Beer Blogging Blow-out

Let’s cut to the chase, get the niceties outta the way shall we? The Library Bar in L.A.’s Downtown Financial District is one of the few beacons of proper beer culture in our city. If you haven’t been, we highly recommend it.
The 7-tap, European draft system they pour from is expert; the beer choices are striking without being too showy; the bartenders are all painfully attractive and they serve their bevvies in proper glassware. If you like your Belgian ale in a pint glass, don’t bother coming here. Ruin your beer on someone else’s time. And (if it isn’t too full of suits) the swanky bookish vibe is more than pleasant to lounge around in. Which is exactly what we did earlier this week for their “Bloggers N’ Beer” event.

Now, not to paint ourselves as drunks or illiterates or anything, but we actually showed up a little confused having read it as (no joke) “Beer Bloggers.” So here we are thinking, “Shit, we better have our game faces on right?” Neither of us are used to discussing brews with anyone except each other and our friends and the occasional beer clerk we’ve interviewed for the beer store series. We’re not kosher. We even went out of the way to ask Christina “the Beer Chick” Perozzi, who organized the event, which of the illuminati were showing up. In case we found time to cram.
You can understand our surprise when half of citysearch.com is sidled up to the bar at 8 pm, asking poor Christina why the Inversion IPA tastes like dirty socks. Turns out, the admittedly tech-brilliant PR firm that handles the Library Bar was behind the party, even sending out the evites and compiling all the blogger’s sites and everything. Hey, more power to them. But a beer symposium it was not.

That said, it was a great idea for an event, some killer viral marketing and it actually brought us full circle in a couple ways. Back in November when the bar opened, Evan wrote about it for his newspaper. Because Christina created the bar’s beer menu, he interviewed her. Since then we’ve had her on our radar. Last time Alex spoke with her, the event came up and voila: small world. Besides managing the infamous Father’s Office, Christina has a consulting business that seems to often involve the mad genius of Pasadena: Mark of Craftsman. In our minds, one of her biggest accomplishments as L.A.’s beer sommelier is single-handedly convincing L.A. pubs to carry multiple kegs of Craftsman. That’s her legacy right there.
In any case, it was rad to finally meet the “Beer Chick” and totally amusing to peruse the random blog personalities dutifully trying to learn about beers, taking notes and snapping pictures.

Beer Tasting Line-up

1. Craftsman 1903
2. Unibroue Blanche de Chambly
3. Saison DuPont
4. Unibroue Maudite
5. Deschutes Inversion IPA
6. Deschutes Black Butte Porter
7. Flying Dog Road Dog Porter Scottish Ale
8. Westmalle Triple
Every beer on the list, except the Flying Dog porter, is a fine choice if a bit standard. Truth be told we got psyched about a preliminary list Christina sent us that had 2 beers we’d never had — both were replaced with ones we had. Still, we totally dug swilling our way around these beers for free and toasting Christina on a job well done.
The highlight of the night, however, had to be running into the only other serious fucking L.A. beer blogger in the room (in the city, as far as we know) Dave of hairofthedogdave.com. A sweet guy with great taste, we shared a bottle of Westmalle triple and made him promise he’d participate in the upcoming Great Beer Ride we’re going to get around to organizing one of these days. If you haven’t checked his blog out, do so. To be honest, he covers SoCal beer better than we do.
As for the more, shall we say, pedestrian coverage, it’s good PR. But we wouldn’t link to it.