The Great LA Beer Festival
LA is finally getting it’s own beer festival.
Yes, I am aware that KROQ holds a “microbrew festival” every year at Santa Anita. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that attendees of the KROQ event are more interested in drinking than they are about beer. Is it silly hope for something a little more beergeekcentric than pounding 12oz light lagers at the racetrack?
- LA Beer Fest at Sony Studios, April 4th & 5th, 2009
The LA Beer Festival is being organized by Dan Silberstein and Eat|Drink|Play, the same people responsible for last year’s LA BBQ Festival, held at the Santa Monica Pier. According to their Facebook Fan page, they organize:
Year-round events centered around the drinking, eating, and converting LA into a personal playground. Past events have included the LA BBQ Festival, Cupcake Challenge, 80s Prom, and in the future, the LA Beer Festival.
Judging from past events, it’s hard to tell if Drink|Eat|Play is interested in promoting good beer or throwing cool parties. The lineup doesn’t make it any easier to judge, since it suffers from severe lopsidedness.
On their official website, California heroes like Firestone Walker, Sierra Nevada, Pizza Port, The Bruery, and Reaper are unceremoniously grouped together with macros and lame, bawdy contract-brewed lagers like Bierbitzch and Wingman. For the love of God, how can you put Pizza Port after Nikhon?!
LA is well represented by Skyscraper and Angel City (hell, we’ll even claim the Bruery as our own), but conspicuously absent from the list is Pasadena-based Craftsman Brewing. Hopefully this was just a simple omission from their website, perhaps something as simple as Craftsman not having a properly-sized jpg’ed logo to submit. Worst case scenario: brewmaster Mark Jilg flipped his shit and pulled out when told the Craftsman booth would be sandwiched between Stella Artois and Wyder’s Cider. But I jest. I’m sure Craftsman will be out in full force, maybe with a couple of seasonal ales up their sleeve for us?
The current list of breweries/beers in attendance:
[UPDATE: Complete list can now be found HERE]
Budweiser
Sierra Nevada
Wingman
Stella Artois
Woodchuck Cider
Wyder Cider
The Bruery
Firestone Walker
Red Hook
Sam Adams
Widmer
Skyscraper
Angel City
Deschutes
Bierbitzch
Nakhon
Pizza Port
Pyramid
Reaper
Tickets are $40 each day, and the fest runs from 2pm to 5pm. There will be a couple cover bands on hand to provide some tunes, and food vendors for some grub to soak up all that beer.
You can purchase your tickets for Saturday and Sunday at Brown Paper Tickets.
Doesn’t look like food is included in the ticket price. Either way it is across the street from our apartment so its kind of a done deal anyhow. Kudos to them for using Brown Paper Ticket a lovely alternative to the evil TicketBastard / Dead Nation super Conglomo!
Definitely a weird list of participating brewers… I sent them an e-mail to see if more were to be added. I was totally surprised that Stone, AleSmith, and Port Brewing/Lost Abbey weren’t included. Or more from north Cal – No Lagunitas, Russian River, Bear Republic? C’mon.
Phil – nope, food is seperate, but thank god there’s no ticketbastard charge! BPT is much better.
Ben – I’ve got an updated list of breweries not up on the site, I’ll throw it up in a sec.
Hi there,
Just wondering if there will be Gluten free beer and if so how many (Ciders are Gluten free too). This may sound weird but I know they exist.
Thanks!
Great question. Not sure I have an answer for it. I’m pretty sure there will be at least 2-3 ciders, but good gluten-free beers are hard to come by.