Geoff Watts was one of Intelligentsia’s very first hires in the mid ’90s and has become one of the foremost green coffee buyers in the world, helping to establish a Direct Trade model alongside Intelligentsia founder Doug Zell, by working with farmers who primarily reside in Latin America and Africa. As a result, the product improves, the farmers earn more money for their labors, and infrastructure expands. Last year, Watts relocated to Los Angeles from Chicago, and he continues to spend a large chunk of his waking hours either on a plane or on foreign soil, continue to cultivate mutually advantageous coffee partnerships. We spoke on April 14 at Intelligentsia’s booth at the Pebble Beach Food & Wine Lexus Grand Tasting, and he shared insights that hinted at why he’s been successful in the coffee world.

Was it a given that you’d work with coffee for a living, or did you consider other careers?

I considered a lot of other careers, mostly music. I thought about getting into the academic world for awhile, but coffee found me in a sense. Once I got into it, my mind got made up from there.

What instrument did you play?

I was a drummer, percussion.

Do you still play?

Whenever I can, but just for messing around. My chops aren’t what they used to be.

What subject would you have considered if you had become a professor?

Philosophy. That’s what I studied in school, and that was one subject I thought I could spend a lifetime pursuing and never get bored of it, really.

Do you feel like that helps you in your approach to coffee?

It does. One of the things that’s so attractive about working in coffee is that your work is never finished. There’s absolutely no blueprint for what we’re trying to do, so every year and every five years that go by, it seems like it’s a new chapter in the evolution of specialty coffee in our collective understanding of what quality means and not just how to define it, but how to present it, and how to think about it ourselves. There’s an evolution that goes on with any coffee professional’s relationship with coffee, from the time they first start thinking about how different the flavor can be, to the time they’re actually manipulating flavors themselves, whether it’s through extraction or roasting, to a point where they understand there’s a spectrum out there. They know there’s still more that they haven’t seen yet, which will be coming down the pipeline as they get more professional and start help debating and processing coffee in the field. But then it’s a matter of beginning to define your ideal balance in coffee and define your own relationship with it. You’re exposed to so many different things, and it can all affect you in different ways, but at first, just being able to describe that experience and make sense of it, put it into words somehow. At first you have to be able to develop a sense of personal taste where you gravitate toward certain kinds of coffee, not just have a deeper appreciation for those than for others, but understand why and to be able to communicate that to other people and be able to share your preferences. That’s where a lot of people are right now in coffee. They’ve gone through a lot of different stages of relating to coffee where in the beginning the first thing you get excited about is the contrast. You want more of everything. You want more acidity. You want more fruit. You want more body in the coffee, start understanding sugar caramelization and how that affects your palate. You want more of that, and then you get to a point where you say, “Okay, now I want to dial those things back.” What interests me is the idea of balance, and to see how these things are interrelated, where that acidity and sugar caramelization intersect. That actually is the crafted element of coffee.

At what point do you feel like you established your personal preferences for coffee?

I’m still establishing them. I’ve done it for 17 years, and I have certain likes and dislikes, but that’s the challenge, every month or six months I start to find I’m thinking about coffee in another way that redefines some of my preferences. If you allow them to sink in and cement themselves, then they become biases rather than preferences. That’s the point where you stop growing as a coffee person. You begin to make up your mind about what coffee should be, or what you think it should be.

Do you remember your very first cup of coffee?

Yeah. It was probably from McDonald’s or a cup of Folgers my mom made at home. I do remember my first specialty coffee, I guess, was in Austria, as a student. I went to some coffee shops there and had a coffee called Julius Meinl, and it wasn’t necessarily great coffee, but it was the first time that coffee was presented to me as something that had a culinary aspect to it. It wasn’t just meant to be chugged or ingested for the caffeine, but had a pleasure aspect associated with it, and was meant to be enjoyed in small quantities. That was the first time I started to think about coffee in that way.

So that was kind of an epiphany moment for you?

It was, in a sense. That’s what got me hooked on drinking coffee, but then I went to school at Berkeley and that was the first time I started to see different companies presenting coffee, different roasters, where you could walk down Telegraph Avenue and find more than one roaster selling their own take on coffee. That’s the first time I actually began to think about roasting having an impact on coffee, or coffee being curated by different coffee people that had their own version or own preference for the kinds of coffee they wanted to present. And that was the first time I could go to five different places within a six-block radius and get five different coffees that were – and not having any kind of coffee experience – clearly very different. “I like that one better than that one.” Or, “I like this one over this one.” You start making choices and I think that was an epiphany moment, where I began to understand that coffee wasn’t just one thing. There’s a lot of things.

Is there such a thing as a day of typical coffee consumption for you?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Interview with coffee pro Geoff Watts (Intelligentsia)

May 6, 2012 – We punctuated a restless night, which included a red eye flight from LAX to JFK, with a trip to Mile End Delicatessen. We received an introduction to the wonders of bagelach, horseshoe shaped “rugelach” filled with buttermilk curd, served with cream cheese and dried cherries.

May 6, 2012 – It was good to see Eli Sussman, a fellow committee member on the 2011 incarnation of Taste of the Nation LA, working the line at Mile End.

May 6, 2012 – Mile End had some great baked goods, but we couldn’t resist the raised donuts at Dough, a recommendation from Nastassia Johnson (Let Me Eat Cake).

May 6, 2012 – Toby’s Estate Coffee had another former Angeleno on site – roaster Deaton Pigot – who pointed us toward the pourover bar and Colombia Paez coffee.

May 6, 2012 – Mast Brothers Chocolate expanded since my last visit and added a handy cartoon that explains the chocolate making process. [CLICK FOR A CLOSE-UP]

May 7, 2012 – We spotted Lurisia, my people’s water, at Murray’s Cheese.

May 7, 2012 – La Churreria, a new churro specialist in Nolita, made the fritters to order and served them with dark chocolate dipping sauce.

May 7, 2012 – A trip to the revived 456 Shanghai Cuisine flashed me back to my youth, and to the Fried Yellow Fish w. Tofu Curd Skin with salt dip. It wasn’t as crispy as I remembered, but that was about 30 years ago, and I was barely old enough to tie my shoes.

May 7, 2012 – Joe’s Shanghai more than remedied the trippy time warp with their scintillating rice cakes, pan-fried with cabbage and pork.

