podcast, the winning raffle ticket numbers have been posted on the Beachwood BBQ website. Winners will also be contacted via telephone and/or email so you will want to check your email today and be sure to answer your phone, even if you do not recognize the calling number. Winners must collect their pint of Pliny between Tuesday February 24 and Thursday March 5, 2015. You must bring your raffle ticket with you and redeem it at the location designated. Unfortunately, where you bought the ticket may not be where you will have to go to redeem it (100 will go to the Seal Beach location and the other 40 will redeem their winning ticket at the Seal Beach location). If you do not claim your pint of Pliny by March 5 it will be considered donated to the staff of Beachwood and they thank you from the bottom of their collective hearts. Continue reading
Red Lodge Ales – Red Lodge, Montana
Long before I decided to start the Craft Beer Guy website, I blogged about my travels around the United States and Europe on one of my other sites. The road trips I took around the US is where I first discovered craft beer, even if I was not aware that craft beer was a thing or that the marketing term of “craft beer” even existed. As time permits, and as I find the original photos, I will be posting articles and photos of some of the breweries and brewpubs I have stumbled across in my travels. I say “stumbled across” because most of these discoveries were not destinations, but rather somewhere we happened to drive by. The first of these articles is about Sam’s Tap Room & Kitchen at Red Lodge Ales Brewing Company in Red Lodge, Montana.
In July of 2011 I took a road trip with one of my younger cousins through a part of the country that I had not ever visited or had not been to since I was a young boy. We drove from Valparaiso, Indiana to Los Angeles taking the northern route through Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. That is when I first stumbled upon Red Lodge Ales Brewing Company.
Red Lodge Ales is located at the foot of the Beartooth Mountains about an hour south of Billings. It is definitely one of the more scenic brewery locations that I have visited. Red Lodge Ales was established in 1998 and they had about 10 different offerings if memory serves me well. I had a flight consisting of their Czechmate Pilsner, Beartooth Pale Ale, Bent Nail IPA, Jack’s 90 Schilling Scottish Ale, Porter and (I think) Resurrection Doppelbock. They were all solid brews and if I had more time I definitely would not have minded trying a few more. I do not recall why, but we did not try any of the food; most likely because we had eaten elsewhere before we fell into Red Lodge. Continue reading
A Craft Beer Valentine’s Day in the South Bay
As I sat down to write this, I asked Tanya what we did last year for Valentine’s Day. Neither of us could recall off hand but after a little research we discovered that we may be becoming creatures of habit with traditions we did not realize we had.
Anyway, this year Smog City Brewing re-released their Death By Hops DIPA so we decided to start the day off there. They had a brisk business going on with many beerlebrity sightings as hop heads from near and far came to check out the latest release; they would not be disappointed. Regular readers of Craft Beer Guy have probably noticed that I do not do beer reviews on this site (you can visit my Untappd account if you want those) but I will say that this batch is amazing. If you enjoy a good in-your-face hop bomb you will want to get over there before it is all gone. One thing that came to mind as I enjoyed it was just how lucky we are to live in an area that turns out so many great brews and the double IPAs. When you stop to think about Smog City’s Death By Hops, Strand Brewing’s White Sand, El Segundo Brewing’s Hammerland, and The Brewery at Abigaile’s Beetlejuice, to name but a few, the South Bay is turning out some of the best brews around.
After enjoying a beer at Smog City and speaking with a few people we headed down Western to Mulligan Family Fun Center to race go-karts. They have gas powered karts and governors equipped to prevent them from going very fast but it was still a lot of fun. No photos of this part of the day are available because I have yet to figure out how to race and work the camera at the same time. Continue reading
Photos from the Torrance Craft Brewery Walk
On Sunday afternoon, we held the second of what will hopefully become a series of walks and, possibly later, bicycle rides between the craft breweries located in the South Bay area. If you will recall, last Saturday we had our first walk, the Super Bowl Warmup Brewery Walk. That walk started off at Smog City Brewing Company before walking to Monkish Brewing then The Dudes’ Brewing before heading back to Smog City. For our first walk we had a very nice turnout, with close to 20 participants and two dogs. Yesterday we had 10 participants and four dogs. We also reversed the route to mix it up a little by walking from Smog City to The Dude’s before moving on to Monkish and back to Smog City.
Last week I polled a few of the people that joined us and I knew ahead of time that many of the people that came last week would not be able to make it this week; as it turned out only three of us have participated in both walks and we have people coming in from as far away as Echo Park and El Monte so this was a first time visit to our local tasting rooms for several in our group. I would, once again, like to thank everyone that came out yesterday; it was a lot of fun.
Next week we are going to do something a little different by increasing the distance on our next walk. The first two walks were just a little over one mile in total; the walk between King Harbor Brewing and Absolution Brewing is 2.5 miles each way. There are very few hills; in fact I would not really consider any portion of the route to be hilly. Each direction should take about an hour, so figure four hours in total between drinking and walking. Please visit https://www.facebook.com/events/1406342963000228/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular for more details and to let us know if you will join us. At this time we have five people that have said they are walking; I do not really expect a bigger group, but it would be nice. I have mentioned to a few people that I would like to develop this into a charity walk, so I am testing some mobile apps that we can use to track our mileage and make donations accordingly. If you have suggestions, please don’t hesitate to tell me about them. Continue reading
Photos from the 1st Super Bowl Warmup Brewery Walk
At the end of 2014, my girlfriend Tanya decided that she was going to start doing some extensive walking. We already walk twice a day, every day for a little over a mile each time; but she wanted to do some distance walking, with hills to build up the strength she lost because of years of a misdiagnosed illness. She decided she was going to walk to the beach every day. Now, the beach is only about three miles from here, but there are some pretty steep hills involved so an indirect route is a little longer but the hills are not as intense; it also ends around Naja’s Place by the Redondo Beach Pier. A couple weeks ago we attempted to get people to join us for an eight mile round trip walk to Naja’s and back; I wasn’t too surprised when we ended up walking it by ourselves.
In the meantime I started noticing articles discussing the craft beer boom in the South Bay; some even included inane suggestions of potential “pub crawls” that could now be done in the Torrance area. Perhaps I was reading “pub crawl” too literally, but a pub crawl to be has always meant to walk between the locations; it was pretty obvious to me that the authors were not all that familiar with the Torrance area and had not bothered to use Google Maps to see how far apart some of the breweries are from each other. Since I am from the area and well-familiar with where the breweries are in relation to each other I knew a brewery crawl could be done as long as we picked the right breweries.
I posed a question on the Craft Beer Guy Facebook page about a week ago asking if there was any interest in participating in a realistic South Bay Brewery Crawl; I must admit, I was a little surprised at the number of people that said they would be interested. As a result I scheduled the first in what will hopefully become a weekly series of craft beer walks; we had our first walk on Saturday afternoon. Continue reading
4th Annual Pliny Fights Cancer Raffle Ticket Sales Begin
Tickets on sale from January 20 thru February 21
For the past four years Beachwood has been having a charity raffle for chances to win one (or more) of the 130 pints they will have available between their Seal Beach and Long Beach locations. The beneficiary of 100% of the monies raised goes to the Melanoma Research Foundation done in memory of a long time Beachwood friend, Tony Carbone who passed away in 2008 from Stage 3 Melanoma.
I bought the first two tickets!
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