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

Craft Beer Los Angeles

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.

Busy Dojo, Playcation + Near Beer in Santa Ana

Sean Inman takes a first (and second) visit to the Modern Times Dankness Dojo in DTLA. Take a Playcation with Portland’s HUB. Enjoy Bravus near beer from Santa Ana.

Numbered establishments on the map correspond to information below. Please note: craft beers rotate frequently at these establishments, and kegs might kick between the time we update the Blast and the time you arrive.

1. Tuning Fork (Studio City)

Beers of the Week:
1. MacLeod Grasshopper
2. King Harbor Brew Doughty
3. Iron Triangle Gold
4. 2 Towns Ciderhouse Rhubarbarian
5. Bear Republic Mosaic Rebellion

2. Southland Beer (Koreatown)

Beers of the Week:
1. Mumford Brewing Laces Out (draft)
2. Cellador Ales Septem (draft)
3. Fort Point Beer Company Resonance (draft)
4. Alesmith My Bloody Valentine (draft)
5. Eagle Rock Brewing El Cadejo (draft)

Upcoming Event:
Saturday, February 10 – A Cellador Ales Happening!

Join us for a day of wild and sour beer with Cellador Ales. We’ll have four beers on tap, we’ll be doing flights, and we’ll be hanging out with brewers Kevin and Sara (starting around 7pm). Plus, bottles for sale! And we’ll be open from 12pm-12am for this one!

Confirmed taplist:
• Milk Toast – dark wild ale aged in red wine barrels with raspberries and cinnamon.
• Murex – blend of six beers aged in oak barrels refermented with boysenberries
• Mas Mas – wild saison fermented with nectarines, then aged on spent peaches and nectarines in Malbec barrels!
• Septem – a blend of seven barrel-aged saisons and wild ales

Confirmed bottles:
• Akimbo Blend 2 – Chardonnay barrel sour with peaches
• Saison Ad Absurdum – blend of three barrel-aged saisons
• Restik Blend 2 – dry-hopped sour
• Ms Pea Split – sherry puncheon red wild ale with raspberries
• Blueberry Berlinerish – barrel-fermented brett berliner with blueberries

3. Ladyface Ale Companie (Agoura Hills)

Beers of the Week:
1. Ladyface 7th Anniversary Ale “The Shepherdess” Belgian-Style Barleywine Aged 20 mos. In Calif. Red Wine Barrels
2. Ladyface 8th Anniversary Ale “Octavia” – Belgian Golden Strong Ale, Wine Barrel-Aged (Sour)
3. On Cask: Hurricane Ellis – Chesebro Ipa W/ Cascade Hops, Mango & Carolina Reaper Pepper
4. Firestone Walker 18th Anniversary Ale – 227 Barrel-Aged Blended Strong Ale
5. Bagby Beer Co. 30 Years Of Haightronage – Belgian Pale Strong

Upcoming Event:
Friday, February 9 – HaHa Hops Comedy Night at Ladyface, 9PM on the patio, no cover, 1 item min purchase

Wednesday, February 14 – Valentine’s Day at Ladyface w/ Oysters & beer, & dinner menu specials. Make a reservation online at LadyfaceAle.com/reservations or by calling 818-477-4566.

4. The Bottle Room (Whittier)

Beers of the Week:
1. Indie Brewing East Side Pale
2. Kern River Class V Stout
3. Van Sternberg Triple Van De Garre
4. Almanac Rose Sour
5. Beachwood BBQ Mocha Machine

Upcoming Event:
Happy Hour Tuesday-Thursday from 3-7 p.m., Friday from 12 p.m. – 7 p.m. and all-day Sunday and Monday. Breakfast is every Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. – 12 p.m.