May 8, 2012 – Peels allows customers to mix and match their biscuits with myriad fillings. My pick was thin-sliced, griddled country ham, which didn’t bring to mind my college-era country ham in Nashville, but was pretty good to end a long walk.

May 8, 2012 – Vandaag pulled Ecco Caffe espresso and served the demitasse with a spoon of brown sugar and a small shortbread cookie.

May 9, 2012 – Our final breakfast consisted of Ceci Cela croissants, supposedly some of the best in New York. Pretty good, but they left me longing for Parker-Lusseau Pastries.

Week in Pictures: New York City Spring 2012

My friends were inspired by one of Jonathan Gold’s final LA Weekly reviews, of Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village, so Tamara made a reservation at “the most ambitious Chinese restaurant to open in Los Angeles in a decade.” It was certainly impressive looking, with décor that brought to mind a bygone Shanghai banquet hall and a shiny menu nearly an inch thick, packed with page upon page of dishes and historical photos of Chinese women.

The food itself was uneven, but the owners most definitely had a handle on braised pork dishes, including a jiggling bone-in shank with bok choy, and even better, a dish that was called – to paraphrase – something like Shanghai Braised Pork in Old Alley. The dish featured shimmering squares of pork belly a la Shanghai’s “old alley” infused with a sweet and savory red sauce. The caramelized cubes joined hard-boiled eggs and knots of bean curd in what looked like an urn. Happily, the hog had a lot more life than the serving vessel.

Dose of Vitamin P spotlights my favorite pork dish from the previous week.

Dose of Vitamin P: Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village Pork

Josie Le Balch was practically weaned in the kitchen and started working for her father at his Sherman Oaks restaurant, Chef Gregoire, beginning at age 14. She eventually branched out on her own, working for a pre-Spago Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison. She cooked at Remi, then hit the hills, climbing to the executive chef post at Saddle Peak Lodge, and clocked time at the Beach House on Santa Monica’s Channel Road before opening her self-title Josie Restaurant in 2001. A decade later, she debuted Next Door by Josie, sharing a kitchen with her sister establishment. We spoke with her on April 3 at the Next Door By Josie, and Le Balch shared insights that hint at why she’s cultivated culinary success.

Was it a given that you’d become a chef for a living, or did you consider other careers?

We always cooked in the house, because it was just a thing that we did. For me it was kind of like getting grounded. There was an opportunity for me to hang out with my dad, which I really enjoyed doing. I never really looked at it as a career, per se, but I always wanted to be with my dad. My dad was very French, and they don’t really have women in the kitchen, so it was kind of a thing that my brother should be the chef, and my brother became like the nuclear physicist in the family.

Literally, he’s a nuclear physicist?

No, he’s not, he’s actually a programming engineer, but I always joked with him. It’s funny, because one of the gals that was influential to me was actually here the other day. Her name’s Olivia. There was another woman named Susan, who’s no longer with us, but these two ladies were apprenticing with my dad, coming in, paying for the classes and working there for free. I remember one day, I came in and it was on a Saturday. I probably wanted to go out, but I had to work, and I remember this one girl Susan said, “I can’t believe what an opportunity you have. All these people are paying your dad, and you don’t see it right in front of you.” It changed my viewpoint on what I was doing. I loved to cook, and I loved hanging out with him, and I think I had a good natural ability. Even now, I think 1 out of 10 kids has a really good natural ability, and the other one wants it so bad. And you wonder if somebody became a lawyer and somebody became a doctor, or somebody went to culinary school. Like the idea of the Food Network now. I think it gets a lot of people interested before they actually even work in a kitchen. I was really fortunate. Maybe because it was in the family, I had a natural ability to it. I really loved doing it, and it took somebody saying, “Hey, hello, you can actually do this.”

Would you say you’ve had any other mentors over the years?

Yes, when I went to go work at Remi with Francesco Antonucci, I went to work there because I’d already worked like 20 years in haute cuisine and French cuisine. I wanted to see something different. Ironically, he had just discovered Paul Bocuse, so he was doing all this French stuff, and I wanted to learn all this Italian stuff. But the Venetian style of cooking was close enough to the Austrian and French style that I kind of fit in with him. The owner at the time was Jivan Tabibian and Jivan was also one of Francesco’s good friends. Jivan was not a chef. He was an eater of fine foods and really taught me a lot about palate. I used to play a game with him. I would put something screwy in the dish just to mess with him and he would call me out to the table. He used to smoke like three or four cigars a day. He had the most acute palate of anybody I’ve ever worked with. He really taught me a lot about food and people and the quest for food. I went to Europe on a trip with him and we were riding from Paris to Venice to meet some people and he had some businesses in Paris. We ate our way, and his whole life was the Michelin guide. He had two guides and know where we would go to lunch and where we would go to dinner, which was just an amazing experience with him. It taught me a lot about another side that I hadn’t really been paying attention to. I think you almost take it for granted when you grow up in it. Sometimes I did a lot of travel and I never appreciated it as a teenager, because you were always upset that you lost your summer vacation and had to go live with an aunt in Paris. Now I realize I wish she still lived there. Jivan was a big influence on me.

Ann Ehringer from Saddle Peak, from a different perspective, from a business perspective. I saw a woman, and not just in the industry, but in business, who gave you the tools that you needed to do your job, and then showed me the smarts to then step away and let people do that job. She allowed me to do that. She was great at bringing people together and taught us how to work as a team. From a business aspect, she was a great mentor.

And then my partner that I have here, who gave me the most opportunities. When I met him, I was blessed to have somebody who always has my back. He also taught me about business, but then said to me one day, “Are you having fun? Because if you’re not having fun, it’s not worth doing.” It’s like every level I’ve gotten to in life, I have somebody who steps in and shows me another perspective of what I’m doing.

What do you look for when you’re hiring somebody to work in your kitchen?

I look for a lot of different things for a lot of different positions. One of the things that Francesco taught me…I had always been used to haute service, and he had a totally different perspective of finding people that could smile, finding somebody that has a good, magnetic personality, that has that face and energy that you want to be around, and then teach them how to serve. Because you can’t teach somebody how to smile. I learned that 20 years into the business, and as I’ve progressed, you start realizing, it’s not just about the acute service somebody gives. People want to be around good energy. We have servers that people call to sit with, cause it’s a whole entertainment. It’s the mood when they walk in the door. I think that’s for the front of the house.

