This is a bit of a departure from your usual DFO Hate Week musings, as I wanted to bring you a brief interlude of something good. There are few things better than local independent craft beer, at least, in my mind, and the day before the Conference Championship series, I was in attendance at the Burgeon Third Anniversary Invitational, a celebration of Burgeon Beer Company’s success as well as that of the many fine breweries that they have collaborated with over the past 3 years. Let me start by saying that Burgeon is the closest brewery to my ziggurat, and while not my favorite brewery, mostly due to how packed they are during the week, their beer is undeniably good and unique. Their main focus is on hazys, but they also exceed with barrel aged beers and (I’ve been told) sours. So for a $55 ticket and a $10 Lyft ride, 3 friends and I descended upon this festival featuring 34 breweries that were mostly local and found some of the best beer I’ve gotten my hands on in a while.

Made West Brewing: Trap Door Hoppy Lager (Ventura, CA): First brewery I recognized when we walked in. I wanted to start with something that wouldn’t destroy my palate, which rarely happens. Light with a small hop bite. Very little of that lager taste most people don’t like. This is an exceptional beer.

Foam Brewers: Experimental Jet Set Double Hazy IPA (Burlington, VT): Not a fan. Usually I like experimentals, but this tastes kinda watered down and with like a lemon rind finish. Doesn’t taste like an IPA really. I should’ve tried their other offerings, but I didn’t.

Green Cheek Brewing Company: The Other Brian. Double Hazy IPA (Orange, CA): Much better. This is a full bodied haze with a little melon on the back end. Green Cheek absolutely rocks.

Finback Brewery: Compartmentalized Double Hazy IPA (Glendale, NY): There it is! You’ve heard me rave about Finback in the past and this beer is no exception. There are a TON of different hops in here that I didn’t have time to write down, but they’re all blended into a confusingly delicious aggressive haze. They also had a Gingerbread Stout that I wanted to try but never got back to.

Horus Aged Ales: Ruffle the Feathers, Hazelnut Coffee Vanilla Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout (Oceanside, CA): Horus sponsored the last beer fest that I wrote about, although I wasn’t able to try anything from them due to the line and quick emptying of their supplies.  This beer literally made me start to fall backwards when I took my first sip. How is this so easy drinking?! It’s 14%! Holy fucking balls. That blend of adjuncts is silky smooth and this might’ve been the best beer of the day.

Beachwood Brewing: Dunkle as a Skunkle Dunkelweizen (Long Beach, CA): I asked the tender here to rinse my glass well after that last beer and it definitely took more than his spray bottle to do it. This beer is malty as fuck. This is a Dunkel that doesn’t taste like bananas. Good and clean but not super memorable as far as taste.

Ocelot Brewing Company: Mi Corazon Hazy IPA (Dulles, VA): Hazy with Citra and Galaxy hops. My palate is quite wrecked right now, but I like this. The hops come through despite that and for some reason it makes me want to serpentine! If this was near the end of the day, I probably would have.

Beachwood Brewing: Cherry and Rye Sour (Long Beach, CA): Yeah, I got a sour. Not for the taste or anything, but if there is any use for them that I’ve found, it’s that they make a pretty good palate cleanser . I was hoping for a little old fashioned taste and it’s just sour as fuck. Next!

First water break. I’m feeling good at this point, maybe a little more impressionable than usual, but that’s not unusual.

Artifex Brewing Company: Drop the Ball Triple IPA (San Clemente, CA): I literally just drank a sour to cleanse my palate and the last thing I should be having is a TIPA  I was going for something else, but I saw this hiding in the back and… didn’t I just say I was impressionable? Fuck this is good. It’s extremely sweet. WOW. It’s a New Year’s beer I had to be told, because I was thinking the name was implying it was a mistake . I can feel my taste buds melting all over again. Probably need another sour cleanser. Fuck!

Tarantula Hills Brewing Company: The Grade Imperial Stout (Thousand Oaks, CA): Well if I’m wrecking my palliate again, I might as well get this. 9.5% stout with vanilla coffee and something else? Oh it’s chocolate. That’s mostly what I taste. Not a bad thing at all. This is a quality chocolate Stout, reminiscent of the chocolate version of Yeti.

Moksa Brewing: The Lush Pastry Stout (Rocklin, CA): Or I can just keep drinking heavy stouts. Whoa, this one is like pure vanilla. What a flip from the last one. This is fucking great. I kinda wanna mix them together, but I’m being advised that would be frowned upon.

