Don’t worry I already reviewed both of those whiskey joints; no more forthcoming punishment in that format.
Instead I will be reviewing these 415 kush sacks instead
I offered to split one with the Forestry service worker next to me and he wasn’t even down, it’s like, celebrate equality in marriage, live a little.
So in 91 degree weather, I did this shit instead
Gonna be faded until Tuesday. That new Rye Adam from the Wood will light up your chest like E.T. Phenomenal, tomacco and tanned leather.
Three Weavers, for those instances when two weavers just isn’t quite enough. These rascals in Inglewood have not been up to no good, they are doing at least some good, if not significant good. They opened their doors about 8 months ago and have been slowly ekeing out a very significant market share in an area that was seemingly at its saturation point with upstart breweries, with a whole smattering opening within 2 years of one another. This is a place that is a standout in focus and execution, worthy of your time and attention.
First and foremost, I liked this place because they were one of the only breweries that wasn’t chickenshit or self serving enough to disallow growlers from other places (provided the label is obscured.) Most new breweries just dont even bother with it because HEY THESE PEWTER HANDLED $40 BAVARIAN GROWLERS WONT MOVE THEMSELVES. Secondly, their whole ethos is this stripped down simplicity in execution akin to Julian Shrago at Beachwood. They offer clean, highly attenuated riffs on existing styles and dont go like putting Crunchberries in a fucking Dortmunder to draw unwarranted attention to themselves.When I first heard about Three Weavers, I thought it was an urban hair salon. That isn’t an Inglewood joke, it is a hairstyling joke. But SRS they seem to provide a valuable new riff on a perpetually evolving area. The tasting room is a smattering of all demographics and it is in equal measure industrial and an artsy Birkenstock Lillith Fair extravaganza at the same time. For some reason, whenever someone previously would mention this place, it was always brought up immediately with PINK BOOTS SOCIETY noted in the same sentence. I mean sure they do Pink Boots events,have a Pink Boots societe beer on tap, they have a female head brewer, but you’d have to be a myopic shitlord if all you focused on was the fact that head brewmaster Alexandra Nowell was female. There is more to this brewery, but that appears to be a big part of it.

I don’t know what is a shittier move, taking candids or asking a server to pose in front of the taplist. Both are equally inconvenient and selfish
Seafarer Kolsch: this god damn style: easy to do, hard to fuck up, even harder to do well. They fall closer to the exceptional pin with what should be a glossed over entry, clean delicious and crisp like an anjou pear with a touch of grassiness. It reminds me of Reality Czech and those gentle as shit offerings from Moonlight Brewing, which is to say it is very good.
We Saw Them Coming: I am pretty sure this is just a riff on 21st Amendment’s mediocre as fuck saison “SNEAK ATTACK” and then they added watermelon to it. However, unlike the 21A offering, this is intensely dry and the watermelon isn’t some crutch they lean on like with HELL OR HIGH WHATEVERMELON, it is olfactory first and contributes a touch of salinity to the finish. As refreshing as an ice cube down your Lane Bryant stretchpants.
Return of Sassy Rye: This was meh, it was fine but if you went into this expecting some Nelson explosion of dry, oily hops, you’ll get more of a hoppy Roggenbier. Shit is clean and well done, just not exceptionally exciting, like IN THE BEDROOM starring Sissy Spacek, but with more rye and less depressing.