And then the kitchen’s interesting. My dad used to call it the power behind the throne. I have a lot of energetic people and they come in and I wonder. It’s like my resume’s complete. I don’t need another person on it. I like commitment from somebody. I want them here for a year, because I don’t want to see another heirloom tomato on another menu. It’s important that we have an exchange of thought and ideas out of respect, and I think some of that’s lost. A lot of people just want to burn through a bunch of kitchens. I want them to be here for a year, if possible, so they can see the whole picture. I have guys that don’t have any aspiration to own a restaurant or be chefs. It’s a job. They have children. They want to come into work and go. But they care about what they’re doing and are the power behind the throne.

Then we have people who are strong and energetic like Milo the chef or Jami, the girl who’s here at lunch. She came here when she was 15. Her mother came up to me at a charity event and said, “My daughter wants to cook.” I said, “Have her come in next week.” She showed up for the interview, a little shy. I started to wonder, is this somebody that doesn’t have a lot of social skills, and they’re not into sports? Totally into sports, total artist, does a million different things, and this is one of the things she wanted, and her friends weren’t interested to do this in their spare time. She showed up, then showed up again, and she’s been with me for – “How old are you, Jami?” “22.” – So she works a couple years, and her mom had this great idea. Instead of sending her to college, they took all the money and send her traveling. She went to Florence and lived in Italy with some friends and worked in a restaurant there. And worked in Venice with some friends of ours. And worked in Sicily, and then went to Japan. She does this travel thing and lives abroad for awhile, and then comes back and always has a job here, so she can make some cash. And helps me. She came back when we were opening and helped train a couple people and worked her way through all our stations. She’s a writer, which is what she wants to do, about her travels and food.

Or my chef, Mai, who started with us on the other side and is now running all the ordering…When we were planning over here, we wanted to do a lot of different things. We were laughing. It’s like the Josie side. “What kind of food is it?” When we were opening, I had a year to plan because they were not letting us open, and I had come up with a tagine idea I wanted to do, and I didn’t want it to be locked into any specific thing. I hate the word eclectic, but I want good food and I want to have fun when I cook.

What’s the criteria for a dish that goes on the menu at Next Door and what about at Josie? How’s it different?

This side, we knew we were going to have charcuterie. We wanted to do that. By the time we got open, which took a year, it’s like everybody’s got one, so how can we do it where it’s unique? So we have American charcuterie. We have hams, and we didn’t do prosciutto, and we didn’t do some of those things. A lot of the stuff, we’re looking for local artisans that are doing Italian style or another style. The cheeses are American. That was one of the things that we took off on. Then I did some of stuff, like the pate that we had was the one from my dad’s restaurant, that we used to do. I wanted to have inspirational dishes to us. When Mai and I were talking, we wanted to do a banh mi sandwich. Now people are doing it. What’s going to make ours different?

So what is the twist on the banh mi that makes it different?

We’re doing it with a duck confit that you don’t normally see. Just that little preparation that makes it something different, but it’s still the classic peppers and the cucumbers. The mayo that she makes has a special little spice to it. There’s a sofrito that she mixes with the duck and ginger. She cuts everything perfectly. The care that she takes in something like that, I think it makes it a little bit different.

The criteria stuff, I have the Remi goat cheese that people always ask me for. I have the kickass chili from Saddle Peak that they don’t have on the menu anymore. I’ve been yelled at in restaurants, like I was working at the Beach House, and one guy yelled at me cause they took the kickass chili off the menu at Saddle Peak. “Dude, I don’t know.” I have a variation of that. We did our favorites and fun things that people wanted and we wanted. It’s just an ever-changing.

We wanted to do that pork sandwich…We wanted to do not a Philly style. I went with a friend, Mark Spanner, he’s a friend of my husband’s. He’s such a foodie. He lives in New York. The first time we went to their house…he picked us up at the airport and stops at his butcher, the fish guy, the little market in town, and I was like almost in tears by the time we’re done, because I’m thinking, “Oh, great, we’re going to get to his house on the water, and I’m going to be cooking for 25 people, stuck in somebody’s kitchen again.” It was not going to be a vacation for me. I was so upset – not saying anything – because he was so excited to show me everything. Soon as we get back to his house, he has a huge kitchen, he has a pizza oven in his kitchen. He pulls out two cutting boards, two glasses, and his knife box, and says, “Let’s cook together.” He was so excited that it changed that view that I had. On the different journeys I’ve been with him now, we went to a Foreign Legion club, someplace in Rye, and we went in, and the guy makes lunch there only. They had this unbelievable pork sandwich I had to have. And it was with steamed, sautéed rapini with a little bit of chile flakes, and that’s where the idea came from for this. Somebody told me it’s like a Philly pork sandwich, which I didn’t know, so we played with that and did fried rapini.

It’s recognizable. They don’t fry their rapini, and there are definitely some differences.

Yeah, so mostly it’s finding fun stuff we want to play with and tweaking a little bit, that tastes good, or we feel like eating. The thing that’s different on the Josie side, it’s elevated. What’s nice is that I work so much with the farmers market, it’s an expense to bring that in, but now that I’m buying a little bit more volume now, I can share those things on this side. I may not do all of the peas I’m bringing in and do a pea soup, because it takes so much. I might do that on that side [Josie], but I may do a hint of it on this side, so we can share a little bit of the flavors. But obviously the price point is 1/3 of the Josie side, and portions are different. It’s more of a gastropub on this side, with a little twist of what’s going on, on that side we have barramundi and some of the more high-end fishes, and try to do some fun stuff on the side. Cod, or fried halibut, there are different things we can do to balance it out.

What’s the biggest challenge about operating more than one restaurant?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Interview with chef Josie Le Balch (Josie + Next Door By Josie)

Here are links to some interesting posts from L.A. food writers over the last week:

Eater LA

On May 10, Eater LA editor Kat Odell reported Café Concerto Opened May 1: Coffee, Macarons, Booze in Koreatown.

On May 9, Eater LA contributor Matthew Kang shared A Guide to LA’s Most Expensive Designer Pizza Pies, including Milo & Olive, Sotto, Spago and Stella Rossa.

Grub Street LA

On May 10, Grub Street LA editor Hadley Tomicki reported, Dante’s Fried Chicken Does Parking Lot Tacos in East Hollywood, including a fried chicken taco in a black sesame tortilla with toasted almond coconut milk slaw and apricot “crack” sauce.

