Business N Beer at Alpine Inn at Alpine Village, Torrance

Week seven of Business N Beer was held at the Alpine Inn at Alpine Village, located in Torrance, CA. While the Alpine Inn does not exactly fall under the description of micro brewery, brewpub or gastropub, the Alpine Inn is a specialty restaurant, serving German food, and they have about 15 beers on tap so we decided to give them a try for the Business N Beer circuit. As our attendance was about double of the previous week, I think the addition of specialty restaurants that provide a wide variety of beers on tap is probably a good move.

Jon, Otto and Todd, our hosts

Attendees included several regulars, one or two occasional attendees and a couple new visitors. As it turned out, Alpine Inn was providing musical entertainment in the form of not one but three different rock/reggae/punk bands. We had arrived early and I saw the band setting up so I asked one of the members what time they started playing. He told me they started between 8-8:30 so I figured this would not be an issue. What I did not realize is that he was in the third of the three bands. While the music was entertaining and I could see several of our group were getting into it, it did make it a little difficult with each other. As a result, I was unable to really talk to the new people; I hope they had a good time and will return.

As I noted above, our attendance is back up after low numbers at El Segundo Brewing Company, and this has caused me to come to a few conclusions. The first is that we have definitely found our boundaries as far as geographical locations are concerned. El Segundo is as far north as we will want to go; and Alpine Village is as far south as we will venture. Freeway close is not that close at 6:00 PM on a weekday. Secondly, locations that serve food are drawing the larger groups. That makes sense since we do encourage attendees to bring their significant other and being able to have dinner makes it easier to get them to come along if they are not really into beer. Lastly, I will do my best to make sure we don’t have too much noise at future events. While the live music was entertaining, it does prevent networking. Luckily, most of the people coming are acting like old friends now, so it does not have to be all business all the time.

Joe wins a free beer!

Our next Business N Beer will be held this Thursday at Sophie’s Place in the Riviera Village in Redondo Beach. Sophie’s Place is located at 1708 South Catalina Avenue. There is a large public parking lot just east of Catalina and the parking meters stop charging at 6:00 PM, so you essentially have free parking, even if you get there a little early. Sophie’s Place is a true gastropub with eight beers on tap and a large selection of bottled beer. We recently discovered Sophie’s and it soon became one of our favorite locations in the South Bay. I am sure you will enjoy it.

Please Like us on Facebook and sign up to get on our mailing list. We will never spam you; we just want to keep you in the loop. You can see all the photos from Business N Beer at Alpine Inn on GotBaddog.com.