First Friday @ Smog City and Honest Abe Cider Competition!

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Tomorrow Dec. 2nd Pacific Gravity will be headed to Smog City for our last First Friday 2016! Come and enjoy some of the best LA beers in town with our friends at Smog.

Smog City Brewery
1901 Del Amo Blvd B, Torrance, CA 90501

Check out the PG even page link below for more info:
http://pacificgravity.com/events/first-friday-smog-city-december/ (note: this event was changed from Holy Cow to Smog City)

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Then Sunday Dec. 4th, Bring back your cider you made from the Honest Abe Cider Collection a few months back. We will be sharing them with Strand Brew Club and Honest Abe for a chance to win Best Cider Maker! Everyones invited, bring bottles, growlers, or kegs and get some great feed back on how you did on you cider. Should be a fun day at Honest Abe!

Honest Abe Cider
17800 S Main St #105, Gardena, CA 90248

Check out the link below of the Facebook invite put together by Strand Brewers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1690467347933410/     UPDATE: It looks like that page was moved or taken down, but we’ll have more info on this event to follow!

 

Happy Friday! :)

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First Friday is just a few hours away and I’m here with my hands full, racking a Belgian inspired dark ale into a Balcones whiskey barrel. 😀 There are worse ways to spend a Friday afternoon but this weekend is going to be a busy one…

Remember tonight is First Friday at Maple Block Meat Company ( 3973 Sepulveda Blvd, Culver City, CA 90230 ) and tomorrow is our November meeting and annual chili cook off at the Molloy’s place ( 6738 W. 87th Place, Westchester, CA 90045 ).

Break out your crock pots and get to stewing up some chili for the competition. As I mentioned earlier this week we’ll be supplying rice but you’re free to bring whatever sides you feel like dishing out too.

Rives will be serving his commercial Meads & Ciders tasting, and we’ll be judging the best home brew of the month too.

If you want to enter your chili for competition make sure you’re there and setup between 12 and 1pm. Voting will continue until about 3pm, at which point we’ll tally up and announce the best chili and most unique chili.

A few items you’ll want to bring:

  • Hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen. The weather calls for sun.
  • A chair or two. Because drinking and eating is easier sitting down.
  • Something to drink out of (our lanyard & glass combo will be available for purchase if needed too!)
  • Delicious home brewed beer!

Lastly, remember that we’re deciding on the 2016 Club Member of The Year AND a new President, Vice President, and Treasurer starting at this meeting. If you’d like to nominate a member for any one of those positions, drop an email with their name and the position at board @ pacificgravity. com

One more quick reminder too from our competition corner: Entries for the Inland Empire Brewers 20th annual home brew competition are due tomorrow at CCHBS. More info on that comp here: http://comp.inlandempirebrewers.com/

By the way, my apologies to the Molloy family for my butchering the spelling of their last name in my previous post. Lloyd made me do it. 😟 🙂

Alright, so I’m going to finish up here then Tania and I will be walking over to Maple Block. Hope to see you there, if you want me to save you a seat message me on Facebook!

 

Thanks,

Michael

November!!!

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Hey PG!

Can you believe it’s November already? The holidays are right around the corner (message me directly if you need my wishlist 🙂 ) and it’s time for us to cook up some chili, vote on some new board members, and start making plans for our big end of year party!

First Friday is THIS FRIDAY at Maple Block Meat Company here in Culver city. The service, food, and beer selection has turned Tania and I into regulars lately and I can’t wait to share it with you. We’ll be arriving around 7:30pm and staying until at least 10pm. If you’re in the neighborhood, thirsty and/or hungry, stop on by!

November’s Club Meeting is THIS SATURDAY at the Molloy’s house in Westchester. A few important things to remember about the meeting:

The meeting is a few weeks early this month, so don’t miss out!  The Molloys were generous enough to host us (again) and this weekend was the best fit for their schedule. Remember, it’s a private residence so carry-in & carry-out and be on your best behavior!