On May 7, Grub Street LA editor Hadley Tomicki interviewed Los Angeles Food Editor Lesley Bargar Suter on What It Feels Like To Win a James Beard Award.

On May 7, Grub Street LA editor Hadley Tomicki reported Lemon Poppy Kitchen Opens a Plachinta Paradise in Glassell Park, including the “crepe-like Romanian flatbreads,” buttermilk biscuits and Handsome coffee.

KCET Food

On May 8, Alie & Georgia invited readers to Drink Up: Pour Pous, describing the “elegant French cocktail salon” that the Houston brothers just opened “in the shadow of the Paramount fortress.”

LA Times Food

On May 11, Russ Parsons reported, Sausage heaven at last at Mozza, thanks to the byproduct of Chad Colby’s Saturday night, whole hog feasts.

On May 9, Russ Parsons interviewed one of Silverlake Wine’s owners in a post titled What Are You Drinking: George Cossette. As he said, “I’m always a sucker for something I’ve never heard of.”

On May 8, LA Times staffer Leah Rodrigues reported, Chef Ben Ford wins Cochon 555 competition, besting Chad Colby (Mozza), Neal Fraser and Travis Lorton (Strand House, Grace, BLT), Jason Neroni (Superba Snack Bar), and Micah Wexler (Mezze) by crafting dishes like “belly Benedict with a soft poached egg, Fresno chile and bacon hollandaise” and “pork tartare paired with quail egg, walnut oil and confit shallot.”

On May 7, Betty Hallock had 5 Questions for Niki Nakayama, the chef-owner of n/naka, a kaiseki restaurant in Palms.

LA Weekly (Squid Ink)

On May 8, Emily Dwass reported Pedalers Fork Under Construction in Calabasas, describing a cyclist-friendly dining establishment from a former Providence chef.

OC Weekly Stick a Fork in It

On May 10 in the latest installment of the Tijuana Si! column, Bill Esparza reviewed Taco Kokopelli: Next Wave Chef Takes to the Streets in Tijuana, describing tacos called the Kraken and Black Harder.

Street Gourmet LA

On May 13, for Mother’s Day, Street Gourmet LA founder Bill Esparza wrote about La Saturnina, Aguascalientes, AGS: Flores de mi Abuela. He described trunkfuls of loot, “a perilous highway race” in the Chihuahuan desert, the flowers of his youth, and the “bright, stinging” chile de bola.

Favorite Posts from May 7 – 13, 2012

Dave Shenaut previously split time behind the bars at two of Portland’s better cocktail establishments, Rum Club and Kask, and founded Portland Cocktail Week, which has doubled in size each year. Now he’s taken the title of Director of Drink at Riffle, a new catch inspired, seafood focused restaurant in NW Portland where he oversees every ounce of liquid. On April 22, we met him across the river at Lloyd’s Coffee Shop, and Shenaut shared spirited insights that hinted at why he’s been successful.

What’s your fist cocktail memory, good or bad?

Kind of the groundbreaking one was at House Spirits here in town. Chris John and me were together at the time, and he invited me down. I was kind of running this place, bartending, called Roots restaurant, young and full of arrogance. I had all these different infusions on my back bar, all kinds of different infusions, and would do a lot of flair. I went down and met them, and they made a Pegu Club for me with salt and pepper and it absolutely blew me away, the level of balance and nuance in those cocktails. At the time, I was free-pouring and everything was basic Lemon Drop variants. Change the syrup a little bit, infuse the vodka a little bit, free-pour into a glass, do a lot of show, a lot of flair. My first sip of that Pegu Club, and watching them use these dirty, rusty tools, but the drink they gave me was just exquisite. I had a conversation with Chris John following that, and basically put down my flair bottles and picked up some jiggers.

At what point did you know that you would work with cocktails and spirits for a living?

Man that’s a tough one. I think at that point. It was always this fun, showmanship thing, and I really liked the people across the bar, and I liked making them feel good, but then I realized I could make amazing, great flavor, which was when I started to develop.

What was your very first bar job, and how did it come about?

My first bar job was in an Applebee’s. I was a server, and 20 years old, and the bartender at the time was having the most fun and making the most money, and having people come in and seeing him. The minute I turned 21, I got behind the bar and started making strawberry lemonades and margaritas at Applebee’s in Vancouver, Washington.

What do you remember about the very first night behind the bar?

I remember it was pretty important that I took care of everything I had to do as a server, and I would sneak in and make a few drinks, a Bahama Mama or an Oreo milkshake kind of thing, and the stuff they do there. I had to multi-task. I had to do my job very, very well, plus take on the role of someone else, this girl Amy, who let me come behind the bar and make her drinks so she could help other customers.

So leading up to Riffle, you were over at Kask?

Yeah, I was splitting my time between Kask and Rum Club, so basically I went to work at two small cocktail bars, both run by close friends of mine. One was Eastside, kind of walking that line between dive bar and cocktail bar, the Rum Club. It’s a really great space and Mike Shea’s done an awesome job. The other one is a very small place by Tommy Klus. It’s kind of a waiting room for Gruner, but it’s become its own thing. It’s got an incredible whiskey selection and Scotch selection. I think it’s probably the interesting spirits selection in the city. Rum Club’s got 35 or 40 rums on the back bar, so working at both places and getting to taste these premium whiskeys and premium rums at the same time, in both categories, it was a great opportunity.

How did the opportunity came about here at Riffle?

Actually, Katie Burnett. Portland Cocktail Week, I’m the founder. Katie worked with us for Portland Cocktail Week, working to promote with Lush Life. She introduced me to these guys, Ken and Jen Norris. It’s great. They’re so passionate, so driven, I’m really looking forward to working with those guys. They’re amazing. Their food is killer.

What does a cocktail have to be to go on the menu at Riffle?

That’s a tough question.

Any common threads?

Yeah. It’s easier for me to describe in terms of the wine program. We’re going to do an Old World style Loire Valley wine program with light, bright acidity, and fruity, sweet flavors, very approachable. Not a whole lot of wood, not a whole lot of oak anywhere. It’s a fish, fresh catch inspired restaurant, so I think the overwhelming feeling of Riffle is an unaged spirits program, nice French fruit liqueurs, with some other things.

Would you say that you’ve had any cocktail and spirit mentors over the years?

Daniel Shoemaker at Teardrop Lounge.

