The word is, tonight at 6pm, the Daily Pint will be tapping kegs of Pliny the Younger(!!!), Consecration(!!), and AleSmith’s My Bloody Valentine(!!). Here’s the announcement on Beer Geek LA, plus the official word from the Daily Pint’s site

One cool aspect of this new site, its focused on bringing beer lovers together in real life, as opposed to just on the internets.  There is a corresponding Meetup.com group, with the stated mission of “Meeting other beer geeks in the LA area at some of the best beer bars in town.”

I’ve never tried meetup.com before, but it seems like a pretty good way to meet other people with the same obscure interests as you (not that beer is an obscure interest, everyone loves beer!).

Looking through the LA area, I’ve finally figured out where all those Salsa dancers at the Third St. Promenade every Sunday come from.  It’s a giant Meetup.com group!  Who would’ve known?

Join the LA Beer Geek meetup group to stay posted on “all the best beer events happening in Los Angeles.”  As of right now, there are already 32 beer geeks who have joined up.

And don’t forget, The Daily Pint has freakin Pliny the Younger on tap tonight!!

It’s that time again.  The Second Annual L.A. Grand Crew!  If you missed it last year, now’s the time to clear your Saturday and pump up your bike tires.

The ride starts at 11AM in front of Union Station, and ends at my favorite eastside beer haunt, Verdugo Bar.

The route has changed, and so has the time of year.  Now, instead of buying all the beers for yourself, you can use this ride to buy some delicious Christmas presents for friends and family.  Who in their right mind doesn’t love to get beer for Christmas?

Continue reading for the video invitation from Hot Knives.

LA Grand Crew Beer-Ride ’08 from Hot Knivez on Vimeo.

What do you think about the new look?  The white background is kind of weird, right?  Should I switch it back to the black / gray of the old site?

After screwing around on his site for a good 30 minutes, I found this little gem he made last year. It’s a great song and an even more impressive stop-motion video starring a whole family of anthropomorphised pint glasses. You’ll be singing along by the end of the video!

Also, head over to William Brand’s Beer Newsletter for a great video of a bar in Belgium made entirely out of beer crates.

City: Los Angeles, CA
Neighborhood: ??
Photos taken: 3/27/2008

This store just got a bunch of new stuff in. Do you recognize the shelves? There’s a ton of hints I could give, but I think this one is pretty easy.

The green price labels really give it away, don’t they?

If you haven’t seen it by now, Stuff White People Like is friggin’ huge right now. It’s been up for about a month and has already reached over 2.2 million hits.

There is a lot of speculation about who writes it. I am pretty sure that it’s a guy that lives in LA, and to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that he is white. How else would he know about all this stuff?

A lot of the items are spot on for me. Yes, I love Wes Anderson movies, Snowboarding, Arrested Development, Indie Music, and Bicycles. I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or proud about of having my whiteness laid out on the internets like this.

But it made me think, when did enjoying good beer become a white thing? What percentage of the people on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer do you think are white? How many microbreweries are there in this country that are founded or owned by non-whites?

What do you think, is there something inherently white about enjoying microbrews?

A brief excerpt:

“Right now, in the L.A. scene, there are a bunch of places that are starting to address the whole spectrum of what beer is,” Jilg says. “It really is the tipping point, where decision makers — restaurant owners and bar managers — are realizing that beer is more than the big three.”

And craft beer is growing around the country. Denver-based nonprofit the Brewers Assn. reports that sales of craft beer were up 12% in 2006. The trade group has craft beer representing about a 3.5% share of the overall beer market, up from 3.2% at the end of 2006.

Those numbers jibe with trends the larger American brewers are seeing. Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of import, craft and specialty beers Andy Goeler says craft beer might even have a slightly higher percentage of the overall U.S. beer market, putting the number above 4%. “We’re starting to see the urban areas, and L.A. being one of the big ones, where the craft brands are really taking hold,” Goeler says.

Most urban areas are already associated with a brewery. San Francisco is home to Anchor Steam, San Diego boasts the presence of Stone Brewing, Chicago is linked with Goose Island and New Yorkers raise a pint from Brooklyn Brewery.

But L.A.?