  • The President, Vice President and Treasurer board positions are up for nomination and we’ll start collecting votes on Saturday. We’ll also begin voting on Club Member of the Year and we’re still accepting nominations for that award as well.
    • Want to nominate someone? Email board @ pacificgravity.com with their name and which position you’re nominating them for. We’ll get them on the ballot if you email before FRIDAY.
  • Food will come in the form of our annual Club Chili Cook Off and all members are invited to bring a crock pot of homemade chili to enter.  Last year’s cook off was so much fun, looking forward to see who brings what! 😀        If you don’t make chili, we’ll happily accept corn bread or sides too. 🙂
  • Our commercial tasting style is Meads and Ciders, hosted by Rives. He gave me the 411 on some of the bottles he’s bringing and it sounds like we’re going to have a great lineup.
  • Best Beer of the Meeting competition will revolve around Meads & Ciders AND Smoked, Spiced, and Wood Aged beers. As usual, we’ll award a $25 Culver City Home Brewing Supply gift certificate to the winner.

There are still a few details to work out regarding the meeting Saturday so expect one more post before the week is over.

Looking forward to this weekend like 😀 😀 😀 !   See you there.

Michael

4nov7:30 pmFirst Friday - Maple Block Meat Company7:30 pm Maple Block Meat Company

Last Night’s Club Meeting Reminders and Recap.

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Thanks everyone that came out last night, we had a great October Club Meeting that had some long announcements and Nominations for 2017.

Just a Reminder, Voting for the Club President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Club Member of the Year will be held November 5th at the chili cook off Saturday club meeting at Terry Maloy’s house. More info on that to come, but in the mean time Nominations for Pres., VP, Treasure, and Club Member of the Year will be open tell about Nov. 4th. Please email us at board@pacificgravity.com for your Nominations. There is still plenty of room for Pres., VP, and Treasurer nomination!

Secondly, Tomorrow is the Golf Day Outing hosted by our new Activities Director, Brett Willson. if anyone is interested in golfing there still might be a chance to squeeze you in. Email Brett at brettwilsonpg@gmail.com.

Also we will have a Bottle share after party at the Trux Stop, hosted by Tomm Carroll, aka his place. Tomm said last night that if you don’t have any bottles to share don’t worry he has it covered!! also if anyone is interested in bringing any homebrew kegs as well we will have taps set up!! feel free to email me if you do: President@pacificgravity.com and I will let Tomm know. As well Ian will be cooking up some brats, but with a beer bath technique I’m told so it should be awesome as always. All are welcome to Tomm’s stating at 3pm tomorrow!

Lastly check out the new First Friday schedule for the months of November and December that has been updated for the rest of the year.

Here’s a bit of Recap of Last nights October meeting:

We had a ton of Kegs line up at last nights meeting, all sorts of styles and a couple for the Style of the Month. Everything from Strong Ales, to Smoked Porters, Fresh Harvest IPA’s and NE IPA’s. Plus some great beers being passed around like Rueben’s Smash Hopped Dorado IPA and a American sour blend dry hopped with Mosaic form one of the New Members that signed up last night! There where a ton of new faces and it was great to see and meet you all. I hope you enjoyed the meeting and will be back for more of our events!

Tim J. hosted the Commercial Tasting and did a great job finding all sorts of English Strong Ales and some American Barleywines. We also had a great Raffle with a lot of classics like “A beer and a Glass”, but also gave away some Fresh Cascade Hops from Carls garden, a new and rare LA Ale Works hat and a beer, some PG glassware swag and a beer, a Brewery 750ml, and ended with a grand prize of a 6.5 gal. Glass Carboy donated form Porter at Smog City.

We did our last 2 off flavor tastings last night, hosted by Michael Patterson. Thank you Michael for hosting all the set ups this year. Last night ended on some fun ones Earthy and Spicy. The Earthy one tasted like you just took a shot of dirt mixed in with some grass clippings. Great Stuff!

Club Member Parker Waechter once again this year took home the Best Beer of the Night price of a $25 gift certificate at Culver City Homebrew Shop with his Wee Heavy. He has consistently brewed not only the style of the month, but has done it in away that has improved his skill immensely. I encourage all to be like Parker and brew those beers! The Style of the Month has been there to encourage people to step out of their boundaries. To brew and learn about different styles. Parker has done that, admitting last night how brewing the style of the month has been a great and fulfilling challenge for him this past year and it show in his awesome beers he brings every month. Great Job Parker!

Below are some pics form last night. Cant see the pics on the email?? go to this post link: http://pacificgravity.com/2016/10/last-nights-club-meeting-reminders/

 

IMG_6577 IMG_6578 IMG_6579 IMG_6580 IMG_6582 IMG_6583 IMG_6584 IMG_6585 IMG_6586 IMG_6587 IMG_6588 IMG_6589 IMG_6591 IMG_6594 IMG_6597

 

First Friday At Phantom Carriage

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Hey PG!