Did you work there?

Yeah. I worked there from opening for about three years. I go back to that story with Chris John. “How am I going to get involved in the craft side of things?” Basically, he put in a good word for me with Daniel, who was just opening Teardrop, and I got in there. After bartending for five years, I went in there and told him I’d bar back, whatever it took to get in the door. Daniel and I worked back to back on busy, busy nights for two-and-a-half solid years. We learned a lot together. He taught me all kinds of things.

As far as naming cocktails, what’s your approach?

Oh man, that’s one of the hardest things. I look up lists of horse names, of lines from movies. It’s tough. I think you end up being in an ongoing search for cocktail names, keep a list in the phone, anything that sounds interesting, you just type in a list for possible cocktail names. Sometimes a drink is named after somebody I’ve met. Sometimes, something that’s inspired by the ingredients. You want people to laugh and think something’s approachable. You want people to see something and have some recognition for it.

What would a Dave Shenaut cocktail be?

One that I’m making today for Cocktail Camp is a Souracher. It’s named for this German guy who used to work as a line cook at the restaurant, Roots, that I used to work at. Every night he drank rye whiskey with Campari and a lime squeeze. I was so fascinated by that flavor combination, that I worked with that flavor combination for a long time. I found this drink called an Eva Peron. Are you familiar?

No.

It’s a Fernet cocktail out of San Francisco. I had that at Tales of the Cocktail and I applied that style of drink to this flavor combination that I’d been working with forever, finished the cocktail and just named it after this guy’s last name.

What do you look for when you’re hiring a bartender?

INTERVIEW CONTINUED ON THE NEXT PAGE

Interview with Director of Drink Dave Shenaut (Riffle)

The anticipation was palpable, with a collection of food lovers and science geeks gathered in UCLA’s Moore Hall to listen to the world’s preeminent chef, Rene Redzepi of Noma Restaurant, and his right hand man, Lars Williams, head of the Nordic Food Lab. Dr. Amy Rowat, head of the Science and Food program at UCLA, gave a short introduction about why food science was relevant to our culture today, with a brief description of the kinds of molecules that exist in the foods we eat. Not only do they make the building blocks of the foods we eat, these molecules are essential for life, for the construction of the membranes in the individual cells of our body. This particular lecture focused on what made certain foods “delicious,” or rather, how to explain “deliciousness” as a feature of the foods we eat.

Chef Rene Redzepi began by describing Noma Restaurant, currently rated the number one restaurant in the world by San Pelligrino’s list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Originally a staff of 9 in 2003, the Copenhagen restaurant now staffs 75 people of 22 different nationalities (45 alone in the kitchen). The original mission of the restaurant was to use only locally-sourced ingredients, especially through foraging. While there were initial accolades, they just weren’t finding satisfaction in what they were doing. They wanted to see how they could make the venture fun and sustainable. They wanted to approach food with a stronger purpose.

What they needed to do was to give diners a sense of time and place, incorporating such elements as history and religion in the context of their dining environment – Scandinavia, or in a greater sense, Northern Europe. The revelation of this approach came when Redzepi was wandering through a local shoreline, a nearly swamp-like environment where he saw a patch of green. Plucking a small plant that resembled an asparagus, he took a bite of it without consulting a guide (something he strictly did not recommend to the lecture hall to the tune of laughter). What he tasted was surprising, a celery-stick type texture that had a natural salinity and not-so-subtle flavors of coriander, or more commonly, cilantro. Cilantro and its corresponding flavors were always dominant in the South, places like Thailand or Mexico, never this far north in the world. This investigation led to an approach of what he called un-learning what they had learned as culinary practitioners.

Through the use of some collaborative symposiums (MAD2011 and MAD2012 – “mad means food in Danish”), they were able to invite chefs and scientists to explore issues of food and culture. By looking at food in this perspective, they were able to establish “deliciousness” as the main objective. Science, technology, Culinary Practices & Processes, Intuition, Tradition – these would all revolve around the pursuit of deliciousness. The word itself is a bit awkward, but there isn’t a better way to express it in the English language. It seems unique to have taste and flavor as your main driver, not traditional cuisine, or science, or “culinary perfection.” Something just needs to be tasty, or delicious, to have merit.

Williams and Redzepi proceeded to show a few demonstrations as to how they could extrapolate these principles of deliciousness into certain foods, debunking long-held notions of what we might think to be delicious. An easy example was making seaweed ice cream, as Styrofoam buckets of nitrogen-frozen seaweed ice cream were passed around to taste. The flavor was very subtle, with a finish of familiar seaweed flavor without the roasted element that is commonly associated with Korean or Japanese seaweed laver. They also passed around a sample of molded barley that had an intense meaty flavor that came about after being fried to a golden color.

By investigating the microorganisms that affect the flavor of food, in this instance, the mold in the barley, they were able to establish certain metabolic pathways used by microbes that affect flavor. This way, they could deconstruct and construct elements to express flavor compounds that you couldn’t otherwise achieve.

Next, they had us taste a pipette of carrot kombucha and powdered dried winter cucumbers. These were two examples of foods that were re-thought and processed in creative ways, using their approach. I embarassingly choked on the cucumber powder, but the flavor of dried cucumber was strong, and I could see how it could be used effectively as a dish component.

Finally, they had a blind-taste a dark liquid that tasted of mild soy sauce. They showed a slide of crickets garnished with purple flowers. The crowd responded with murmurs and even some groans at the thought of consuming insects. The liquid we had tasted was a garum of crickets (originally supposed to be a sand fleas, commonly called sand crabs, though they could not be procured). A garum is an ancient Roman method of creating umami-rich fish sauce with fermented fish parts, and the approach is common in Southeast Asian fish sauce creation. Williams and Redzepi proceeded to show us how the garum was made. They blended live crickets on the stage, then mixed in molded barley (for the enzymatic action in the mold). It’s later aged for six weeks before being filtered.

From here the lecture seems to go in a number of different directions, first with Redzepi trying to use the example of cricket garum to re-think how the Western palate approach certain ingredients and flavors (especially the consumption of insects). They created controversy when they had served insects at Noma, with some internet critics accusing the restaurant as being a modern “emperor’s clothing,” unabashedly serving such a lowly ingredient at a fine dining restaurant. The insects they had served were ants that had the flavor of kaffir lime, which they had procured in Denmark.

