Astropus

I’m shamelessly stealing this from the the great Joshua Bernstein (beer writer for Bon Appetit and author of The Complete Beer Course) who posts a monthly recap of his writings for various publications on his personal website. An index of sorts. I had a pretty slow month writing-wise in October, so I figured this would be as good a s time as any to start keeping track of what I’ve had published around the web.

Paste Drinks – 10 Essential Pale Ales: The Drinks editor actually assigned this list-post to me, and I was more than happy to fill the slots with my favorite APAs and talk about why the style is special. Even got to use my Mosaic hops and American Hustle comparison that I’ve been itching to write for months.

Paste Drinks – The Hanson Brothers Reinvent Themselves With Beer: I didn’t anticipate how difficult writing this piece would be when I pitched it. It all got started because the PR guy that handles The HOld Steady also has the Hanson Brothers as clients, and after I wrote about The Hold Steady in September (I’m Pretty Sure We Partied: My Afternoon On The Hold Steady’s Tour Bus) he offered to send me samples of Hanson’s infamous Mmmhops beer. The box of brews included the bro’s latest album and a beer+album review piece seemed like the natural thing to do.

Los Angeles Time Beer of the Month – Figueroa Mountain Danish Red Lager: I looked slightly outside of the Southland for this month’s pick and went with the balanced lager from Fig Mountain. It’s a style that many people overlook, but the Vienna Lager is a very approachable style that is great with food, It just feels like an autumnal brew, but remains light enough to weather the lingering summer temperatures.

Los Angeles Times Daily Dish – Highlights:

• I had my longest, most in depth piece for the Times run in October: Popular Eagle Rock Brewery faces yet another hearing to continue operation. The feature looks at the breweries struggles with their Conditional Use Permit through  interviews with ERB’s owners, other LA-area brewery owners, and representatives from City Hall. I’m really proud of this one.
• Buzzed-about Three Weavers brewery opens Saturday – This is an exciting opening for craft beer in LA. Three Weavers is a big operation with an ambitious plan, and it’s the first brewery to open in Inglewood.
• Pliny Lives! Firestone Walker steps in to keep vaunted brew flowing – Russian River buried this announcement late on the last Friday of LA Beer Week, but I was able to chat with David Walker about it during the Walker’s Wild Ride event, and the coverage of the collaboration blew up on social media with over 4k shares becoming one of my most-shared pieces ever!
• Tomatoes, apples and a cold brew — California farmers market beer law OK’d – A week after the FW Pliny piece, I had an even bigger social media success (nearly 9k shares on Facebook) with a post covering a new California law that would allow breweries to sell their beers at local farmers markets.

Serious Eats: Drinks ran two editions of their Ask A Cicerone® feature, the first on Oktoberfest beers, and for the second edition they changed-up their format a bit and covered the best oatmeal stouts. I got to talk about one of my all-time favorite food pairings in the latter (Velvet Merkin and Doughnuts)!

Early in the month I helped the LA Beer Hop with a cheer and beer pairing tour, and wrote about the event for Beer of Tomorrow. It was a huge success, and I’m looking forward to the next time!

I also taped a couple of segments of The Tasting Room with Tom Leykis again this month, and we tasted our way through five brews for autumn in LA and talked about fresh hops, the cost of craft beer, and the rise of sour beers. Check it out!

Im a little in denial about it being November, and I hope that I can manage to sell a few more pitches this month than I did in October.

Until next month, you can follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or on my A Beer Writers Notebook Tumblr blog.

Cheers!