5. Blue Palms Brewhouse (Hollywood)

Beers of the Week:
1. Bell’s Hopslam
2. Bell’s Larry’s Latest Sour Ale
3. Chapman Crafted Orange Cream Milkshake IPA
4. Macleod Oaked 80 Schilling CASK
5. Green Flash Black Butte XXIX

6. Beer Belly (Long Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Green Cheek Now Open Thursday’s
2. El Segundo Nuclear Power Plant Triple IPA
3. Mason Ale Works/OffShoot Zero Moustafa
4. Smog City Benny & The Bretts Vol 2
5. Lost Abbey Ghost in the Forest

7. Beer Belly (Koreatown)

Beers of the Week:
1. Beachwood Hops of Fury
2. State Can’t Flocc, Won’t Flocc
3. Mumford Something Borrowed
4. Green Cheek German for Dark
5. Bottle Logic Pallet Treasure

8. Beachwood BBQ (Seal Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Firestone Walker Nitro Merlin
2. Smog City Wow Pop Pale Ale
3. Beachwood Foam Top Blonde
4. Cellador Apricot Atavism Sour
5. Beachwood Hops of Fury Triple IPA

Upcoming Event:
Wednesday, February 14 – Valentine’s Day Dinner Specials

This year we’ll be featuring special dinner entrees and a dessert designed with our beer lovers in mind. Choose from cold smoked seared day boat scallops, imperial stout braised pork belly, and bone marrow pound cake. And then enjoy with curated beer pairings including the brand new Beachwood Valentine’s beer, Kit & Canoodle–a decadent imperial raspberry chocolate stout that’ll ignite a passion with your palate & whomever you share a glass with.

9. Beachwood BBQ (Long Beach)

Beers of the Week:
1. Beachwood Hop Nino IPA
2. Beachwood Light Idea American Lager
3. Beachwood Kit & Canoodle Imperial Stout
4. Beachwood Udder Love Milk Stout
5. Beachwood LBC West Coast Style IPA

Upcoming Event:
Until Saturday, February 10 – Pliny the Younger Raffle Tickets

On sale at both Beachwood locations. $5 each, cash only, benefitting the Melanoma Research Foundation in memory of our dear friend Tony Carbone. Raffle on February 12. Visit Here for more details.

10. Angel City Brewery (Downtown LA)

Beers of the Week:
1. Angel City Public House Saison
2. Angel City Nite Terrors
3. Angel City Topaz the Time IPA
4. Angel City California Common
5. Angel City Black Lager

Tags:

Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

Blog Comments

Wow! Thank you so much for sharing. I will have to visit some of these places!

Loving this feature. Keep the good stuff coming!

As long as breweries are producing great beer, and bars and restaurants are pouring them, I hope to continue with the L.A. Beer Blast. Thanks for reading.

Loving the idea of beer+events. Great way to bring two awesome things together. Total win-win.

missed the Beachwood Blendery event but I’m making the Koreatown event on Thursday 🙂

Nice. Always plenty of great options.

Love this break down! So many amazing brews to give a try. Looking forward to seeing how many of these we can sample. Thanks for sharing!

It would be great if the blast included easterly spots such as Bread and Barley in Covina, Lordsburg in La Verne, Eureka in Claremont, and the Rookery in Pomona.

Pascal, I appreciate the recommendations and do hope to get more inland representation on the L.A. Beer Blast. Thanks!

Is there anything better than locally brewed delicious beer?! Not for this girl! I love trying different kinds of draft where ever I am. Very cool article!!

Ashley

Ashley, thanks for reading Food GPS. I’m glad you enjoy the L.A. Beer Blast!

As an espresso junkie, I would love to see events like these that are focused on coffee houses. I think it would be just as fun but maybe safer…maybe. What do you think?

I love this time of year! So many different blends. Thanks for the map!

Just wanted to let you and your readers know about PubQuest (www.pubquest.com) – an interactive map to find every craft brewery location in LA (and the entire U.S. and Canada. Cheers!

Julie, thanks for sharing PubQuest. Have a good week.

Hi Joshua, I’ve been following L.A. Beer Blast for a little while now and would love to be apart of a upcoming edition. We here at Slater’s 50/50 Pasadena love beer and boost one of the largest collections of L.A. County brews. Keep up the good work.

[…] I put this week’s L.A. Beer Blast to bed, I started rifling through my e-mail and came upon one from Firestone […]

Greetings, I totally enjoy following you, but I have to ask why you never have any of the locations in the Southbay listed? Select BeeStore, Rock and Brews, Hots Tacos, The Abigale or any of the great Breweries located in the area like smog city or monkish.

Tom,

I appreciate the feedback and will look into adding more South Bay listings. Thanks for reading.

Another vote for South Bay listings — we have a ton of fantastic options here!

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[…] We also have some terrific bars that support craft beer, most of which appear every Thursday on the L.A. Beer Blast (shameless […]

[…] L.A. Beer Blast: The Best in Local Craft Beer [Food GPS] […]

No El Prado Bar, Sunset Beer Co., or Hermosillo? You missed some of the East side’s heavy hitters.