Redzepi and Williams had gone fill circle in their lecture, establishing cuisine as a context of culture and tradition, while showing their efforts in food science to successful bend what we might think of as approach food for eating. What remains to be seen is their long term effects on our approach to food. Their belief is that the efforts of the Nordic Food Lab will have longer effects than Noma, which isn’t sustainable without the unpaid work of dozens, as is common in many of the world’s top kitchens.

The Exploration of Deliciousness with Rene Redzepi and Lars Williams

The L.A. Beer Blast lets Food GPS readers know what’s new at select L.A. bars and restaurants with great beer selections. You’ll also discover beer-related events in the area.

READ BREW & YOU

The craft beer revolution has a lot in common with the Farmer’s Markets. Now it seems, rather than being content with pairing beer with a great meal, brewers are putting the farm into the foam. The Beer of the Week is a spicy collaboration, and your Homework project starts with solera.

BREWMASTER OF THE WEEK

Alex Ganum started in the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before the Michigan native switched to the brewhouse. An inspiring internship at Brewery Ommegang led to Portland, and eventually, Upright Brewing.

View L.A. Beer Blast in a larger map

Numbered establishments on the map correspond to information below for easy reference:

1. 38 Degrees (Alhambra)

Upcoming Event:
We are proud to host the team from The Bruery May 12th as we celebrate this brilliant, classy brewery’s 4th Anniversary of making beautiful beer in a First Class setting here at 38 Degrees. This evening we will feature many rare Bruery gems on draught and serve multiple flights of 4 at a time. Yes, the new 4th Anniversary brew Fruet will be on tap as well.

2. Beachwood BBQ (Long Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Upright Pils
2. Beachwood Brewing The Falcon West Coast IPA
3. Jolly Pumpkin Bambic
4. Beachwood Brewing Tart Simpson Berliner Weisse
5. Beachwood Brewing James American Brown ale

Upcoming Events:
Join our friends from Firestone Walker on May 15th for a night of great beer and great giveaways!

3. Beachwood BBQ (Seal Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Maui La Perouse Belgian Wit
2. Foret Organic Saison
3. Speakeasy Massacre Wheat Wine
4. Beachwood Brewing Forever Bitter
5. Struise Black Damnation VII

Upcoming Event:
May 10th, How about a night out at Beachwood to celebrate the 4th Anniversary of our friends/neighbors The Bruery! Patrick and the rest of the crew from The Bruery will be on hand and they’ve got special plans for the evening.

4. Beer Belly (Koreatown)

Beers of the Week:
1. Craftsman Ochre Ale
2. Monkish Red Table
3. Smog City Little Bo Pils
4. Beachwood Brewing Alpha Waves
5. Firestone Walker Wookie Jack

Upcoming Event:
5/16 Wed. Beer Belly presents a One Night Stand with The Bruery. Our Favorite OC Bruery is celebrating their 4th Anniversary, with proceeds going to Share Our Strength, a non-profit organization. Taplist includes Fruet (anniversary ale), Nottenroth (unsour Hottenroth with kumquats), Go Team! (Eagle Rock collaboration), Loakal Red, Mischief, Gremlin (Belgian golden), Trade Winds, Carmen with Cranberries (sour brown), Cuvee Jeune (young lambic), Sans Pagaie (sour blonde with cherries), White Oak (barrel aged wheat wine blended with mischief) and Birra Basta (biere de garde with zucchini, lemon and cedar). #NoKidHungry

5. Ladyface Ale Companie (Agoura Hills)

Beers of the Week:
1 Eagle Rock Populist
2 Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
3 Ladyface La Blonde – new batch just tapped
4 Ladyface Cask of Week: Dérailleurberry (Derailleur® w/elderberry)
5 Stone Cali-Belgique

Upcoming Event:
American Craft Beer Week at Ladyface features two new beer releases, four days of music, Ales from the Vault, brewery tour, Brewmaster’s Dinner & more! Visit the website and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all the details.

6. Little Bear (Downtown)

Beers of the Week:
1. White Oak – The Bruery (barrel aged strong ale)
2. Malheur 12 (Quadrupel)
3. Pannepeut – Struise (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
4. La Perouse – Maui (Belgian Witbier)
5. Baudelaire iO – Jolly Pumpkin (Saison)

We have also started happy hour, $2 off select draft and $4 well drinks, 4-6 pm Monday through Friday. Also next week we will start partaking in an old Dutch tradition during happy hour called kopstootje, a beer and a shot. We will be featuring Bols Genever (a traditional Dutch gin) and Maes Pils.

7. Rock & Brews (El Segundo)

Beers of the Week:
1. Ten Fidy (NITRO), , , and.
2. Mikkeller Milk Stout,
3. The Bruery Tradewinds Triple
4. Figueroa Mountain Hoppy Poppy
5. Alesmith Speedway Stout

Upcoming Event:
In two weeks on May 16th we’re having an epic flight night with Hangar 24: Pugachev’s Cobra, Hammerhead, Vinaceous, and Palmero all together in one flight! Cheese pairing plates will be available as well.

8. The Factory Gastrobar (Long Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Avery Maharaja
2. Cismontane Coulter IPA
3. Sudwerk Maibock
4. Heretic Evil Cousin
5. Port Hot Rocks

Upcoming Event:
On Monday, May 14, we will kick off American Craft Beer Week with a blessing of The Factory Gastrobar by our local priest, an introduction to the beers of Monkish Brewing by brewer/owner Henry Nguyen, and the tapping of Lost Abbey’s Deliverance! JUST ADDED = Lost Coast Tripel IPA, Cismontane Anniversary Belgian IPA!!!!

10. The Surly Goat (West Hollywood)

Beers of the Week:
1. Port Pilsner
2. Speakeasy Massacre (Imperial Witbier)
3. Deschutes Black Butte 23
4. Eagle Rock Solidarity with Bitter Orange (Cask)
5. Avery Uncle Jacob’s Stout (Bottle)

Upcoming Event:
On May 10, The Surly Goat is hosting Eagle Rock Brewery all night long. Come drink with Jeremy Raub, Ting Su and the rest of the ERB crew, and $1 from the sale of each their beers goes to Share Our Strength. The Goat will be pouring multiple Eagle Rock beers, including Libertine, their special Imperial amber witbier.

