Checking up on All-American Ale Works

I had the unfortunate occasion to be at the Kaiser Permanente mega-complex in #Anaheim one night.  A sick mother-in-law is no good.  The Old Man and I hung out for a while bedside in the ER and then, hands wringing, left for the night hoping for the best within the next couple of days.

Since we were so far down on La Palma, we decided to hit up All-American Ale Works.  It is one of the newer breweries in Anaheim and one that I hadn’t been to since I wrote this review of them in the summer of 2017.

All-American Ale Works is the furthest brewery east on Lager Palma Brewlouvard.  It’s maybe 3 miles from Bottle Logic, Asylym, & Hoparazzi.  We were pleased when we pulled  up and there was a sign letting patrons know that they had $3 Founding Father Pints on this night.  With a special like that going on, we were shocked when we walked inside and there was no one in there, except for the brewer Travis.  When I came in July, it was so packed that I was lucky to get a seat.  That was right after they opened so word was on the street about a new brewery in Anaheim.  This time, I had my choice so I picked the table with the best All-American Ale Works brand.  Hardcore.

We asked Travis what the “Founding Father’s” pint special was all about and he told us it was all the “Year Round” beers on the menu, there were 5 choices with varying tastes and ABV’s.

Here’s a pretty focused shot of the menu.  The growler prices are cut off so you will just have to go there to find out the prices.

Normally I would’ve gone for the Old School Mix Tape Session IPA but it was only a 4.7%.  I know it’s more about the taste of the beer but I happen to be an ABV nerd and it’s something I look for in a brew.  So I went with the Barefoot Blonde Lager which measured 5% and the Old Man had a Storm The Beach which is a red ale with coconut with an awesome 7% ABV.

We both really enjoyed our selections in the first round.  So much that we stayed for a second round and both had the Storm The Beach this time.  Again, the color was dark red with a good head and the coconut in the mix adds such a sweet, mellow flavor to the finish.  Here’s the Old Man hisself posing with his first 7%er:

 

 

For about 10 minutes after we ordered our first round, no one was in there so we just talked to Travis.  He was personable and really on top of things coming up for All-American.  They are looking ahead to having distribution in local places and getting their name out on the craft brew festival circuit.  I mentioned the lack of crowds and Travis said the $3 pint on Monday night thing was new but let me know that they have a bunch of events going on throughout the week.  Here’s a pick of the weeklies:

 

 

Eventually, a group of 4 came in and sat at the bar so Travis turned his attention to them.  Now it was my chance to start snapping pictures and writing down the facts!  Another couple came in a little while later and then finally a lone guy but it got a little more crowded without being annoying.

 

There has been a hole in my heart since Backstreet Brewery quit hosting trivia night.  My interest was definitely piqued when I saw that All-American teams up with

Geeks Who Drink for trivia on Tuesdays at 7:00pm.  Travis said the top prize is a $20 gift card.  I know a couple of Lag-A-Lots who could use a $20 gift card to pay for the $50 worth of beer we would all drink that night.  One of these nights I’m gonna get down Lager Palma east and play some trivia with my smart friends.  Can’t hardly wait!

 

 

 

Travis told us about some upcoming charity thing they are doing in conjunction with a local cat rescue.  For the life of me, I cannot remember the name but I wish I could give them a plug here.  Remember to spay and neuter your pets!

All-American Ale Works has improved and seem to be getting better than when I first tried them out.  Everything about the place is mostly the same as it was when they opened last year.  For example, they’ve got the Patch Wall and merchandise for sale still.

The art on the walls is still the same as well as the big screen tele’s on every wall broadcasting whatever game catches the fancy of the brewery patrons on any given night.

But they have a lot more beers on tap than they used to though and that’s great.  Travis said when they first opened they only had 9 or so choices on the menu and now the menu is extensive.  He said they have made over 35 different brews since they opened until now.

I got a few shots of the back area:

If you’ve never been to All-American Ale Works, I recommend checking it out.  If you’ve been once or twice last year, like I had, do yourself a favor and head back there.  Just don’t come on Tuesdays for trivia night because my team will devour you.

