This post is a continuation of the 2015 New Beer Every Day Beer Diary Challenge, #ottbeerdiary.  Over the course of 2015, I drank at least one new beer every day. Please read the background in the link above, and enjoy reading about the most recently tasted beers below. This year I may deviate from the diary format in some posts, hoping to concentrate more on the locations and the breweries I am enjoying. If you’d like to join the challenge as well, let me know in the comments below. You can catch up on all of our posts as part of the challenge under the tag ottbeerdiary.

Day 399: February 3, 2016

Diary entry:

Not quite the morning I was hoping for.

Rather the exploring SoCal, or even going to work down in San Diego for a few hours, I decided to visit the dentist, to see how much havoc all of these sour beers have been wreaking on my teeth. With surprisingly positive results!

Whew!

Had to spend a few more hours after the Dentist at the hospital where Erin was having some medical stuff done while in the States, and then we made a run out to Costa Mesa, CA, where we paid a visit to an outpost of one of our favorite restaurants in the world, Din Tai Fung, the xiao long bao dumpling chain from Taipei. This used to be a weekly stop for dinner for us when we lived in Taiwan, and we try to take the chance to visit them whenever we can — be it in Taiwan, Hong Kong, or one of their locations in the US.

Of course, this required a Taiwan Beer

Finishing dinner and getting back to Erin’s parents’ house in Torrance, I had to finish arranging my suitcases, and then get ready to head to the airport for my red-eye flight to JFK for work in CT tomorrow. Part of getting ready, and not knowing how bad traffic would be or what options I’d have, I opted to try a beer from Erin’s southwest road road trip in September that I had not yet tried:

Smoked Piloncillo Stout by Ensenada Brewing Co. (Old Mission Brewery). This 6% ABV smoked stout had dark roasted malts and some interesting spiced notes.

At the airport, since I did arrive early, I had a first beer at one of the restaurants before hitting my gate: Joe by 10 Barrel Brewing Company, a 6.9% IPA with Simcoe, Amarillo, and Mosaic hops. Nice hoppy, citrus bitterness. But this was from Oregon, and I was still hoping for something more local…

The Beer:

Name: Dogtown Duck

Style: American IPA

Producer: Venice Duck Brewery

Alcohol content: 6.8%

Bottle size: 16 fl. oz. draft

Purchased from: Rock & Brews LAX

Tonight’s beer of the night was not the originally intended Ensenada Stout, but the Dogtown Duck IPA by Venice Duck Brewery of Venice, CA. When there’s a local option, have to go local. And since I made it to the airport earlier than I expected, and had time to kill without lounge access since it was a domestic flight, I popped in to Rock & Brews to try one of their local offerings. The server described this to me as a “malt-covered pine cone.” Indeed, it’s a very hoppy, green West Coast IPA.