11. Verdugo Bar (Glassell Park)

Beers of the Week:
1. North Coast Acme Pale on nitro
2. Ballast Point Fathom IPL
3. Stone Mixtape
4. Moylans Hop Craic
5. Avery Uncle Jacob’s Stout (Bottle)

Current Event:
Verdugo Bar just launched a daily Happy Hour, which runs from 6 – 8 p.m. during the week and 3 – 5 p.m. on weekends. It’s $2 off select beers, $4 well. Special beers change weekly.

12. Tony’s Darts Away (Burbank)

Beers of the Week:
1. Rubicon Hop Sauce DIPA
2. Port Hot Rocks Smoked Lager
3. Golden Road Hudson Porter
4. H24 Hammerhead Barrel Aged Barleywine
5. Ballast Point Fathom IPL

Upcoming Event:
Come celebrate American Craft Beer Week with Firestone Walker! Parabola 2011 and 2012, Wooky Jack, Black Xantus, Double Jack and more! Starts at 6pm on Tuesday, May15th.

13. Mohawk Bend (Echo Park)

Beers of the Week:
1. Ladyface Russian Lullaby RIS
2. North Coast Acme Pale Ale on Nitro
3. Craftsman Monkey See, Monkey Do DIPA
4. Smog City Sabre Toothe Squirrel
5. 2010 John Barleycorn Barleywine

Current Event:
Celebrate American Craft Week at Mohawk Bend on Saturday, May 19th. We will be debuting El Segundo’s Two 5 Left and featuring many of their other beers as well. Starts at 6pm. See you here!

14. Golden Road Pub (Atwater Village)

Beers of the Week:
1. Coronado Frog’s Breathe
2. Eagle Rock Solidarity on Nitro
3. TAPS Barleywine
4. GRB Either Side of the Hill
5. GRB Get Up Offa That Brown

Upcoming Event:
Celebrate American Craft Beer Week with CANS!!!! We will be featuring different can brands all week including Big Sky Brewing, Sierra Nevada and New Belgium. Check our facebook for daily specials on these cans and MORE!

15. Library Alehouse (Santa Monica)

Beers of the Week:
1. Stone Bottleworks 13th Anniversary
2. Stone Mixtape Vol. 1
3. Russian River Pliny the Elder
4. Green Flash 30th St. Pale Ale
5. Bockor Cuvee des Jacobins Rouge

Upcoming Event:
American Craft Beer Week Kickoff at Library Alehouse with Hangar 24

Join Hangar 24’s Head Brewer Joe Savage at 6pm on May 14th for the release of the fourth beer in Hangar 24’s Barrel Roll Series: Hammerhead Barleywine. Hammerhead was aged in Rye and Bourbon barrels and tips the scales at 13.8% ABV.

In addition to Hammerhead, we’ll also have the debut of Local Fields: Palmero, a Belgian-style Dubbel brewed with local dates and raisin syrup. Rounding out the tap list for the evening are Double IPA, Alt-Bier and Orange Wheat.

We’ll have flights, special food pairings and of course, general merriment. Watch the Alehouse facebook page (facebook.com/libraryalehouse) and twitter feed (twitter.com/libraryalehouse) for further details.

16. Maximilliano (Highland Park)

Beers of the Week:
1. Craftsman Juniper Ale – Belgian Style Pale Ale brewed with Juniper Berries
2. Craftsman Ochre Ale – Sour Ale
3. Craftsman Point Five – Session IPA
4. Telegraph Los Padres – Dry Hopped Saison
5. Bottle: Logsdon Kili Wit

Upcoming Event:
Starting Next Monday, May 15th & every Monday thereafter, we will be hosting a Flight Night. Make your own flight, pick any 5 draft pours from our list.
This Monday we’ll be debuting our very own Craftsman Brewing “Maximiliano House Beer” 1903 brewed with Oregano & Thyme! Head Brewer/Owner Mark Jilg will be in the house, hanging out on Monday too!

17. 4 Points LAX (LAX Airport)

Beers of the Week:
1. The Bruery’s Mischief
2. Monkish Crux
3. Knee Deep MEPS Belgian Saison
4. Eagle Rock Revolution
5. Anchorage Galaxy White IPA (bottle)

Current Event:
On Saturday, May 12th from noon to 5pm we are celebrating the re-opening of our pool bar with by having a Local Brewer’s Fest and Pool Party.

We are featuring beer and brewery representatives from The Bruery, Strand, El Segundo, Hangar 24, Smog City, Taps, Golden Road, Monkish, Bootlegger’s, Cismontane, Drake’s, and Sierra Nevada. We will have BBQ available, and live music. Here’s a few of the beers we will be pouring: Sierra Nevada Flip Side Double IPA, Bootlegger’s Smokin’ Joe, Eagle Rock Deuce, El Segundo Citra Pale Ale, The Bruery’s Sans Pagaie (Kriek) and a Barrel Aged Blend from Drake’s. $24 admission includes 12 3oz tastes and validated parking. RSVP (requested but not required) via Facebook.

18. The LAB Brewing Co. (Agoura Hills)

Beers of the Week:
1. Ballast Point Sextant Oatmeal Stout on Nitro! (San Diego)
2. Oskar Blues Dales Deviant IPA (Colorado)
3. Enegren Black Saison (Moorpark)
4. The Lab Belgian Pale Ale (Agoura Hills)
5. The Lab Bad Influence double dry hopped IPA (Agoura Hills)

Current Event:
A new beer will be tapped each day starting Monday. Find us on Facebook and check out www.labbrewingco.com for a full schedule and other daily specials and events coming soon! https://www.facebook.com/LABBrewingCo

L.A. Beer Blast: The Best in Local Craft Beer

Alex Ganum started in the kitchen, but it wasn’t long before the Michigan native switched to the brewhouse. An inspiring internship at Brewery Ommegang in upstate New York led to Portland. After three years of working in production for BJ’s, he founded Upright Brewing near Portland Memorial Coliseum in 2006. We spoke by phone on May 1, and Ganum shared insights that hint at why he’s found hop-fueled success.

Was it a given that you’d work with beer for a living, or did you consider other careers?

It’s been a long time since I was in beer. It was probably 2002 where I wanted to pursue brewing as a career.

What were you doing for a living leading up to working with beer?

I was in culinary school when I started brewing, but I took to brewing a lot more than other stuff, so I finished school and pursued a beer job.

What was your first professional beer job?

I had an internship at Brewery Ommegang in 2003. That was really cool. I moved back to Portland and worked at the local BJ’s for a little over three years.

