Business & Beer at Monkish Brewing & a special offer

On Thursday October 10, Business & Beer held their monthly get-together at Monkish Brewing Company, a Torrance microbrewery that specializes in Belgian style ales. In addition to the 10+ varieties of ales available, Vella Pizza was there with their mobile brick oven to provide their special pizzas for those in attendance. Speaking of attendance, this group was one of the most diversified we have had since we first started Business & Beer. There was a healthy mix of old timers, occasional visitors and first timers. We even had representatives of two new breweries join us, Pac City Brewery from Pacoima and Absolution Brewing Company of Torrance. We will be including Absolution Brewing in our rotation in 2014; after they get set up and get a tasting room in place.

Business & Beer is an informal business networking group that meets on the second Thursday of every month at a different microbrewery or brewpub in the South Bay area. Unlike other business networking groups we have no dues or mandatory meetings. If networking is an important part of your job description and you enjoy craft beers, you should consider joining us. It is a very nice group of people and they want to meet you and learn more about what your business offers. Our next gathering will be November 14 at El Segundo Brewing Company in El Segundo. They have been doing a lot of brewing there lately and have several beers released since our last visit there including the addition of a lager and a saison to accompany the IPAs, stouts and DIPAs. If you have never come to El Segundo Brewing, you are in for a treat. You can find our entire schedule of upcoming events and sign up to our mailing list on the front page of BusinessNBeer.com. You can also Like us on Facebook to be kept abreast of upcoming gatherings and special events. You can find all the photos from our gathering at Monkish Brewing Company on CraftbeerGuy.com.

Speaking of special events; on November 17 Alpine Village will be holding their second annual Kraft Bierfest. Not to be confused with their famous Oktoberfest, Alpine’s Kraft Bierfest is all about American craft beers. Last year’s Alpine Bier Fest featured 106 different brews from 34 small and medium sized craft breweries; it was a great time and there were no lines. If you want to see the photos from last year’s event, they are up on GotBaddog.com. Regular readers know we attend quite a few local beer festivals; I cannot think of any that had more varieties of hard to find craft beers than Alpine Village’s craft beer festival. This year the event is being moved from the big Oktoberfest tent into the Alpine Inn. This means limited ticket sales and their restaurant will be available for food if desired.

Tickets are $30 at the door; $10 for designated drivers. You can purchase tickets ahead of time online for $25 until November 11, 2013. If you read all this you have just saved yourself $5 per ticket. If you use promo code “Baddog” you save 20% and can purchase up to 30 general admission tickets for a mere $20 each. Admission gets you a tasting glass and 10 three ounce pours. If you need more, additional drink tickets will be available for purchase.