October is such a cool month. The weather is usually perfect; warm during the day and crisp at night. Darker beers are starting to make their way onto the shelves, excitement grows with crowds of beer lovers lining up for pumpkin releases from this brewery or that. Football is going strong, hockey and basketball will be starting here in a few weeks too. New episodes of our favorite shows are airing (South Park is off to a great start by the way) and isn’t this presidential election just a whole lot of fun? 😀

 October also brings with it Halloween and all things spooky, so it only makes sense to visit our friends [and club alumni] at Phantom Carriage in Carson for First Friday.

 

I gave Martin and Simon the heads up so they’ll be ready for us and their tap list looks great. For the first time in I don’t know how long, their extraordinary high gravity dark sour Lugosi is in the lineup along with Golden Brett a wild Belgian inspired ale from Allagash of Portland,  Maine. Their bottle selection is giant as well. http://www.phantomcarriage.com/livebeerlist/

The bites here are as good as the beer and the two fit together nicely. Check out the menu to get your taste buds thinking, Tania and I recommend the Phantom Fritos and the pickled veggies. http://www.phantomcarriage.com/menu/

Finally, remember to bring your growler out for a fill to go. 🙂 You’ll thank me for reminding you, later when you’re at home on Sunday watching the game with a fresh 1/2 gallon of beer. They have some super simple rules for growler fills, you’ll need to put painters tape over logos on any branded growlers, and they need to be clean. More on that topic here: http://www.phantomcarriage.com/growler-policy/

Tania and I will be there starting right around 7pm. Car pool, uber, bicycle, or thumb it!  See you there!

Michael

7oct7:00 pmFirst Friday - Phantom Carriage7:00 pm Phantom Carriage

September First Friday @ Monkish Brewing Company

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Hey PG!

A quick reminder that THIS FRIDAY September 2nd is our First Friday at Monkish Brewing Company in Torrance. A fan of Belgian inspired beers myself, I’ve been looking forward to this one as our “fresh Belgian” beer event for 2016. The owner Henry is super hospitable and the beer is delicious and priced right.

Bring a sub or a pizza and get ready to tip back some easy drinking ales with us. I hear it’s member Eli’s birthday, so we’ll be celebrating with a little more effort on his behalf. 🙂

By the way, I had a really good time at our August club meeting on the 18th. Andrew’s commercial sour beer tasting was off the hook and the quality of home brewed sours that made it out was exciting. Thanks again to Culver City Homebrew Supply for hosting us and for the special discounts.

Finally one last bit personally. Thanks to club members Ian, Tim, Mimi and Luis for attending my “Cheese, Cheers and Beers” event at Surfas this past Saturday. Having some familiar faces in the crowd made things way more fun, it was great.

Anyway, Tania and I will be arriving at Monkish right around 7pm this Friday. Hope to see you all there!

_Michael

2sep7:00 pmFirst Friday - Monkish Brewing Company7:00 pm Monkish Brewing Company

 

Tonight! August First Friday @ Wirsthaus

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Hey PG!

Just a few hours until our First Friday @ Wirsthaus on La Brea tonight and I can’t wait. I first went to Wirsthaus last year for a birthday party and it was a lot of fun. It’s a traditional German restaurant and pub featuring authentic schnitzel, sausages,  potato pancakes, currywurst, and some decent vegetarian options too. They’ve got ping pong and usually some live music going on, more than 30 German beers available too.

More info here: http://www.wirtshausla.com/

Should be a very fun night, Tania and I are planning on arriving at 7pm to try and grab some table space. The place can get rather busy, but (as we’ve done before) we’ll find a way to make it work.

Looking forward to drinking cold beer out of a boot tonight! I hope to see you all there.

_Michael

5aug7:00 pmFirst Friday - Wirtshaus7:00 pm Wirtshaus

July’s First Friday Tomorrow! :)

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Hey PG!

 

Sorry for the late reminder, I’m traveling again, this time in New England, and I haven’t had a moment to sit down and write this up!

Tomorrow, Friday July 1st is First Friday at King’s Harbor Brewing Company’s waterfront tasting room. Located on the Redondo Beach Pier, their beer is super fresh (the brewery itself is just 2 miles away).  Growlers, 22oz bottles, and crowlers (32oz can growlers) are available, plus their limited Radler – South Bayern Hefeweizen blended with Lemon Soda.

