THE COCKTAIL HOUR: The Placerville Brewfest

(Note: The Placerville Brewfest has changed to the Motherlode Beer and Music Festival and now takes place at the El Dorado County Fairground in mid-August - Ed)

As a retirement present, I received three VIP passes to the Placerville Brewfest. Placerville an historic Gold Rush city in California, east of Sacramento. It's also the county seat of El Dorado County. The brewfest takes place on the streets of downtown here on a Saturday late in June each year.

The VIP passes get us in an hour early, a large glass for tasting, and a bag to collect swag from the brewers on site. We get a taxi to take us from our hotel so there'll be no inhibitions here tonight...we have four hours  to drink as many samples as we can.

After checking in and getting our wristbands, we on the prowl for brew...

Watch the Video!

It's in the mid 90's today on Main Street. The buildings on either side of us date back to the Gold Rush. In fact, we can drive 30 minutes and stand on the little piece of sand where James Marshall found the nugget that started it all. Today, the gold is liquid. Well, most of it is. Some is red and some of the porters are brown.

We've got three blocks ahead of us, lined with people ready to give us free, ice cold beer.

There are a few big guys here like Sierra Nevada, Deschutes, and Gordon Biersch but the vast majority of the booths are from little, local microbreweries with names like Hangtown, Thin Line, Placerville Brewing, and Amador Brewery.

The best I tasted were the red ales from Placerville Brewing and Campbell Brewing. Hangtown had a very nice Saison and Alamador a very good Kolsch.

There were also a few cider breweries, a mead stand (a little sweet for me), and a high-alcohol kambucha stand called Booch Craft that was very interesting, sweet but dry.

The local homebrew club was also pouring a very good black porter.

Food was provided in samples by Round Table Pizza and the Farm Table Restaurant. Tim liked the bratwurst from farm table. Plus, giant pretzels to hang around your neck while you wandered through all that beer.

See the video, above, where in 12 minutes you can get a very good sense of what it was to be there plus see the gunfight erupt between rival breweries where I get caught in the crossfire.

It was a very fun fest and we just might have to make it an annual tradition here.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2018 - All Rights Reserved

THE COCKTAIL HOUR: The Festival - San Pedro, California

Another Sunday, another beer festival. Actually THE Festival...so awesome that it needs no other moniker.

Today, it's in an old warehouse in San Pedro at the mouth of the Los Angeles Harbor. The building has been repurposed as crafter's supermarket and The Festival will be occupying the space at the other end.  A new brewery, Brouwerij West, is turning the building next door into their new headquarters and is helping sponsor this event.

Watch the Video!

Over 90 breweries from around the world are here today pouring samples.  Each 2 ounce sample is a buck, or you can buy 25 for $20.  Beers, ciders, mead, and more are representing the U.K., Canada, Spain, Japan, France, Germany, New Zealand, Belgium, and all across the U.S.A, to mention just a few.

Getting our wristbands and digging into the crowd, Letty starts off with the French and English ciders while I start with a tarty lemoncello IPA from a UK brewer.

French ales in the Belgian style are next, as are actual Belgian ales.

An outstanding porter tickles our taste buds from 8 Wired Brewery in New Zealand as does the offerings from Hair of the Dog in Oregon, which turns out to be Letty's favorite of the day.

If you reading this on November 9th, you still have time if you're in L.A. to drive down to San Pedro and take in the festival for yourself. It's a lot of fun and you can walk across the street to 22nd Street Landing for a dinner to let your beer buzz fade away over the waterfront.

For more information, visit the promoters of The Festival, The Shelton Brothers, at this link: www.sheltonbrothers.com/festival

A special thanks to Brian Garrido for his assistance with this report.

Cheers!

Darryl

Photos by Letty Musick - Copyrght 2014
All Rights Reserved

Fightin' the Man: A Tale of an ADA Dispute in Southern California

Monrovia is a pretty little town about 15 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It’s not on a lot of tourist’s radar, which is a shame, but should be. The city is known for its immaculate craftsman and Victorian style homes. Writer Upton Sinclair had a beautiful Mediterranean style villa.  Film companies flock here to shoot in the city’s downtown area on Myrtle Avenue that stands in for the typical “Main Street, America” look.