“Los Angeles has the Father’s Office,” says Greg Koch, chief executive of Escondido-based Stone Brewing.

Hopping a coachclass out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late June of 2007 I found myself watching season one of Lost on DVD next to a 250 lb Brazilian on his way to Seattle. I lay down with my sweatshirt balled up under my head and legs crossed as I recline my seat as far as it will go as we rolled north towards Santa Barbara.

As the train went up through the San Fernando valley, my thoughts went back to my days at UCSB. For a small percentage of the population, college is nothing more than grooming school for upper-class aspiring, non-identity frat brothers who usually find their perfect expression on the outskirts of campus in rows of ratty apartment buildings with beirut tables and couches in each lawn and everyone thinking the same thoughts as they all watch the same girls at the same time every day as they bike down Pardall Road to get to class.

But for most of us, UCSB is a place to prowl through the wild streets looking for tapped kegs, to hear voices calling from the cliffs, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization, to build huge bonfires on the beach and drink Costco sized bottles of whiskey and grapefruit juice on Tuesday nights.

As we made it through Camarillo where Charlie Parker’d been mad and relaxed back to normal health, I resigned myself from these memories of my college glory days and focused on the journey at hand. No, tonight wouldn’t find me with my blankets in the sand cooking hot dogs on freshly cut and sharpened sticks over the coals of a big wood fire in my swim shorts, barefooted and wild-haired, singing, swigging ale, spitting, jumping and running. No, tonight I would be crammed in a window seat next to a single mother and her one year old on their way home from Santa Cruz.

Before I knew it the train rolled into San Luis Obispo a full 10 minutes ahead of schedule and I figured I needed a few beers for this long day on the tracks en route to Portland. I turned to the young man sitting across the aisle who in three weeks was being shipped across the Atlantic to join the Peace Corps in Mali and asked, “Will you watch my pack while I run over there and grab a couple beers from the nearest liquor store?”

“Sure thing.”

I jumped off the train and walked past a quaint and charming Italian restaurant in search of a good place to buy some 22 ouncers. There was a barber shop or some sort of place where locals hang around on the porch on the corner next to the restaurant.

“Do they sell beer in there?” I asked.

“No, but if ya go straight down this street about three blocks, there’s a great deli an they got beer.”

I followed in the direction he pointed and sure enough, there was a great deli called Gus’s with an above average selection of beer. Five or six Lost Coast beers including Alleycat Amber and a great selection of Rogue as well.

I opted for a bomber of my favorite go-to beer, Firestone Double Barrel, and a bottle of Rogue Santa’s Private Reserve. Somehow it just made sense to get one beer from where I was and one beer from where I was headed. The pair came out to just under eight dollars and I was quite pleased with myself for figuring out a way to avoid the five dollar Heinekens on sale in the observation car lounge.

I grabbed a plastic water cup as I left the deli and half-assedly jogged back up the hill to the train station. I still had a long ride ahead of me, but having some tasty beer made it go by a little faster.

There’s a contest going on at the Flying Dog Blog, and the winner gets a sweet Gonzo beer gift set. Read on for details from flyingdogblog.com:

We recently had a visit from our good friend, Matt Mosley, who brought this HST mannequin that he had commissioned for his recent birthday party. This thing is scary real and even has an original “Free Lisl” (Google it) button to boot. To make a long story short, after a week of freaking out Matt’s wife, she made him get it out of the house and he was nice enough to let Flying Dog Brewery become Hunter’s temporary home. Matt, who knew Hunter personally, told me, “He would have hated this thing.” So here’s my question to The People’s Republic: What do we do with this mannequin of the late, great, Dr. Gonzo?

Email your answers to bullshit@flyingdogales.com, or you can leave a comment on the blog (registration required, unfortunately). I submitted my entry a few days ago and so far I think I’m the only one to answer. Hopefully this post will give them a few more page views.  Head over to the Flying Dog Blog.

The highlight of the evening was meeting Evan and Alex of Hot Knives, the preeminent beer bloggers of LA. They also blog about food and cooking, and occasionally work beer into their recipes. How about some Levitation flapjacks or Stone-inspired ice cream? Come to think of it, I could go for a chocolate stout float right about now.