Bonus points for not having a heavy, needlessly ornate, stupid fucking themed serving board of like an entire Loom or some shit
Southbounder Coffee Stout: This got my sand dollar nips blasting like some Flintstones pushup Pops. This had all of the dry and well massaged yeast profile of their other gentle offerings but a blast of intense acidity and roast from the coffee. This is easily their best beer and fires on all cylinders. I emptied my wastegate immediately, straight blowoff, fully boosted.
Alright so there you have it: nuanced, gentle, sessionable beers that are well crafted without the cereal aisle and spice rack dumped into them. None of the offerings will be a complete paradigm shift, but perhaps that shouldn’t always be the intent, maybe you should stop being such a judgmental asshole and sip on ESB. The staff knows their shit, the patrons are nice, and the contingency of beer assholes officiously bottlesharing on premises has yet to infect this place with their AXE Bodyspray musk. Now is the time to visit.@24:45
http://www.stealthisbeer.com/episodes/2015/6/22/episode-12-ben-keene-beer-advocate-magazine
WE FINALLY MADE IT TO THE MOUNTAINTOP.
NOTE: your LA beer week programming will continue after I post this shameless self-absorbed post about what others are saying about DDB.
Alright before we jump right back into the fray with another brewery review, might as well address this stone fruit prodigy that people have been mentioning with regularity on the trade boards. The Smog City barrel program seemingly has blind sided consumers and top tier tickers alike with monthly releases spitting hot rounds, dropping mad 16s on the South Bay. Even crusty kids with Pennywise shirts are peeping the BAL game.
So what’s the deal with this shit? OH GREAT YET ANOTHER STONEFRUIT SOURED BLONDE WOW SUCH ORIGINAL MANY INSPIRE. I thought the same thing and furrowed my brow, knowing that hard as nails lineage it would need to compete with: Persica, Fen Tao, La Fosse, Veritas 15, Fuzzy, the list goes on and fucking on. Even making a 4.5% AWA with peaches and apricots already puts a red dot on a brewer’s head like Rodman.
Let’s go through the standard checklist that gets level 2 cicerones tumescent:
– Stonefruit
– 2000 bottle release
– brewery only
And then they need to clean the trub from those And1 basketball shorts because that’s all it takes these days. Except this beer is actually good, it’s really fucking tasty.
The pour looks a touch watery but leaves subtle cling before that carb crackles off and belies that potentially acidic affair waiting underneathe. It looks clean and radiant, glowing like a Super Mario Galaxy Star.
The nose is intense pithy apricot flesh, cut nectarine, less peach and more farmers market clementines and satsuma almost. The bouquet seems so representative of the fruits in question is feels supra-real, like when that yellow smelling marker smelled more like lemons than real lemons do. This goes over the top and the acidity isn’t really anywhere to be found. There isn’t much brett C or musky funk interplay and this is one of those “squeaky clean” sours that boost crushability in lieu of cheesy gristiness.
The taste is endlessly balanced, a fruit profile that never becomes cloying or artificial. It has moderate acidity but you could easily crush a 500ml without a second thought. There is a touch of drying along the gumline but it never feels like they are learning on the fruit as a crutch. With some fruited wilds, you toss 2 lbs per gallon of anything and YOU WIN THE GAME THIS TASTES LIKE FRUIT, but that isn’t the case here. The fruit tannins serve to compliment rather than outshine the delicate drinkability of this beer, it’s like an ultra competent Steve Buscemi performance that makes everyone else appear even better as a whole.
A complaint that perhaps isn’t even a valid gripe is that it is TOO easy to drink and unless you actively contemplate this beer, it will be gone. One phone call from your ex wife pestering you about DID YOU BORROW MY STEPLADDER and boom the entire beer is gone. THANKS A LOT, JANET, YOU STOLE YET ANOTHER THING FROM MY LIFE. It isn’t insubstantial like some of the Bu’s, and it isn’t over the top like some nameless Floridian offerings, it his this perfect inner wall of satisfaction you want to rock upon until you crack your pit and juice it hard.
WAIT WUT.
In sum, yet another fucking great beer without a clear parallel, that is absolutely worth putting in and around your face.
Oh shit the LA Beer week reviews continue after yesterday’s Absolution write up gave people srs feels. Today we focus that malt soaked gaze upon some oddly charming macabre upstarts: Phantom Carriage.
So what is the deal with these Carson ballers whipping up american wilds, leveraging in equal measure macabre golden age Horror films and South Bay oil refinery microflora? Their business model at the outset appears to be a “Rare Barrel from the South” of sorts, with an emphasis on barrels, blending, bats and Black Lagoons.