How did the opportunity come about for Upright?

It was just something I had been thinking about for a long time. It eventually got to the point where I wanted to leave BJ’s, and decided I might as well do it now, so started to figure things out from there.

Do you have a first beer memory, good or bad?

I remember drinking a lot of German pilsner. My dad always had Spaten or Paulaner Pilsner in the fridge, and Sam Adams Boston Lager too.

What was the first beer that you ever brewed, and how did it turn out?

The first beer we made at Upright was an Old Ale called Billy The Mountain. It came out nice. We put a little bit of Brett in the barrel and started to learn about barrel aging. We’ve learned a ton since, which is cool and exciting from a professional standpoint.

My first homebrew was a mild ale that was part of a kit, and I remember doing a porter, and all the beers that homebrewers go through. My first whole grain beer was a Belgian style Golden, and I remember propping yeast out of a bottle, so that was kind of fun..

What’s the criteria for a beer that you brew at Upright?

A bunch of different things. We have a handful of beers that we brew year round, tinker with and make them better, changing ingredients, but seasonal beers or one-off beers, it’s the same as the annual beers. We make tweaks for fun or if we think we can get a better direction or try new things. If we see a tank’s going to be empty next week, we definitely focus on beers we enjoy drinking at the bar.

Does it make your job easier or harder to have so many other craft breweries in Portland?

I think it’s easier. We have a lot of breweries, because there’s a really big audience here. It’s just a big thing between the breweries and audience. To isolate them from each would be weird. Competition’s not a huge issue out here anyway because there are so many people looking for beers. Most craft beer drinkers aren’t so brand loyal that they won’t drink other breweries’ beers.

What was the most recent beer that you brewed, and what was your approach?

Our most recent beer we did was for Cheers for Belgian Beers, where all the breweries used the same strain of Belgian yeast. We made Belgian stout and left it on the cooler side so it wouldn’t be too fruity. We got coffee from a local roaster, Heart Coffee Roasters, so a lot of the subtlety in the coffee came through in the beer.

What’s your top selling beer, and why do you think that’s the case?

Locally, we sell draught wise a lot of German style pilsner called Engelberg. It’s a really easy drinking beer that bars and restaurants like, because there’s not too much in the way of local pilsners available. Otherwise it depends on time of the year. Our wheat beer, the Four, does well for us in July and August. In the wintertime it really evens out quite a bit.

Who’s a brewer you’ve never brewed with before that you’d most like to brew with?

Oh gosh, I really like Ron Jeffries over there at Jolly Pumpkin. I drink his beers whenever possible. They’re really quirky. They have a lot of character and individuality. I also like a lot of simple pub beers, low alcohol, simple stuff, and a lot of brewers are doing that stuff, and I go see them every week and hang out.

What music do you like to listen to while brewing?

We usually have music on that has a lot of horns. The brewery’s loud, so it takes horns for it to come through, stuff like louder jazz, punk, soul, stuff like that.

Where and what do you like to drink when you’re not working?

Everything. Everything. I really like wine, booze and cocktails. We have a lot of distilleries popping up out here, which is super cool. I mix it up when I go out drinking. Drinking wine, I stick with mostly Washington, Oregon, and California wines, but I also go with French stuff too. There are some really killer French wines out there, especially the whites.

If you could travel to any city in the world right now, primarily to drink beer, what city would it be and how come?

Probably Düsseldorf because we’re going to brew an altbier for the Oregon Brewers Festival and I wouldn’t mind sucking down a bunch of altbiers to figure out to make it. And it would be cool to go to Düsseldorf, regardless of whether or not we were making that beer.

If you could only drink one more beer, and you couldn’t brew it, what would it be and why?

Jeeze. I’ve got hefe on my mind these days, maybe a really fresh Schneider-Weisse sounds really good. I’d like a liter of it.

Interview with Upright Brewing founder Alex Ganum

The craft beer revolution has a lot in common with the Farmer’s Markets and eat local movements. Now it seems, rather than being content with pairing beer with a great meal, brewers are putting the farm into the foam (as the brewing folks at Twisted Pine in Boulder have labeled their upcoming Carrot IPA.)

Now instead of a V8, you can have a pint of beer that is made with pumpkins, peppers, , tomatillos, tea and even mushrooms! Now, there has always been a history of fruit in beer from shandy’s and radler’s to lambics. Sometimes the fruit is added to cut some of the sour notes or to complement a wheat beer. But there has been a resurgence of using the full palate of farm options available recently.

And you don’t have to fly to Colorado to do it. You just have to head to Blue Palms on the 19th to the Farmers Market FestivALE!!! . While there you can sip the Stone Mixtape beer that includes most of what Simon & Garfunkel had at the Scarborough Fair. Minus the parsley. Or you could try the latest beer from bay area brewer, Almanac whose previous beers featured plums and blood oranges and whose third offering is using fennel!

If you can stand the heat, you can taste chipotle in your stout or try the famous Sculpin IPA from Ballast Point with habanero peppers added. There will be some fruited beers on offer as well so that you can fill out your food pyramid for the day.

Just don’t try to claim that this is your daily dose of leafy greens. There is no kale or spinach beers. That I know of. Yet.

The beer of the week comes from craft beer pioneers, the Widmer Brothers of Portland. Spiced IPA is a collaboration (just like last week) between Widmer and the Quaff home brew club of San Diego. Quaff stands for Quality Ale and Fermentation Fraternity. The multi-state pair have added a twist to the now traditional West Coast IPA by adding assam black tea and a host of spices like ginger, cinanamon, clove, cardamom and black pepper to it. Spiced IPA is part of the Widmer Rotator IPA series that has seen a rye IPA, a bold Citra IPA and Falconer’s Flight (a new hop varietal).

Your homework this week is to start using the term solera. Because you will need to as The Bruery’s Fruet, fourth anniversary beer starts hitting fine craft beer establishments across Los Angeles just in time for American Craft Beer Week. It is a very time intensive process of aging beer. You fill barrels with this year’s beer, then next year you bottle some of the year 1 beer and add in the year 2 beer. Then next year you bottle some of the 1+2 blend and add in year 3. Now picture this with many more barrels. Thankfully the Bruery is keeping track of what year is in what barrel for us.

The beer of the week comes from craft beer pioneers, the Beer Search Party.

Drink Your Vegetables