Okay, it’s hitting me now. Those big beers all caught up at once. My friends got some chow and I snagged a couple of their fries, but I wasn’t about to wait in the food lines at this point, so nothing to do but power on!

The Lost Abbey: Sinners Blend 2019. BBA Stout (San Marcos, CA): This is a 13.7%er with coffee, vanilla and cacao and a name I saw earlier and had to come back for.  It tastes like chocolate soft serve mixed with whiskey. I know this because I literally made that once in college. Hooooly fuck! I’ll be tracking down a bottle of that at some point.

Horus Aged Ales: Ethiopian Coffee Great Maple (Oceanside, CA): Speaking of things to come back to, I had to try another Horus offering while they were available.  This is straight maple syrup with maybe a touch of coffee. It never has gone down so smooth. Okay, yeah, did I mention I was starting to feel it?

Burgeon Beer Company: IPA Slushy. (Carlsbad, CA): Burgeon as the host had a stand out front but also their usual tap room open, which is good because my skin was ready to get the fuck out of the sun for a bit. The big item inside was their IPA Slushy and we were told earlier it wouldn’t be ready until 2pm. We got back about 15 minutes before then and were told it wasn’t cold enough to be fully slushed, but people were getting it anyway and we didn’t want to miss out. It’s still good. Tastes like an aggressive apricot/peach ale with some mostly frozen slush chunks. It’s a cool spin on beer that my brewer friend thinks is an abomination. Doesn’t bother me none, but this destroyed my palate more than anything else I’d drank so far today.

Burgeon Beer Company: Citra by the Sea Hazy IPA. (Carlsbad, CA): While we’re in here, I had to get this for the name. My palate is gone again but man do I wish I could have this normally. I get just the end of the smooth Citra bite. I can feel the fluffy haze goodness but can barely taste it.

Moonraker Brewing Co.: Deafening Silence BBA Imperial Stout with Cacao Nibs, Orange Zest and Vanilla Beans (Auburn, CA): Back outside. You know those chocolate covered orange slice candy things?;That’s exactly what this beer tastes like. I like their IPAs a lot more, but glad I tried something new.

Vitamin Sea Brewing: At Sea Double IPA (Weymouth, MA): This tastes like a hazy that someone crushed a bunch of orange vitamin C tablets into. Chalky feeling. It’s not great.

Alvarado Street: Uncrushables Kettle Sour Ale (Salinas, CA): This literally tastes like drinking a liquefied sour Uncrustable snack. You get the kind of thick bready mouthfeel and strong hints of peanut butter and jelly. If it wasn’t also super sour, it’d be really great!

Alvarado Street: Amigos Hazy IPA (Salinas, CA): Fresh palate after that sour and this is too… nah. Super dry for an IPA and that’s usually a deal breaker. My friends love it, so maybe just not for me.

Aslin Beer Company: Bale Peanut Butter Stout (Herndon, VA): Peanut butter candy inspired heavy 13.5% Stout. Good but not memorable compared to other PB stouts I’ve had before. Moving on.

Burgeon Beer Company: Glazed BBA Stout with VG’s Donuts, Ethiopian and Guatemalan coffee, vanilla beans, cacao nibs and toasted coconut. (Carlsbad, CA): I had this beer on my birthday last year and it was so good I bought a bottle. Made with locally famous VG’s Donuts that get dropped into the beer like a tea bag while brewing. Fucking incredible. Super bready like a donut already with that sweet glaze taste. The bottle before was thicker than this and it’s all smoothed out now. Incredible.

The end is in sight and our Uber is going to be in about 10 minutes. Time to hit the last couple nearby. I’ll leave my notes as they were when I took them.

Slice Brewing: Dripping Moon Pastry Stout with hazelnut, coffee and vanilla. (Lincoln, CA): My hands am fucking sticky This isn’t as good as the Glazed but it is good. Feels heavy and has a breadiness to it. Would be better if I didn’t just have that. Where’s the water?

Highland Park Brewery: Collective Blend Stout of some kind. (Los Angeles, CA): Fuck. Oh that’s a great one to end on! Thick but smooth. Not sure what the adjuncts are, but it’s boozy, I wanna say say… Not sure. It’s almost 4 and I’m fucked. But I like it. This is quality. Taste though? Ask someone else.

And now back to your regularly scheduled hate.

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