We get the “why not bar A?” on the blast question frequently. It comes down to those people who want to be included. Hermosillo and Sunset Beer Co. did for awhile and then stopped. All three are great places and we’d love to have them.

Love this Beer Blast! So helpful when trying to figure out where to grab the next Craft Beer! Keep these Beer Blasts coming! Thanks! 🙂

Thanks Gina! Glad to know it helps out!

I don’t see Mediterraneo on this list. They can stack up to any of these places I believe.

[…] very well, with their meager online presence and dismal visibility in local beer communities like Food GPS’ Beer Blast, Beer Paper LA, and Westcoaster […]

No Venice Ale House? Great beers and delicious food!

JD, Venice Ale House has been on the L.A. Beer Blast in the past. They’ve got a strong beer program, for sure, and I’d be happy to see them on the blast again. What do you like to eat there?

Way to neglect virtually the entire South Bay region. Only the home to the most breweries in LA county. Needless to say we have some of the best taps around. Spots like Select Beer Store, Sophie’s Place, Abigail, Naja’s Place, Mediterraneo……actually forget it, we’ll keep it to ourselves. Nothing to see here.

Which places do you go to for your craft beer Bob?

seaninman – mostly the place mentioned above ^, plus the various taprooms down here such as Smog City, Strand Brewing, Monkish and El Segundo Brewing. There are also 2-4 more taprooms opening around here in the next few months. Best place in the LA for beer by a mile…

Bob, thanks for the feedback. Some of the places you mentioned have participated in the L.A. Beer Blast in the past. I hope to bulk up the South Bay presence again. You’re right, Torrance probably has the highest concentration of good breweries in L.A. Strand paved the way for some amazing new developments.

Thanks for the response Josh. There is so much beer in LA trying to put it in one place might be a bit ambitious!! South Bay, DTLA, the Westside and the Valley could maybe have their own sections?

Bob, Sean Inman and I are working to recognize all of the great craft beer establishments in L.A. Even if it’s not on a weekly basis, you’ll still find regional coverage on the site. Here’s Sean’s guide to 10 top South Bay destinations: http://www.foodgps.com/10-top-craft-beer-destinations-south-bay

Awesome. I’ll check it out. Thank you.

Hoping the SFV, you know, the mid Northern part of Los Angeles, home of 1.7 million angelenos might get a mention for some of our hot spots. Your list is great but to go from Mohawk Bend, all the way to Ladyface, with nothing mentioned in between. That’s missing a lot IMHO.

Instant Replay in Canoga Park
The Rabbit Hole in west Hills
Boneyard Bistro in Sherman Oaks
Blue Dog Tavern in Sherman Oaks
Crazy Harry’s in Winnetka
Taps In North ridge
The Local Peasant in Woodland Hills
McG’s In Chats worth (sister site of the Daily Pint)

Its not the waste Land it was when beer blast started.

Retsinis,

Thanks for the feedback, recommendations, and for reading. We’ve got a San Fernando Valley guide in the works, which should go live in January.

It would be great if the blast included easterly spots such as Bread and Barley in Covina, Lordsburg in La Verne, Eureka in Claremont, and the Rookery in Pomona.

Robert M, thanks for the head’s up. Of the places you mentioned, I’d only heard of Eureka. I’ll look into it.

Reply

Oregon Beer Transplant

I recently moved from Eugene to Los Angeles. Adjusting to the beer scene here has been difficult. Beer Blast has been very helpful. Thanks! See you at Sour Fest.

Oregon Beer Transplant, glad to hear you’re finding the L.A. Beer Blast useful. Thanks for reading!

It can be difficult at first to navigate the L.A. beer scene coming from Eugene and all of it’s wonderful spots. At least Ninkasi is starting to deliver more beer to us to give you a taste of home.

