Those who love Seven Grand – a veritable museum of whiskey – can now extend their support to its sister brewery, All Season. Under the selfsame aegis of Pouring With Heart, a Los Angeles-based hospitality group, this new operation set up shop just last year in the historic Streamline Moderne building at 8th & La Brea, for decades an outpost of Firestone (the tire company, not the brewery). Fans of Machine Age high modernism in architecture already had made the structure a place of pilgrimage, and now they can add tasty beers to the docket. Bullitt references the eponymous film (arguably the first action movie), which set the standard for car-chases on celluloid. The beer itself is delightfully bitter, with pinesap and grapefruit-pith tones. Drive safely!

The Italian Pilsner has taken on a life of its own, now brewed far outside of the walls of Birrificio Italiano north of Milan. Leaning heavily on continental hop-varietals to emphasize herbal, spicy and grassy notes in aroma, the style has proven especially popular here on the West Coast. Lowercase Brewing (located near SeaTac airport in Washington) has playfully extended the geographic reach with Adriatic Pilsner, with barley grown in northeastern Italy and hops sourced just over the border in Slovenia. Styrian Dragon and Styrian Kolibri (developed in Žalec like so many new varietals emanating from the country) stake their claim on the cutting-edge, while a yellow submarine bobs cheerfully on the waters of the Adriatic Sea on label of the can.

 

A play on “Avante Garde”, a longstanding Bière de Garde brewed by The Lost Abbey, this seasonal beer defies rational taxonomy. Maintaining a Belgian base profile while adding autumnal allspice, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, pumpkin and orange peel and furthermore dosing with Brettanomyces, a complex mélange emerges. Demonstrating the continued pull of pumpkin beers, Avant Gourde arrived for the first time in cans last week and disappeared extremely quickly. More cases forthcoming!