Upton Sinclair House

Image courtesey of Wikimedia

Doncam under CC BY-SA 3.0 License

That All-American, Main Street feel extends to the festival and farmer’s market that takes place here every Friday night along Myrtle Avenue.

We have to come here each Friday night for physical therapy for Tim. The adjacent festival makes it easy to step out afterward for dinner and browsing. 

There are three restaurants we rotate through on a weekly basis on each corner of the heart of the festival, the intersection of Myrtle Avenue and Colorado Boulevard. The fourth corner is a bank but we’d love someone to open a nice place to eat there so we can have a full rotation.  I digress…

One Friday night a few months ago, we finished our workout. As Tim does his therapy, Letty and I make use of the time to work out in the gym. Afterward, we make our way over to the corner to take advantage of T. Phillips’ 72 taps and Happy Hour appetizer prices for dinner only to encounter a dismal sight.

One of the vendor booths for the festival has set up shop directly on the wheelchair ramp and curb cut blocking the access to the entrance.

I asked the vendor why they were there, blocking our way. He told me that the people running the festival told him to set up there. The vendor moved some of their merchandise to create a wide enough path for Tim to get through while I found one of the security guards for the festival.

He told me I’d have to take it up with the festival manager who was nowhere to be found at this moment.

I left him with the message that this was illegal and the booth had better not be there next week.

Fast forward to the next week. After the workout, we again go to our dinner corner. This week there wasn’t one booth blocking the curb cut…now there were two booths blocking two corners.

Seething, we set down to eat but I kept an eye out the window. I know that the mayor and city council members are frequent visitors to the festival so I want to find one and complain.

No mayor or councilmembers showed but the manager of the festival was walking by.

I left our table and found him at one of the booths blocking the way.


I greeted him and introduced myself to him as nicely as I could and said “you can’t block the ramp like this, there are several people here in wheelchairs that need this access.”

His first response was “yes I can because I leave four feet on the side.”

My response was “no you can’t because that four feet is sloped sideways and a wheelchair user would feel like they’re tipping over.”

The next reason was “yes I can because we’re not a permanent fixture here, we’re only temporary.”

I admit it was a bit tough to debate without the law in hand or an expert grasp of it but I bluffed ahead anyway…”I don’t see how a festival that is here every single Friday night of the year is not permanent. I want you to clear these ramps and if I don’t see them clear next week I will take this to the mayor and city council.”

We left it when he told me not to worry and he’d take care of it.

Another week goes by, another session of therapy, and another workout.  Dinner afterward. 
Two corners blocked by the same vendor booths.

OK, now it’s time to follow through on my promise…

Darryl
Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved

The Cocktail Hour - Belgian Beer Festival

The World on Wheels crew gets out of the patio this week and goes on location to Lucky Baldwin's Pub in Sierra Madre, California just east of Pasadena.  There's also a Lucky Baldwin's in Old Town Pasadena. It's the 11th annual Belgian Beer Festival where, in their words, the largest selection of Belgian beers in the world are served on tap.

Maybe, I don't know. But there are 46 taps and 29 of them (on this day) are dedicated to the Belgian brew. The kegs are rotated, so what's on tap today may not be what's available on Monday. I do know that they will be serving around 60 Belgians on tap during the festival, which happens in February and again in the summer.

The way it works is this... 6 oz tastes are $4 with an extra dollar tagged on for the ultra-premium brews. Pints are $7-9 dollars. You can get a package with a souvenir glass and t-shirt for $20. The glass comes filled with whatever brew you want. Come in anytime during the next year, and get a dollar off of your beer. It's not as good as it sounds because the glass is only 12 oz. and they usually sell pints. You can see the glasses at the end of part 2 of the video.

I'd put the entire video up at once, but YouTube only allows 10 minutes at
a time, so I have to break it into two parts.


Here is part 1 of the video...

and here is the conclusion...

Enjoy!

-Darryl