Just changed our bottled beer menu to craft only. Check out Zeke’s Smokehouse! 2209 Honolulu Ave. Montrose CA 91020. Oh, by the way, we may just have the BEST BBQ you have ever tasted!:D

So yeah, josh you rock! Sean you Dah man mayne. Here is definitely a different comment: I just went to hanger24 and there baseball beer is solid to bad it’s only in there tap room and triple a fields don’t even try to side toke the barkeep for a growler, he might arm wrestle you but he won’t let you take it to go. Who’s up on Angel city’s pickle back beer…do we chase it with James? Yes please! Das awesome but not as tart as Ohana which does mean “family” and feels like one as well! Lilo and stitch was a good movie too bad they don’t have a cool beer like the big le”brah”ski that is by far the baddest thing golden road has let me taste outside the brewery…Victor Novak vs The Hobbit at craftsman..Who’s your money on? And ah Ninkasi…I await your gloriousness amongst us men who mind only Sam Adams half arse pass at a west coast “Rebel IPA” brewed on the east coast where you park your car in the Harvard yard and apparently think that using west coast hops gives you the right to pass off malted barley Yeast water and hops as something sellable to wannabe craftys. Do me a favor and invest in some hipster hops like duvel did to green and dry hop it with some citra then get it brewed in our time zone. Mahalo like lost abbey and Maui on a lemon grass note. Tots….

[…] Craft beers are available at multiple restaurants and bars but for a true craft brew experience, visit small independent joints like our recent Farm-to-Table guest Hangar 24 Craft Brewery in Redlands. There are plenty of craft breweries throughout Los Angeles, from Simmzy’s in Manhattan Beach to City Tavern in Culver City (my personal favorite), to Spring Street Bar in downtown to Beer Belly in Koreatown. The key is to be adventurous and to try brews you haven’t experienced before. Food GPS does a great job of rounding up the best brews in L.A. […]

Hi Joshua,

I was wondering if you would be interested in a guest post. I have a couple of ideas that I think would be a great fit, but I couldn’t manage to find your email on your site. I tried to contact you via your contact form as well, but it bounced back. If you could get a hold of me at brenna (dot) ciummo (at) seattlecoffeegear (dot) com, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks,

Brenna

Kinda getting tired of seeing these same old comments (i.e. “What happened to the beer blast e-mail”), so I thought I’d post something new.

So then……uhhhh…..let’s see……oh yeah. Rasputin on nitro is not to be missed. So don’t miss it. Alrighty then.

Herbaceous Vic,

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, that’s the thing about comments. Even after making updates and upgrades to the L.A. Beer Blast, those early now-outdated comments remain. No big deal. By the way, I like your e-mail address. You clearly enjoy beer.

It’s true!

Well, now I wanna know what Herbaceous Vic’s email address is!

This looks Awesome #Beerblast

Or #Bamfest?

beer week was awesome! now time for #bamfest

Chris,

I hope to make it to BAM Fest next year. I know the organizers and the cause is awesome. Glad to hear you enjoyed LA Beer Week.

What happened to the beer blast e-mail

Joseph,

The L.A. Beer Blast still goes out via e-mail every Thursday afternoon. Just enter your e-mail address by clicking the SIGN UP button at the top of Food GPS. Thanks!

Thank you from a long faithful reader to start.

I have been wondering if there is a deadline for the places listed to give you information or something. I ask because it’s kind of inconsistent now to see all the places every week. Like Najas, stuffed sand and Kenetic are missing from this week for instance

Corey,

Thanks for reading. Yes, bars generally submit their beer and event updates on Wednesday night or Thursday morning. We make wholesale changes to the L.A. Beer Blast listings and map every Thursday afternoon, right before the week’s newsletter goes out. In general, you’ll find good consistency with the participating establishments. We recently added Kinetic to the mix and expect them to reappear soon. Naja’s and Stuffed Sandwich haven’t appeared in the new version of the L.A. Beer Blast, but we’d be happy to have both places on board. They both do a good job in managing their programs and the owners clearly have a passion for craft beer.

We love it when Homework requires drinking a cocktail! May we suggest a new beer cocktail on the menu at Ladyface? It’s called the the George Chesebro. Named after the rugged silver screen actor who filmed many a western in the area, it stars Eagle Rare Kentucky bourbon, our Chesebro IPA and a dash of Ventura Orangecello, and it packs a punch as solid as George himself. Cheers!

Got to come get me some of that!!

They are giving away 2 pairs of tickets to Rock and Brews Craft Beer Festival on http://www.Facebook.com/LAwonders and http://www.Twitter.com/LAwonders

Would anyone here happen to know who has Dogfish Head 120 Min on tap or in bottle?? I know they just sent out kegs this month and I’ve been dying to try it….

