I’m going to be in L.A for a few days. Any spots I should look into? We like pretty much all styles but have been skewing sour as of late.

Brewery Terreaux if you are into sours. Bottle Logic is pretty close to there also for another stop (not sours).

Saisons are also my go to. If you get down thru the W burbs or Chicago, check out Afterthought Brewing if you haven't already. I'm just a fan, no affiliation but god damn if they don't hit every release out of the park. https://untappd.com/AfterthoughtBrewing HF-level saisons imo. On top of that, widely available in this area... Can find them at Beer Temple, or mainly at Beer Cellar, Beer on the Wall, or Orange & Brew.

If you never get down here and you're interested, shoot me a PM and I can proxy some or we could work out a $4$ funk factory thing or something.

Check out the list at Monkish. I loved them for IPAs and Belgians, forget if they have any sours.

I also love to go to Simmzy's in Manhattan Beach and Naja's in Redondo Beach.

Disregard this entire post if you won't be close to the South Bay!

Monkish does make some very good saisons.

When I went to LA a few times for work hitting up Monkish on the way out of town was always good fun. The drive up to the airport if you're staying around there for the flight out is easy, they tend to have solid food truck options, and the people that work there are great. The beer is good, though I would argue their saisons - while well regarded - are a solid 2-3 tiers below the best (HF, Tired Hands, SARA, SP, etc.).

They rarely had anything to go and my understanding is it's a **** show when they do, and it seemed to always be crowded when I went. But I didn't mind either of those.

For other spots, I find LA is a town that it depends on where you are going to be. But I had a couple of bottles sent to me in a trade a couple years back from Cellador Ales, who I think specialize in sour beers, and they were very good.

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Downtown, thanks for the shout. We love Chicago, and I'd never heard of that brewery. They look outstanding. Would you say you are routinely able to find those beers on the shelf? We were thinking about making a trip down in a couple of months for the weekend, I may have to shoehorn that into such a trip. (Potentially open to trading when weather gets nicer too - I got out of that a couple of years ago when reddit shut it down. Have to admit, not packing beer on Sunday evenings has been nice.)

Drinking a 2017 cable car. I've had a pour of cable car before but never split a bottle. God damn that is one fine beer.

Headed to Denver next week. Any recommendations?


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Oh man I could go on forever...

I don't know your style preference or where you're staying, but I'll give it a shot by throwing out a few options:

For new-school IPAs, try Cerebral and Fiction. For west coast leaning styles try Comrade. These are all on the eastern end of town.

For wild ales and blended beers, try TRVE and Black Project on South Broadway. TRVE is a "heavy metal" brewery, but def don't let it turn you off if that's not your jam.

German beers, go to Bierstadt in the RiNo neighborhood. Their Slow Pour Pils is generally regarded as the best pilsner in town. And while in the area you can walk to about a dozen other breweries, including places I would recommend like Epic, River North, Great Divide, Our Mutual Friend, and Black Shirt. I know I'm forgetting others. Other interesting spots not far away are Spangalang in Five Points, and also Liberati in the Curtis Park neighborhood, started by an Italian guy who makes "oenobeers." Beautiful space too.

For beer bars with food, my personal favorite is Hops & Pie in the Berkeley neighborhood (NW Denver). Outstanding draft list that is constantly rotating and excellent food. Always jam packed in the evenings but enjoy a beer or two while you wait for a seat. I live two blocks away and go there way too much. You can also walk to several breweries in the area, with Call to Arms (former Avery guys) being the best. Empourium is decent too. For food/beer closer to downtown I like Walter's 303 in Uptown, Freshcraft, and Euclid Hall. And then there's always Falling Rock in LoDo, Denver's most famous beer bar. They have an extensive tap list but the food isn't the greatest.

So much else but I hope this helps for now.

Not a ton of experience in Denver but I thoroughly enjoyed Great Divide so I'll reiterate that recommendation. Also I'm pretty sure Denver is the best airport in the USA for beer (though I'm happy to be proven otherwise).

