Sarah BennettL.A. Beer Week, the weeklong celebration of all things local craft beer, is back June 18 for its eighth event. The opening-day L.A. Beer Week Kickoff Festival has nearly doubled in size over the years, moving from the Old Chinatown Plaza to Exposition Park to this year’s event at L.A. Center Studios, where 70 breweries will be pouring 200 beers (you can buy tickets starting today at 10 a.m.).
This will be the third L.A. Beer Week organized by the L.A. County Brewers Guild. With full participation from all 40 members of the guild, plus a few more who may be members by June, the beer fest will be the largest gathering of L.A.-brewed beer in one place, where you can taste what’s happening across the county — from Lancaster to Long Beach and from Agoura to Pomona.
At least six new additions to the scene will make their L.A. Beer Week debut, including Arts District Brewing Company, Mumford Brewing, Phantom Carriage Brewery, Brewyard Beer Company, Dry River Brewing and Brouwerij West (which, as a guest brewery, poured its first mixed-fermentation beer at the festival in 2014).
In addition to featuring L.A. breweries, the guild is pulling an impressive lineup of guest breweries, some of which, like San Diego’s Societe Brewing Company and Santa Cruz’s Sante Adarius Rustic Ales, are not distributed locally.
The festival kicks off nine days of L.A. beer love with hundreds of independently produced pint nights, tap takeovers, concerts and beer dinners at bars and restaurants citywide, culminating this year with the biannual Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Across America Festival, which has its L.A. date on the Queen Mary June 25.
L.A. Beer Week Kickoff, Sat., June 18, noon-4 p.m.; $L.A. Center Studios, 450 S. Bixel St., downtown; facebook.com/labrewers; $40.
Laurie Porter of Smog City Brewing; Credit: Bernie Wire
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