If I see it on lists anywhere, I will add it to the Beer Blast.

Tapping you 120 Min. tonight @ 38 Degrees Ale House & Grill 7:00pm. Cheers

Josh,
I love the new map format. This is a huge help in planning pub crawls in unfamiliar territory, for one. The list format was ungainly given the growing number of establishments (and that’s a good thing). Having said that, it does seem as though there are about half as many places on the map as there were on the list. I’m sure you’re working on adding the others. Thanks for doing this.

Mark,

Thanks for reading, and for your feedback. The revised L.A. Beer Blast continues to grow in its new format. We’ve already doubled the number of participating establishments since the first newsletter, April 26, and look forward to adding more great bars that are dedicated to showcasing craft beer.

I loved the old email that listed what was on tap. Now that I have to go to the web site, I don’t use it the Beer Blast very often. I understand that you probably needed to make the change for finacial reasons, but it makes your once great concept less useful.

Greg,

If you subscribe to the current newsletter, you only need to make one click to see the entire L.A. Beer Blast. If you’re not interested in making that effort, you can always bookmark this dedicated L.A. Beer Blast page. Either way, you’ll continue to learn about some of the best new beer and beer-related events in Los Angeles. Thanks for reading.

Josh,

Nice job on the new format. It is organized and easy to use and still packed with great information. I will have exciting news for the next blast. Cheers!

Thanks for the feedback, Chris. Glad you enjoy the new L.A. Beer Blast layout.

Thanks for the support and feedback. We’ve already made efforts to improve the L.A. Beer Blast experience. Hopefully it helps guide people even more smoothly to great craft beer in L.A.

I, too, am glad that the Beer Blast is back, but the list format was a lot more user friendly than this new map format. I’m having trouble discerning which icon to click on and I keep clicking on the same one again and again. The list format was great because it was easy to pull up on my phone when I wanted to know what was on tap around town. If it sticks to this format, sadly, I may not use the Beer Blast much anymore.

Tom, Leela and Kevin,

Thanks for the constructive criticism about the new version of the L.A. Beer Blast. I’m open to any feedback that could improve the user experience. The previous version definitely got to be exhausting to read and hard to navigate as more and more craft beer bars opened. Here, we’ve developed a concise, uniform format, with five beers and one event per bar. I’ll look into maximizing that information, map functionality, and their synergy.

I would like to echo Tom’s constructive criticism. I’m so happy to see Beer Blast up and running again, but am not loving the map format for the reasons described above. I can’t be certain, but it also seems as if there are less locations listed than when it was in list format. I really do miss being able to quickly scan all the bars in my area for their brew list, so here’s a second person hoping that you might bring back the list format. Cheers!

I’m so glad to see the beer blast up again! The new format is interesting, but problematic in several regards:

1) it’s really difficult to navigate in a desktop web browser. The information for each individual beer bar opens in a pane that is visually constrained to the Google portlet, meaning that to read it, I have to scroll the map around. When I’m done reading it, I close the info pane, and now my map is focused on Palmdale or Bakersfield or somewhere else equally useless, and I have to scroll the map back to L.A. Not the best user experience.

2) It’s nearly impossible to use on a smart phone (at least on an iPhone. The problems above are exacerbated by the smaller screen and conflicting multi-touch inputs for resizing the view and scrolling through the portlet. That and, asynchronous data calls are slow through the iPhone, even when on a wireless network. So, overall, the experience is very unresponsive

3) I can’t search it. If there’s a beer that I know is going on somewhere in town, but I’m trying to find out where, I can’t perform a search for the beer. For that matter, I can’t do a quick scan, either.

Perhaps some users only want to know what’s going on at a particular bar. But generally, I want a great snapshot of what’s going on in an entire region and to be able to do so with a quick glance or skim.

I know a lot of work went into this new interaction design, but from one user’s perspective, it’s not as useful to me in this format as it was as a big ol’ text dump. Showing the geographic location of the bars is a great idea, though.

I wonder if there’s a way to work together with the guys at the Beer Mapping Project to put two great resources into a single format (although their project has the same problems on the iPhone as I’ve described above).

Anyway, despite my “constructive feedback”, know that I appreciate all the work that goes into this, and it’s a resource I’ve really missed the past few weeks. Thanks for keeping it going!

welcome back…missed my beer blast the past few weeks. hope all is well.

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