Side note: wanted to plug Braindead Brewing in Dallas which I just had a really good time at. I have really struggled to find good local IPAs on previous Texas trips and this place blew away anything else I've had here.

Great list. I'm like 2 miles west of you, ha.

What did you think of Grateful Gnome near you? I've only been once, and it was like stop 4 of a birthday party crawl, but I did enjoy it. De Steg is under new ownership/brewing team, only had two strong belgians there last time but it was also good. I didn't love Emporium, but went basically went they first opened. CTA is top notch.

Ha nice. I assume you're not too far from Colorado Plus in Wheat Ridge? Decent food/beer list there as well.

I like Grateful Gnome ok, as well as DeSteeg in the alley. To me they're both hit or miss but I know which beers I tend to like at each so we frequent those places too Same with FlyteCo just off Tennyson on 38th. I like Empourium a lot but totally get that everybody has different tastes. Try their Peace, Love & Pale Ale if you haven't already and enjoy pales. They made a great pilsner too but I don't remember the name or know if it's regularly on tap.

Also, imo Hogshead is top notch as well but for most people probably not walkable from these other places.

Crooked stave

I was going to come to this thread to ask for recommendations for Denver, as I'm about to board my flight, so it's a pretty happy surprise that someone else just got such good intel.
Riddle, if you're in town for Lead Gen World let me know!

I really like Hogshead, I bike up there in the summers. C+ too yes, love being able to try so many CO beers in one place and a very good kitchen there. My friend used to brew there a few years back too before he started his own brewpub.

I actually hit FlyteCo a couple weekends ago, Hops and Pie had a 50 min wait list so we walked over there for some beers, they had a couple nice beers, the saison collab with Bruz probably my favorite.

Requesting trip report.

Marshal Zhukov's Imperial Stout is amazing if you're into this style. Smooth as silk.

Was in Chicago last weekend. I love the Off Color Mouse Trap tap room, and their graphics designs really connects with me. It's the second time I've been there and I think it will be a must-hit each time we go back.

Wife and I also went to Goose Island. They had some pretty ridiculous taps including a cuvee of Reserve BCBS beers and BCBS Coffee from like 17 or 18. We ended up splitting a bottle of Vanilla Rye. It's definitely not the beer it was 3 or 4 years ago, but I'm glad we got one final crack at it. With the slightly more subtle flavors, it went down really smooth. Dangerously smooth.

The first night we also went to Longman & Eagle, which has a great whiskey menu. I had a Thomas H Handy sazerac that would put some hair on your chest.

In closing, what a great city.

Hey San Diego beer peeps heading to your great city next week with the kiddo. Looking for recs for kid friendly breweries, maybe something with games, arcade games, a menu with stuff like pizza. I saw some good recommendations in this thread that I was going to cross reference to some some kid friendly brewery lists I saw. That being said if the 2+2ers had some recs I’d appreciate it.

Um never-mind I’ll need to cancel due to Coronavirus and my company see if the whole state of California level 3. If I go I’ll be quarantined from work for 14 days.

Is it paid quarantine though?

You guys ever tried Fall River Brewing out of Fall River, CA?? Its super deep Northern California. They don't distribute very far, but if you're ever in Sacramento or North of there, I'm sure you'll be able to find it somewhere. There's a tap room in Redding, CA that you should check out if you're ever passing through. They have an amazing IPA called Hexagenia. This is one of their newest beers, a super good Hazy.

Hopefully everyone is safe and doing well. Times like this are when it's good to have a beer cellar.

Ha this all became irrelevant as the whole office was shut down the following week.

My beer consumption has certainly increased.

Can any of you lambic folks advise on how delicious 3 Fonteinen gold blend and homage are? There’s a couple at the local liquor store but they’re $52. Just wondering if they are $52 special. I like standard 3f and tilquin quite a bit.

Assuming they're 750s that's pretty much the same price we'd pay for them in Europe (I'd expect to see something between £29 and £36 for them). Can't comment more as they're out of my price range, but it doesn't seem unreasonably expensive to me given import costs.