These photos were taken Saturday, June 10 at Shoreline Aquatic Park in Long Beach, where the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild held their LA Independent Beer Festival to kickoff LA Beer Week (LABW14) for the first time since 2019, due to that pesky pandemic. The ticketed event featured craft beer from approximately 75 member breweries, food from seven food trucks and one ice cream vendor, live music and games.

The event was advertised to be hosting 75 local breweries, providing 150 beers. Well, I did not go through the trouble of counting every brewery that showed up, but I can assure you that there were well over 150 beers, because there were several breweries that brought more than two beers, in fact there were breweries like LA Ale Works that had what seemed like 20 offerings, and they were not the only ones. I would guesstimate that there were closer to 250 beers available.

Going through my records, apparently the first LA Beer Week kickoff festival I attended was in 2015. While both events had 75 breweries and around 200 beers there were some major differences, the first being that Shoreline Aquatic Park is a lot nicer venue than Exposition Park in downtown LA; it’s not even a contest. The second major difference is that while 2015 may have had as many breweries, not every brewery was very “local,” while every brewery I saw yesterday seemed to be from LA County. Plus, in 2015 I was familiar with just about every brewery in attendance; I cannot say the same about the 2023 edition. It seemed like there were literally dozens that I had never even heard of. I obviously have some catching up to do.

There were approximately 2,300 people there and I saw maybe three lines, not counting the Porta Potties. The usual suspects, including Monkish, Highland Park, and Smog City had some decent lines but they handled them well and I did not hear anyone even hinting that the lines took too long.

The weather was the typical June gloom, with some wind at times, but it was never really too hot or too cold; it was nice to wake up without a sunburn today.

Congratulations to the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild, the festival sponsors: BSG, Three Weavers Brewing, El Segundo Brewing, Smog City Brewing, Yakima Chief Hops, Los Angeles Ale Works, Eagle Rock Brewery, Mt. Lowe Brewing, Trademark Brewing, Bravery Brewing, Aluminati Inc, all the participating breweries, vendors, and volunteers on putting on a great event.

So, while LABW14 started yesterday, it runs through next Sunday, June 18, and there are lots of events going on this week, so please visit https://www.labrewersguild.org/events for a list of everything going on this week. Cheers!

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