These guys are a great inspiration for a blossoming beer blogger like myself. They tell great stories and aren’t afraid to shit all over the Beer Establishment. Ever tried a Velveeta quesadilla right after a beer bong? (Further reading: In the Busch with A-B’s Specialty Beers)

On occasion they are known to wear bucket hats and yellow shades while speaking through clenched teeth and smoking from cigarette holders as they use their press credentials to gain entry to the biggest wine convention this side of the Mississippi. (Furthur reading: Food and Wining in Los Angeles)

If you’ve clicked all these links and still haven’t got enough Knives, you will also enjoy their Reverse Sideways trip to the Stone Brewery last December.

Wörtwurst, dry your eyes. My man-crush has officially transfered. Deal with it.

Click here for video.

In honor of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie opening today, I thought I would share a story told by Jim Hill, an entertainment writer who specializes in all things Disney.

Did you know the first movie, “Curse of the Black Pearl,” almost never got made? I remember thinking it was a pretty lame idea to base a movie on a theme park ride – isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? But it turned out to be an excellent movie, and the second installation, “Dead Man’s Chest,” broke all previous opening weekend records.

Well, the weekend hasn’t even begun yet, and the new movie, “At World’s End,” has already broken a record; widest opening release. I don’t think anyone will be surprised when Pirates re-breaks the opening weekend totals, even though Spider-Man 3 raised the bar just a few weekends ago.

Pretty impressive for a movie that almost didn’t see the light of day. From JimHillMedia.com:

At one point during pre-production, Michael Eisner himself canceled the first “Pirates” film. Saying that the movie — as Gore & Jerry envisioned it — was going to be far too expensive (I.E. A then-whopping $120 million). Plus what with all of those undead pirate skeletons walking around and all the throat slashing, stabbing and shooting, this motion picture was going to automatically wind up getting a PG-13 rating. And Walt Disney Pictures — as a rule — never released anything racier than a PG.

And then there was the cold hard fact that it had been 50 years since Hollywood had last produced a successful pirate picture (I.E. Burt Lancaster’s “The Crimson Pirate” Which Warner Bros. released back in 1952). Every modern attempt to reviving the swashbuckling genre — 1976′s “Swashbuckler,” 1980′s “The Island,” 1983′s “Yellowbeard,” 1986′s “Pirates” and 1995′s “Cutthroat Island” — had all been miserable (more importantly, expensive) failures. So why even bother to try?

Eisner also (correctly) believed that the whole “movie based on a theme park ride” would be a major hurdle to overcome, so he told Verbinski and Bruckheimer to edit the script to take out some of those tongue-in-cheek references to the ride.

Well, now that the franchise has proved to be a success, it seems like the tongue has been firmly placed back inside the cheek. In the trailer, they show a ship falling over a waterfall, something that was specifically cut from the first installment.

And then there’s the whole bit about the Green Flash.

BARBOSSA: Ever gazed upon the green flash, Mr. Gibbs ?
GIBBS: I reckon I’ve seen my share. (To Will) Happens on rare occasions, at the last glimpse of sunset, a green flash shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives and never see it. Some claim to have seen it. Some say …
PINTEL: … it signals when a soul comes back to this world from the dead!
(Gibbs glares at Pintel for interrupting his story)
PINTEL: Sorry.

Nice meta humor in there. They were flashing the green light at your movie, it eventually rose from the dead, and then you made an assload of money. Pat yourselves on the back there, writers. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I don’t know the context, but it’s still pretty funny.

Alright, now here’s the part where I tie this in with beer. There’s an awesome brewery down in San Diego called Green Flash Brewing Company, perfect for those days when you’re sailing around in your pirate ship looking for green flashes. I’ve never had their beer, and it’s not too prevalent in LA yet, but I’ve seen their West Coast IPA and Nut Brown Ale at the Cap ‘n Cork on Hillhurst in Los Feliz.

Since I haven’t tried it, I thought I’d do some research to hear what others have to say.

Best to start out at the company’s website. I found their Green Flash explanation page the most interesting. Their Tap Room section gives a good run down of their styles.

