Well, Dear Readers, it’s been awhile. Our last post was Octoberfest 2024 in Big Bear by SCCBB Orange County Blogger Stephanie. Between then and now, a lot has happened. Which could be an understatement.
(Photo taken January 12, 2025 by our neighbor, Rob Lund)
Eleanor and I lost our house of 33 years in the Altadena fire on January 7-8, and our daughter, the Elusive Isabella, lost all her worldly possessions when the ADU she was renting burned in the same fire. It was devastating, as you might imagine, and we are slowly putting our lives back together.
In addition to dealing with insurance companies, law firms, realtors, FEMA, and maintaining our livelihoods, we are trying to figure out what comes next. Isabella has moved to Austin, so Jester King is now in her backyard.
I will leave it to our other SoCal Craft Beer Bloggers to fill in what’s been happening with them.
Before I move on, I want to acknowledge the amazing support we have received from every conceivable quarter: families, friends, co-workers, employers, complete strangers, and people we haven’t heard from in years.
A shout out to Boss Blogger 93 KHJ for putting Eleanor, Isabella, and I up for a crucial five weeks after the fire. Not only is she generous, and a gracious hostess, but she’s got really good friends who buoyed our spirits with excellent bourbon, beer, meals, and baked goods.
February
Quite simply, the best beer I’ve ever had out of a can. This collaboration between Sonoma’s Russian River Brewing and San Diego’s North Park Beer Company was off the charts. Here’s how North Park described the collaboration on Untapped.com:
The moment you all (but really, we all) have been waiting for… we’re psyched to bring you Elder-Fu! Our dear friend and legendary brewer Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River came down south with an arsenal of his hand-selected hops to brew with us, and to say this is an honor would be quite an understatement. As you may have guessed, Elder-Fu! is a crystal-clear Double Dry Hopped West Coast Double IPA brewed with Simcoe DynaBoost, Simcoe Cryo, Simcoe, NZ-106, Nectaron, Krush Cryo, Mosaic, Tangier, & Amarillo Abstrax Quantum Brite. Expect layers of tangerine, dank pine resin, a touch of herbal orange blossom & light berry paired with a balanced, dry finish. This is the way of the Fu!: Keep cold, drink fresh, or prepare to face the fury of the Fu!
We got our hands on a couple of cans courtesy of Elusive Isabella’s pal Natty Nico, beertender at the Glendale Tap. For me, the beer was a microcosm of my beer education. I was introduced to Russian River in Santa Rosa nearly 15 years ago by Sir Ted of Sonoma, my Nor Cal beer guru. And I learned about North Park on these pages from BeachRock Bill, my San Diego beer guru.
March
At the end of March we met up with our friend LSD Luke from Orange County to check out ISM Brewing, a year-old brewery in Long Beach founded by Ian McCall, whose bona fides are seriously legit:
- Brewbakers in Huntington Beach (2004)
- Beachwood BBQ in Long Beach (2009)
- Siebel Institute of Technology
- Assistant Brewer to Julian Schrago at Beachwood Brewing (2013)
- Head Brewer at Riip in Huntington Beach (2018)
ISM did not disappoint. Among the outstanding brews we tried were:
- Midnight in Druidia, a 5.4% ABV black lager or “schwarzbier”
- Astralism, a 6.2% ABV West Coast IPA collaboration with Seattle brewery Human People
- Calf Fiend, a coffee brown ale on nitro which won Gold at the World Beer Cup (pictured above, on the left)
- Plough and Harrow, a classic saison that won Bronze at both the World Beer Cup and the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) (pictured above, on the right)
April
In April, Eleanor and I got together with LSD Luke, Boss Blogger 93 KHJ, and KHJ’s friend from high school (or even earlier), Debbie. Luke made us an amazing meal, with Spanish-style tapas and lots of good beer and wine.
Eleanor and I had met Luke on a junior year abroad in Spain, and eons later we reconnected. KHJ likes to say she was conceived in Spain (which is true), and has visited the country several times. As the five of us waxed nostalgic, Debbie offered to make us her preferred college-era drink, an Irish Car Bomb, made with Guinness and Bailey’s, as suggested in the photo above. Mercifully(?), in this case, the bomb did not explode…
May
On a visit in early May to Deluxe 1717, our favorite Pasadena restaurant (and one of Elusive Isabella’s former places of employment), Consigliere Casey C. was excited to share one of their newest craft beers, a red lager by East Brother Beer Company (founded in 2016) in Richmond, CA. It was as good a red lager as I’ve ever had, and paired very nicely with the pork chop and creamy polenta dish garnished with all of Chef Alberto’s signature touches.