Below the glowing neon sign (also lets you know you have arrived)

This is their suite number, in case you miss the glowing neon sign

Getting Trivial with Leonardine Industries

Ever since OC Pop Quiz and the OC Weekly teamed up to host a trivia competition in which the Lagalots failed miserably back in early October, we haven’t been to a regular Wednesday trivia night at @BackstreetBrew.  It’s not like we were ashamed to show our loser faces, we just got really distracted by life.  But last Wednesday, we decided to have a night out with some fun trivia on the side.

I checked Groupon and there was a deal that I quickly bought.  It was $22.00 for 4 pints of beer and 4 flights.  A great bargain in itself but Groupon let me use a coupon code that gave me $5.00 off so in the end, I got my deal for $17.00.  It was worth downloading the Groupon app and kept me in beers the whole night.

The Old Man and I started with our flights.

I got a sampling of the lighter lagers and ales with my heaviest being a 5.9% called Trifecta Pale Ale.  Sean got some of the stronger ones and his favorite was the Holy Shizz Imperial Red, it’s a 12% or something close to that.  An interesting and tasty beer I tried was the Mango & Habanero.  It was so sweet at first and kinda pulpy when you held it up to the light.  It went down smooth.  And then the habanero kicked in and my throat burned like a mother fucker.  Sweet and spicy is a great combination.

For our second round of flights, we both just got our favorites from the menu and shared each one.  When it came time for us to get our pints, I went with a Set Sail IPA and so did the Old Man.  We weren’t even finished with those before we were ordering our last round of pints.  We were a little tipsy so we stuck with a 5% Vienna Lager to close the night out and the brewery down.

There were six teams competing that night and it was only the second time that Leonardine Industries has played.  The usual suspects were there, like Quiz On My Face, but there were some new faces & team names too.  Quizmaster Doug was already there when we arrived so we knew it was gonna be a fun and fast evening.

In the first round, Leonardine did okay.  We knew that Sturgeon is prized for caviar and that Papa Johns is the official sponsor of the Super Bowl and that the first animal

in space was a dog but we didn’t know who Quasimodo fell in love with (Esmerelda, btw) or that the latin root of Malaria is “bad air.”  We ended up getting 4 points out of six and we got the bonus wrong.  It was about the Super Bowl attendance and we guessed 120,000 because we don’t know anything about the capacity of stadiums.  But Team Ramrod knew and when they rolled the die, they got to steal a point from another team.  Luckily they didn’t choose us and we came in tied for second place.

Round 2 was hard.  It wasn’t about balls so we had that in our favor.  The task was to name 10 musicians/bands that toured in 2015 and made more than 50 million or something like that.  The only thing we could think of to do was to name all the artists that we hear about all the damn time on TMZ.  That turned out to be a pretty good strategy because we got seven points for a total of 11 and the lead.  Thanks Harvey Levin.  Yeah, yeah…I know you’re a lawyer.

The next round was worth a total of 9 points.  We got the first three right, which was the top tourist states in the US.  In a way that was too easy, we guessed California, New York and Florida and they were all correct.  The next three were so fucking difficult that I don’t even think that the fully assembled Lagalots could’ve known the answers.  We had to name 3 of the 6 musicians who had won an Oscar and also had a Billboard hit.  Wow.  Who the fuck knows that kind of information?  Certainly not us as we guessed wrong on all three.  The last question was to name 3 styles of iPod besides Touch and Mini.  Sean knew the Shuffle and the Nano but we couldn’t think of a third so we only got 2 right.  We got the bonus question wrong by the smallest fraction.  I thought the iPod came out in 2002 but it turned out to be 2001.  Two teams got it right and got to roll the die.  But the good news for us was that we were still in the lead with 16 points.