Even in night mode, it is difficult to demonstrate how fucking dark this taproom is. Snaggletooth nightbeasts can get mad love here.
The tasting room is the typical industrial park complex but when you enter the pitch black tasting room it feels like a cross between Disney Thunder Mountain and the Haunted Mansion. There are chalk murals of Boris Karloff and Vincent Price and it looks like it needs one of those dry ice machines and fake cobwebs to nail down the “Horror Section” milieu of a VHS rental store.
The taplist doesn’t offer a incredible variety but that is like going to Kuhnhenn and complaining about the multitude of massive beers. They maintain a decidedly Awa verve and even when they set out into the farmhouse realm it still feels lactic and acidic throughout.

Would you like a tart saison, a sour wild, an acidic american wild, or a sour berliner? SUCH CHOICE TO BE MAKE.
So is their beer any fucking good, or should it be buried in a graveyard with some Troma DVDs?
Broadacres: Their berliner was refreshing, watery, Gatorade with a touch of salinity akin to De Garde Petite Mosaic. Pretty deece.
Ambler: not really farmhouse so much as it was just a straight up sour golden ale you have encountered a billion times before. Nothing exceptionally deficient, but given the layout of most mediocre breweries, this would be top tier for the average brewery, if they had a single sour at all.
Cushing: this is syrupy, acetic, with a cloying abrasiveness in the vein of a less attenuated Upland “lambic.” Shit was WNBA 100% not bitches.

These photos are even shittier than the usual DDB photos because the brewery is about as well lit as a 8th grade makeout party with nothing but bandos
Leapwood with Brett: The special offering of Leapwood with Brett was easily the best beer on draft and was so good that it seemed out of place amongst some of the the forgettable sours padding out the ranks. When placing it against the serviceable but decent Muis, Leapwood seemed like it was from a completely different brewery, this would be legitimately worth seeking out to purposefully avail yourself of this phenomenal beer.
Muis: like a more watery version of Cushing, this was basically all Brett Lambicus, kinda one dimensional, dry, but with a nice lemongrass finish that lingers. 6 nugs on the dro scale.
Their bottle list was on point with a wide array of bottles from local breweries, other Saisons, wilds, Shelton brothers items, and even limited beer from the “would be” competitor, Smog City brewing. You would have to be a persnickety complainer to not be able to find something to enjoy, even if you don’t find Phantom Carriages lineup completely compelling, the guest taps, the variety in the bottles, the collaboration with other breweries like Cascade and LA locals make it a pretty tough spot to really talk shit on.
My main complain is the sheer redundancy of some of their sour blonde iterations OVER and OVER and OVER, like a lesbian who gets her tubes tied: WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS.
The brewery appears to have its voice dropping with some glimmers of pure athleticism and greatness, with the barrel aged stretch marks of awkward development as an undercurrent at this time. There are some great beers, and a bunch of mediocre barrel fillers. The aphotic movie room with a Vincent Price film on was a magnificent touch if only because I have never seen a brewery with enough balls to go beyond the tragically trite “BARRELS AS TABLES, grain sacks for seats, HEY LOOK A FOOD TRUCK” bit.
While this may be a nonissue to some, I ordered the hummus and baguette and it was really fucking good. The pairing was completely shitty with a flight of Casacade lactic bombs as a sidecar, but that is largely my own negligence.
So what is in store for these guys? I can see them weathering the craft beer storm because they are decidedly focused with intent, branding, and a lineup that seems to be perpetually evolving. When I first tried this brewery at the Beachwood sour fest, it seemed like a few meh Brett trois strains and a sour golden with potential DMS issues. It was initially some Junior Varsity Monkish-tier shit. In a single year they have already improved incredibly and the glints of their best far outweigh their worst at this juncture.
I opened a bottle of Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock with the staff and they all were conversant, really friendly and self aware. While the beers themselves sometimes are not consistent enough to carry the day, the overall experience makes this place a must visit.
They absolutely will need to field a million tired ass Dany Prignon/Fantome Carriage jokes tho, that shit will NEVR get ode.