According to the East Brother website:
East Brother Beer Company was built on a belief that classic beer styles, when made with care and precision, never go out of style.
Founded in Richmond, California, a city known for its grit, industry, and pride, East Brother draws inspiration from its surroundings. Our 12,000-square-foot brewhouse sits in a historic shipyard district, a nod to the region’s history and a reflection of our own values: hard work, consistency, and quality.
A week or two later, Eleanor picked up a four-pack of Codebreaker at Trader Joe’s made by a brewery neither of us had ever heard of — Trademark Brewing in Long Beach. As you can see on the photo to the right, Codebreaker won Gold at the Great American Beer Festival in the West Coast IPA category.
Codebreaker was a real throwback to me from the heady days of craft beer explosion in the early 2010s. “Dank” was a category then, and in all the hoopla over juicy tropical hazies that have been all the rage for the past couple of years, it seems this flavor profile had gone underground (which is where you can find dank things, I realize). And though it was dank (having an earthy, pungent vibe, reminiscent of cannabis), it was also refreshing and kind of a breath of fresh-yet-vintage air.
I just have to mention that on a more recent trip to our local Trader Joe’s, I saw a four-pack of Tarantula Hill’s “Dankerman: the Legend of Four Breweries.” I thought to myself, “Hmm, maybe dank isn’t as underground as I imagined…”
The Beer Advocate gives a bit more data on that beer, which I have yet to taste:
Dankerman is a collaboration with Burgeon Beer, Artifex Brewing Company, & Craft Coast brewing. It’s a West Coast IPA brewed with Mosaic, Simcoe, HBC-586 cryo, and Nectaron hops. This beer is dry hopped in two stages to bring out the juicy and dank characteristics of the hops.
Our last stop in May was a long-overdue reunion of sorts between Beachrock Bill, his Wife Helen, Eleanor and I — with BRB’s 97-year-old mom, Nancy, presiding over the table at We’re Pouring, which she was responsible for discovering about a month after it opened, back in 2017! I must say that we were all so focused on catching up and sharing phone images and reminiscences, that I took no photos. And because BRB picked up the tab (he’s wily and generous that way), I have no record of what we sampled from the always sublime tap menu.
I probably focused on Russian River’s Pliny the Elder (Elder-Fu was just a little bit better, I gotta say…) and Damnation, their Belgian golden ale. BRB concentrates on hazies (Radiant, Bottle Logic, and Beachwood are usually featured). Eleanor no doubt had a Lost and Found Belgian dubbel from the Lost Abbey. And though Helen wasn’t able to find the 13%+ ABV barrel-aged dose of decadent amazingness she craves, she made do with Beachwood’s System of a Stout, clocking in at a “mere” 12/2% ABV. Nancy went with Valkyrie, an amber ale from Enegren. All engines firing on all SoCal beer styles with this group!
Early June
It’s rare that I get to try something in the beer world that is 100% absolutely new to me. This past weekend, at Wife and the Somm, an outstanding restaurant in Glassell Park, I ordered a Taipei City, Taiwan-based beer called ToastTea Amber Lager. The menu told me it was made with Assam tea. And I could taste how the tea provided an intriguing complement to the hops, by adding a smoky bitterness that added depth without overwhelming the refreshing crispness of a the lager.
After doing some DuckDuckGo-ing, I discovered a design website called “theDieline.com,” which contained an entry for “Dieline Awards 2022, Best of Student.” Here’s how the site described this fascinating beer:
“Inspired by local oil-proof sandwich wrapper bags, which are ubiquitous at every breakfast bars, we turn this beer brewed with unused toast crusts into a bottle of liquid breakfast combo – sandwich and black tea. In collaboration with Hai-Hsin Huang, a local contemporary artist, we re-interpret those source-unknown yet whimsical cartoon characters on the bags with a new toasty vibe. In addition to the beer itself, the concept of repurposing food waste also applies to its secondary packaging – Toasted Tote Bag, which is also 100% made of recycled plastic bags 2 of 3 and recycled grain waste from the brewing of this lager. Encouraged by Toast Ale UK, TOASTea lager is our kind of response and act to local food waste issue in Taiwan’s everyday scenes.
A word for those who enjoy a great mystery novel along with their beer: if you want to get a full-immersion into Taipei street food and intrigue, you can do no better than the Taipei Night Market Novel Series by Ed Lin. Ghost Month, Book 1 in the series, is one of the top five mysteries I’ve read in the last five years.
Here’s hoping that it won’t be another six or so months before we post again!
Cheers! Until next time,
— Chauncey B, aka the So Cal Craft Beer Blogger
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