Beer Molly, a San Diego local, is a recently converted fan of the Nut Brown Ale and the Barleywine Style Ale, which she tried for the first time at the brewery a couple months ago.

William Brand says you need to try their West Coast IPA. It was his Beer of the Week at the beginning of May, marking Green Flash’s arrival in the Bay Area. He mentions a previous review of Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, and says West Coast IPA is like Pliny Jr. Hmm, I guess that leaves Pliny the Younger out in the cold.

The Disgruntled Chemist tried the Extra Pale Ale, and after geeking out about the science behind green flashes, concluded it was a great beer that he hopes to find again.

Green Flash seems like it will be the next big thing to come out of San Diego. The company is 5 years old, has 5 employees, but who knows, in 5 years, they might be the next Stone. So jump on the bandwagon now, and when they’re huge, you can tell all your friends you’ve been drinking this stuff for years.

You should be able to find some in a store near you. Maybe it’s not as good as Piraat for sneaking into the movie theaters, but worth tracking down nonetheless.

I’m gonna need to make another trip to the Cap ‘n Cork.

Chill A Coke In 2 Minutes!

Also, what’s this guy’s cat doing in the fridge?

From left to right, they are:

Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar
Anderson Valley Brother David Triple
Anderson Valley Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout
Bear Republic Big Bear Black Stout
Firestone Walker Reserve Porter
Angel City Dunkel
Stone Imperial Russian Stout Spring 2007 Release

(And no, it’s not in order of how cool the labels are)

The Web site is just one of the gathering spots for beer lovers — not the guys sitting in front of the tube with a six-pack of mass-market brew, but a rapidly growing body of connoisseurs who are as devoted to their chosen beverage as wine lovers are to theirs.

Hear that? We are a rapidly growing body of connoisseurs. Awesome. The article goes on to identify a problem that beer culture faces – backlash from macro-brewery advertising, and the negative image that can sometimes be associated with “people who love beer”.

“One of our main goals is trying to raise the image of beer as a whole and bring back the beer culture,” Todd said. “We had a beer culture but Prohibition kind of reset the button.”

The popular image of beer drinkers has always been the industry’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The slobbering yahoos at the football game with the bare chests and painted faces; the snarling mud wrestlers battling over “tastes great, less filling,” and the usual array of good ol’ frat house antics are all representations from the mass-market beer industry itself, which has succeeded by aiming low. The cost has been respect, and the result has been a decades-long battle to win it back.

Hats off to Todd and Jason for being written up in the New York Times. They are helming the ship that will lead us beer disciples to the Land of Plentifully Available Niche Brews. And to that, I say Godspeed.

Read the full article: Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation

You might not realize it, but we are living in the midst of a Beer Renaissance, where incredible beer from all over the planet is available at our fingertips. The huddled masses, who yearn to breathe free, are no longer stuck drinking swill like Bud or Coors. The advent of sites like Beer Advocate has made it possible to pull up information on virtually any beer in the world with just a few clicks of the mouse.

With all these choices, beer can become a bit daunting. Even when you’re standing in the cooler section at Ralphs, you have a good 40 different types of beer staring you down. “Pick me! Pick me!” they cry. I swear, sometimes I feel like Angelina walking through an orphanage. I wish I could choose them all, and give all of them a good home, but c’mon David, let’s stay on track here. You came to the store to grab a 12-pack, and that’s it. Stay focused.

It’s times like these where it just seems easiest to grab a box of Pacifico and be done with it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes you need to push your boundaries a little bit, and try something new. And that’s where rating comes in.

If you want to expand your horizons, you’re going to have to try a lot of new beer. And how are you going to remember all those sweet pours, malty aromas, crisp sips and bitter finishes without breaking out the ol’ pen and paper? It’s worth the time it takes to sit down and identify all the unique characteristics, and figure out what it is about beer that you really enjoy.

It would be a shame for all the notes in my Moleskine to go unread, so I have decided to publish them here for all to see.

Beer is my passion. I don’t yet consider myself to be a true connoisseur, but hell, I’m 23 years old, I’ve got many beers ahead of me. I expect my tastes and preferences to change over time, and hopefully that evolution can be chronicled through my posts.

Welcome to my site.

Cheers,

Dave

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