L.A. County Fair results are in!

Ben Guzman and Scott Goodell Dort with Jasmine 3rd Place

Jeff Koehler American Brown Ale 2nd Place
Jeff Koehler Baltic Porter 1st Place
Jeff Koehler Roggenbier  2nd Place
Jeff Koehler Flanders-Style Red Ale 2nd Place

Josh Jensen American Pale Ale 3rd Place
Josh Jensen Bavarian-Style Hefeweizen 3rd Place

Lee Bakofsky and Andrew Bakofsky Saison (Spring/Summer) 2nd Place
Lee Bakofsky and Andrew Bakofsky Strong Bitter and Extra Special Bitter (ESB) 2nd Place

Congrats Everyone!

It’s mighty tasty, be there! Their tasting room is open 4-10 PM.

Congrats to Scott Goodell and Ben Guzman for a Silver medal on their Dortmunder Export, and to Lee Bakofsky for Gold as well as Best of Show Second Runner Up for his Imperial Stout. Keep up the good work!

After an unscheduled hiatus, we’ll resume our month meetings Friday, April 23rd in the Bakofsky garage.
We’ll be brewing, sampling, eating, etc… Details to follow.

That’s right!  Our home brew is traveling out to SXSW with L.A. Record for “The Ever Loving Party” March, 19th, 12-7pm @ Design Within Reach, 78701.  Sorry it’s refreshment for bands only – but the show seems like an insane line up:  Acid Mother’s Temple, The Growlers, Leslie & the Badgers, and more!  Check it out if your in Austin for SXSW.

Join us Friday evening for a few pints at Eagle Rock Brewery. You’ll be hard pressed to find a nicer bunch of folks, let’s send a little support their way.

I haven’t yet tried their extra pale and am looking forward to it! Currently they are open by reservation only, so we’ll need an accurate headcount by Thursday.
Let me know if you’d like to drop by!

5:00 PM | Friday January 06 | 2010

Check out their:

Blog…
Website…

3056 Roswell StreetLos Angeles, CA 90065-2214

Reach out to us at info@eastsidebrew.com.

This past Saturday, Eastside Brewers headed down to Fullerton to check out Bootleggers Brewery.  Two of us had met the new Assistant Brewer Chris, in Seal Beach at Beachwood BBQ – he was super friendly and invited us down – so, instead of brewing this weekend, we headed out to the brewery (and then we went to Beachwood for lunch and more tasters!).

Tucked away in a small office park a few blocks from downtown Fullerton was this great brewery, dreamed up by Aaron Barkenhagen, and built with sweat and dedication.  They recently took over the warehouse next door and are working on their permits to serve pints! The beer tasting was great, we tasted nearly 10 on draught and a couple of bottle conditioned treats, all were solid.  The double IPA (10%) was a great example – hoppy and full bodied, their winter beer with mint was awesome, their lemon grass beer they do for contract rocked, and the hefe was balanced to the clove side.  Both bottle conditioned beers were tasty – especially the plum beer.

So, if you’re in the OC, you should check ‘em out.  Hopefully they’ll be showing up in more of your favorite beer bars soon!  And maybe even at the LA Craft Beer Festival in May!

The brewery floor

Mike, Aaron, Patricia, Chris

Takin' home some goods

Recently a couple of us brewed up a 10 gallon batch of imperial stout.  The plan was to oak the stout after fermentation.  We brewed the 10 gal. and then split it into two 6 gallon carboys for fermentation.  Our ferment did not attenuate fully, so we ended up with 5 gal. @ 1032 and 5 gal. @ 1022 (wanted to hit 1018).  With fermentation complete we prepped the oak cubes (american medium toast) by soaking them in high proof bourbon (Baker’s Bourbon) for sanitation.  1 oz of oak cubes (w/o the bourbon) went into each corny keg and we racked  5 gal of stout into each.  After 7 days the oak flavor was where we wanted it to be – now time to transfer the beer off the oak.  Our plan was to blend the two kegs together so we would balance the two F.G.’s together.

Step One: 2 Kegs w/beer (on the left) & 2 Kegs w/o beer (on the right).

Step 2: Jumper cable with two outs (black connects). Connect to the out of the full keg and to the out of the empty keg. You connect to the out of the empty keg so that the beer fills from the bottom of the keg, not sprays out from the top of the gas in connect. Also, on the empty keg, be sure to open the release valve so that the pressure is lower in the empty keg than the full keg and the beer flows.

Step 3: Push beer from full keg to empty keg using CO2 10psi. We filled each keg with 1/2 of the higher gravity and half of the lower gravity beer so that they were of equal strength/taste.