As an added bonus, Naja’s is literally a crawl away, if you’re feeling adventurous enough to attack their tap list too. 😉

This event starts right around 7:30pm on Friday and goes until closing time. The Redondo Beach Pier offers great parking at that time of night and due to the holiday coming up, I expect both K.H.B.C. and Naja’s to be a little more accessible than usual.

As usual, I recommend everybody find a designated driver or über down there. Especially due to the holiday weekend!

Have fun and party safe.  See you all soon.

_Michael

1jul7:00 pmFirst Friday - King Harbor Brewing Company7:00 pm King Harbor Brewing Company Waterfront Tasting Room

 

Club Meeting and other event dates!!

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Sorry for the late announcing of this months club meeting which will be held at the:
Culver City Homebrew Supply store this week June 16th at 7:30pm.
4234 Sepulveda Blvd, Culver City, CA 90230. Style of the Month is All Lagers for homebrewers and International and Czech Lagers for the commercial tasting. There will be a raffle, food, and sign up sheets for next month’s Summer Party for volunteers, beer, and food.
Also if you still need to brew beer for the Summer Party, all club nights held at the Culver City Homebrew Supply shop is double discount nights, So bring you recipes and buy some homebrew supplies!!

We have some more events coming up in July, so set your calendars!

July 1st for First Friday will be south of us at King Harbor’s Waterfront Tasting Room, in the Redondo Pier area! really close to Naja’s Place. Go down via Uber or Lyft and check them out, have a few of their beers and if you need more then head next door. Waterfront Location: 132 International Boardwalk, Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(Note: Do not mistake the location with King Harbor’s actual brewery located at 2907 182nd street Redondo Beach, California 90278)

July 10th for Sunday Funday in the Arts Disttrict, Downtown LA!! This should be a real fun bar crawl in a cool part of downtown with a lot of great beer bars, food, and Breweries. Plus the highlight event where we get a personal tour from club friend Devon Randall, aka Head Brewer at the Arts District Brewery.
The Plan: So the Expo Line just opened up all the way the Santa Monica, so this is a great excuse to use it. The train’s will take you all the way to the Arts District area. Plan on getting on the trains about 10am-10:30am to meet at our first location: Wurstkuche at 11am, where you can get the best sausages in town and some awesome German and Belgian beers. Then about 12:30pm-1pm we head across the street to the Arts District Brewery, where we will meet Devon, drink her beer’s, eat more food, and set off on a personal tour of the brewing facilities. After a good while of hanging at the brewery, the next stop we leave it up to the group, or the individuals. I might head to 82 the Arcade Bar, or Mumford Brewing a few block away. There is also Angel City Brewing and Eat Drink Americano real close too. A bit farther you can cab it to Iron Triangle Brewing, Little Bear, or Villains Tavern. Check out all the links I added to each location, I will announce at the June club meeting and post more about the schedule closer to the date of the event.

July 23rd for Pacific Gravity’s Summer Party!! Definitely set your calendars for this, the biggest event of the year! We will have sign up sheet at this thursday’s club meeting for volunteers, beers, and pot luck food. We will also be looking for some special volunteers to help out Ian with the food duties as well, the week before, during set up, and during the summer party day since he is not as mobile as usual. We will make the official announcements at the meeting this Thursday at the Culver City Homebrew Supply shop.

 

http://pacificgravity.com/2016/06/club-meeting-event-dates/

June 3rd, First Friday @ Louie’s of Mar Vista

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Hey PG!

I hope this reminder finds you all well, both in life and brew schedule. 🙂

Friday is our June First Friday at Louie’s of Mar Vista, which should be a very chill food and beers event. If you’re not familiar with Louie’s, it’s a well designed restaurant with a beautiful bar and dining room. They have an area out back that’s covered, but open to the outside air with a few tables. The food is excellent, ASAP style (As Southern As Possible), so I highly recommend you bring your appetite and a date. 😉 Here’s a link to the menu to get your appetite going: http://louiesofmarvista.com/?page_id=344

Beer and drink-wise they’re stocked pretty well, including a few locals like Monkish and Smog City the last time I was there and a whole bunch of specialty cocktails, enhanced by the fresh honey harvested from their bee boxes on the roof.

Tania and I will be there right around 7pm but you’re welcome to come by anytime. Looking forward to seeing you there!

_Michael

3jun7:00 pmFirst Friday - Louie's of Mar Vista7:00 pm Louie's of Mar Vista