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Food

Beer of the Month: Port Brewing Hot Rocks Lager

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Mendocino Brewing Blackeye Ale: Beer of the Month  (Kirk McKoy /Los Angeles Times)
2/30
The exotic combination of bananas, clove and pineapple makes an excellent foil for Cantonese or Thai, but this is a well-behaved beer that also gets along fine with chicken or macaroni and cheese. Click here for more, plus pricing.   (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
3/30
The nose is a little malty with a pleasant, unusual note perhaps like sweet potatoes. On the palate it’s quite sour — more sour than Goudenband, about like unsweetened yogurt. Click here for more, plus pricing.   (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
4/30
The luscious nose is milk chocolate with a touch of molasses and dried fruit -- raisins, figs, apricots -- and it’s malty-sweet in the mouth, though it finishes dry and slightly spicy. Click here for more.   (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
5/30
It has a huge, dense head like a proper Pilsner, with a clean, floral nose. The malt makes it noticeably sweeter, though not as sweet as a bock. Click here for more.   (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
6/30
It’s a big, mouth-filling golden ale with a fair amount of carbonation from bottle-conditioning. Click here for more.   (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
7/30
It pours dark amber with an attractive nose of pine and oranges. Click here for more:  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
8/30
It pours very red, almost the color of Port, with a medium tan head. The nose is malty, the palate flowing with chocolate and molasses. Click here for more:  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
9/30
It pours reddish medium brown with a moderate tan head, and the nose is just like milk chocolate. Click here for more:  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
10/30
It gets its smooth character from malted wheat, though wheat flavor doesn’t exactly leap out at you. Click here for more:  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
11/30
It pours amber with a pale yellowish head and a mild nose of fruits — apples and maybe bananas, rather than the usual West Coast citrus effect. Click here for more:  (Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
12/30
Black Cauldron pours very dark, practically black, with a dark tan head. It has a slight citrus and dried-fruit nose, but this beer is really about roasted flavors (from two varieties of caramel malt and a little bit of rauchbier-style smoked malt). Click here for more:  (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
13/30
Pintail is a seasonal brew from San Diego-based Karl Strauss, and for a long time it was available only at Karl Strauss brewpubs. Last year, Strauss started bottling it for sale in stores. Click here for more.  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
14/30
It pours light amber with a moderate, not terribly persistent head. On the palate, it’s full and well balanced with good hop bitterness playing off the malt. The finish is long and ends dry with a sudden bitter note cleaning up sweetness right at the end. Click here for more:  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
15/30
On the palate, it turns big and mouth-filling, creamy and malty, with the hops exercising a firm grip on your tongue. The finish is long with a little kick of alcohol at the end (the alcohol level is 9% by volume). Click here for details.  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
16/30
It pours dark amber with a substantial off-white head. The nose is earthy, musky and yeasty, the palate distinctly, but not shockingly, sour — about as sour as pomegranate juice — with a mild fruity flavor, reminiscent of raspberries, sour cherries and green apples. A little spicy snap follows, then a long gentle finish of caramel and more sour fruit. Click here for details.  (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)
17/30
When the weather’s cool, people gravitate to rich, malty ales, and they tend to think of the dark stuff, like stout or porter. Here’s another way to go. Curieux is made in the style of a Belgian tripel ale, and it’s aged for eight weeks in used bourbon barrels before being bottled on the yeast. This particular batch was bottled in July. Click here for more.  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
18/30
Shmaltz Brewing Albino Python has a straw-yellow color with a moderate head and a grassy (three kinds of hops in there), faintly celery-like nose. On the palate, the fennel and orange add a bit of breadth to the aroma, with the ginger dominating. It finishes quite dry and hoppy. Click here for details.  (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
19/30
We’ve come to think of Christmas beer as a tradition, but for American brewers, it’s really a chance to show off their originality. Some make sweet, malty ales, perhaps splashed with fruitcake spices (Anchor typically goes this route), while others may make a richer, more alcoholic version of the brewery’s flagship beer. (Rogue’s winter seasonal is more or less an India Pale Ale, bitter as sin, enriched with a roasty note.)  (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)
20/30
It pours dark brown with a moderately high tan head (like most Unibroue brews, it’s bottled on the lees), showing a yeasty nose with a whiff of pears and black pepper. On the palate, it’s full of roasted flavors like black coffee or toasted walnuts, a bit creamy with a slightly dry finish. Click here for details.  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
21/30
Pyramid Breweries calls this one Audacious Apricot Ale and fills the label with sketchy but clearly reckless surfing figures, presumably so nobody will think it’s some kind of frivolous soda pop. It certainly isn’t. It’s a much-decorated brew that goes back 15 years (even before Pyramid was calling itself Pyramid) and helped create the fruit beer phenomenon in this country. Click here for details.  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
22/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Telegraph Brewing California Ale. Click here for details.

RECENT & RELATED

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
23/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat. Click here for details.

RECENT & RELATED

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
24/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Buffalo Bill’s Orange Blossom Ale. Click here for details.

RECENT & RELATED

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Richard Derk / Los Angeles Times)
25/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Lost Coast Brewing Tangerine Wheat. Click here for details.

RECENT & RELATED

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
26/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Bear Republic Red Rocket Ale. Click here for details.

RECENT & RELATED

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
27/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity.

RECENT & RELATED:

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
28/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar.

RECENT & RELATED:

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times)
29/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Big Sky Moose Drool.

RECENT & RELATED:

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)
30/30
BEER OF THE MONTH: Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema

RECENT & RELATED:

Beer gets sour -- so pucker up

Pick out a wine with Times restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila

Recipes from the L.A. Times Test Kitchen  (Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times)
By Charles Perry
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Special to the Los Angeles Times

In the Middle Ages, brewers sometimes stoked their brew kettles by throwing in rocks that had been heated red-hot. They were on to something, as Port shows in this intriguing dark lager, a collaboration with Bend Brewing in Bend, Ore.

What do the hot rocks do? They caramelize and even scorch some of the malt, giving a new layer of browned flavor — not just the caramel, chocolate or molasses notes (there is a tiny amount of the last, a huge amount of the first) but also a little of that burnt sugar taste we learned to love the first time we toasted a marshmallow.

This is a super-malty beer, pouring brown with a little glint of red under a really colossal head. Hops very much play second fiddle — the finish is long and sweet, with hops merely nipping sarcastically at your tongue once in a while.

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Obvious food pairings are barbecued pork with a Kansas City-style sauce, Korean barbecue (galbi) and flan (crème caramel).

Quick sip

Style: A big, forgiving mouthful that says life is sweet, even with its regrets.

Price: $4 per 22-ounce bottle

Where to find it: Wally’s Wine & Spirits in Los Angeles, (310) 475-0606, https://www.wallywine.com; Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa, (949) 650-8463, https://www.hitimewine.net; Wade’s Wines in Westlake Village, (818) 597-9463, https://www.wadeswines.com; Beverages and More stores, https://www.bevmo.com; and Total Wine stores, https://www.totalwine.com.

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