Martin Cizmar

Here's a brief history of L.A. craft beer, starting with the forgotten flop that could have changed everything and running through today's Monkish moment....

California again proved itself king of craft beer, winning 72 medals out of the 306 presented. The Los Angeles area had 11 of those. For perspective, the entire state of Colorado had 32 medals while Oregon had 22 and Washington had 17....

Given how competitive the market has gotten, new breweries tend to specialize in something — hazies for the bros, English ales for the persnickety homebrew types, crushable lagers for patio bars. The first few high-profile projects from Artisanal Brewers Collective ended up fitting that mold. The 16-strong restaurant group runs beery spots across the Southland, from the Belgian-focused Bluebird Brasserie in Sherman Oaks to the English-inspired Stalking Horse Brewery in West L.A....

The most influential beer trend ever to emerge from Los Angeles was a happy accident in 2015, when El Segundo Brewing was the cool new kid on the block thanks to its much-celebrated, Nelson Sauvin–driven double IPA, Hop Tanker. Being self-distributed and a fairly small operation, it was moving the beer super-fresh....

I’m not here to complain about the natural evolution of craft beer culture, or to bitch about what today’s cool kids are into. American beer is better now than it has ever been. But it’s also worth noting that the customer experience at today’s best new breweries is … lacking. The vibes are bad. And once you’ve got bad vibes, it can turn into a bad scene....

L.A. Beer Week kicks off with a massive party featuring 250 beers from 90 breweries and then splinters into a dense thicket of wildly diverse themed tastings, release parties and oddball one-off events....

Mumford Brewing’s Peter Mumford traveled to Brooklyn last month. As is customary, he brought along a couple of his beers to pour for the locals. First, he offered up one of the hazy New England-style IPAs that’ve brought notoriety to his 3-year-old Arts District brewpub. Then he went classic and popped his take on the West Coast IPA, which has a glassy, straw-yellow body and crisp bite of bitterness....

In March, Kunz opened the huge new 9,000-square-foot showcase brewpub across from the Los Angeles State Historic Park in Chinatown. It’s a gorgeous space with a bowstring truss ceiling, miles of exposed brick, a handsome red-tiled bar and a striking black concrete floor. Out front, there’s a cozy patio under string lights. Around back, there's an open view of the new 15-barrel brewhouse, double the size of the previous space, which is still operating on the opposite slope of Mount Washington....