Beer & Burgs, Part 1

[anarchangel23]

Yesterday, I attended the final event of LA Beer Week: the LA Beer Week Beer Festival.

I recorded everything I tried, but my beer tasting skills are not especially developed, so my tasting notes are brief and uninformative.

• TAPS Fish House & Brewery, Octoberfest. This was a lot lighter than I was expecting, which makes sense when I see on the website that it was a lager not an ale.
  
• Mission Brewert [Link is broken, but included for posterity], Shipwrecked (Double IPA). This baby packed quite a punch both in terms of the fruity IPA flavour (while not being overly hoppy, which I liked) and the 9.25% alcohol content.
  
• Flying Dog, Raging Bitch. One of my local pubs carries a couple of the Flying Dog range, but I don't remember seeing the Raging Bitch there. The Belgian and the IPA of this Belgian-style IPA came together quite harmoniously, the former tempering the latter.

We waited in line for Grill em all for about 30 minutes at this point. It was well worth it, although, while I'm glad I tried the Waste 'em all, it did leave me wanting more in a manner uncharacteristic of any other Grill em all burger. I should have gone with a Behemoth. While in the line, I tried the following:

• Craftsman Brewing Company, Aurora Borealis and Wet-hopped ale. The latter was a good ale without any distinctive features while the former was totally weird. One's nose and palate was assaulted by that inside-of-a-winery smell and taste - good, but I suspect drinking more than a 4 oz. taster might be a challenge!
  
• Matthew grabbed a peach iambic (which pretty much tasted of peace juice!) and a rather ordinary ale on his line-waiting resupply run. I didn't write down the names or breweries, unfortunately. Perhaps he'll comment, and I'll ammend.

With a burg crushed, we returned to the main beer courtyard in search of more brews:

• The Lost Abbey, Devotion. This was a golden ale. My notes say "a bit light". The website has quite the essay.
  
• Strand Brewing Company, 24th Street Pale Ale. I quite like regular pale ales; the dialed down hops from the IPA makes all the difference. This was good.
  
• Old Speckled Hen. This was one of the few non-California beers we had. It's a decent ale and pretty widely available at local bars.
  
• Angel City Brewing, Abbey Ale. A Belgian-style ale. No notes, but I seem to recall that this was a competent but unremarkable example of the style.

To be continued...

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