The picture round, the 4th one, was next and we had to name ten fruits with shitty ass quality pictures as the only way to identify them.  We did well, and I was really proud of myself for knowing the Dragon Fruit because I had just made a dragon fruit and pineapple sorbet the day before.  We didn’t know acai, we got figs and dates mixed up, and Sean had never even heard of a lychee.  We got seven out of ten and we were feeling pretty confident.  But we lost our lead and Quiz On My Face took the reigns.

Round 5…the Guess Who round.  We have a rule that I’ve stated before and I will state again now.  No matter how sure you think you are, don’t turn in the answer until after the 3rd clue.  That way, you’re sure and you get points instead of none at all.  So I know that rule but I like to break rules, i’m just that way.  I knew the answer was Gwen Stefani on the second clue.  So did everyone else.  One team turned in their answer after the first clue and 2 other teams besides us turned in after the second one.  You don’t ask a question in Anaheim about Gwen Stefani and expect no one to know the answer.

 

Round 6 was the final one.  It’s just like round 1.  Six questions and a bonus.  Well we’re pretty damn good at these easy trivia questions by now so we got 5 correct.  We knew that James Earl Jones provided the voice for Mustafa (except the Old Man had to ask me who Mustafa was) and that crochet is like knitting but with one hook and that giant, one-eyed creatures are called Cyclops.  And thanks to the power of the eraser, we figured out how to spell “subpoena” after a few trial and errors.  The question we got wrong was in regard to the host of a foodie show on the Travel Channel.  I thought I knew the answer, Andrew Zimmern, but I was sadly mistaken.  We also got the bonus wrong again.  It was about the weight of the heaviest burger ever made and we guessed 3 pounds but it was actually something like 14 pounds.  Crazy ass meat-eaters.

When the final results were announced, we had a score of 34 and we were in third place.  Quiz On My Face and Ramrod tied for first so there was a quiz off!  In 50 seconds, the teams had to name as many Las Vegas Strip hotels as they could.  The winner, with 13 named, was Quiz On My Face.  Congrats to them and to a battle hard fought.  We found out later that night that it was Quiz’s first time winning and they have been doing trivia night longer than we have.  So extra congratulations go out to those boys.

 

 

 

 

#Winning @BackStreetBrew #EatThinkDrink

It was just an average Wednesday night at the BackStreet Brewery in #Anaheim.  An ordinary, uneventful night of nail-biting trivia with @PlayPopQuiz.

Who is to say that it wasn’t fate that visited upon the #Lagalots that night?  Whatever it was, we actually won and scored two growlers for our drinking pleasure as well as the week’s title.

Our normal team is a dream team, we have experts in every subject.

But last Wednesday found our team broken up with the only remaining members being myself, Sean, and Carie.  We decided to play just for fun and to represent the Lagalots at trivia night.  We even laughed about how funny and unlikely it would be if we won.  Little did we know…

We got there a little after 7:30.  The #FreewaySeries at the #BigA was attracting lots of traffic on St. College so we got off the main roads and took the backstreets to Backstreet.  The taco truck was there with scrumptious veggie soyrizo & potato tacos.

Water you tacoing about?

 

They also have carne asada and chicken I think.  They are all delicious and go perfectly with a pint of #craftbeer from Backstreet.

I started off with my go-to, Jagged Little Pilsner.  Carie had a Rita Red Ale and the old man had a Set Sail IPA, he likes those strong beers!  The brewery wasn’t crowded at all, especially compared to the week before when the #Angels played the #Cardinals.  It was packed then but only about 5 or 6 teams showed up for trivia on this night.

We started off strong and had the most points in the first round.  We got giddy and started wondering what it would be like to actually win the game.  In the second and third rounds, we were losing by 2 points to the team of 4 that went by Buzz Light Beer.

But at the end of the third round, we won the bonus question.  Sean went up to roll the die and came up with a number that got us a free round of beers for our team.  That was incredible!  We felt like, “Who cares if we win the whole game?  We just got free beers!”

Here’s how the Lagalots get their free beer

In the fourth round, we ended up tied with Buzz Light Beer and the tricky fifth round only got us 6 points out of 10.  Carie knew the answer but we weren’t 100% so we waited for the third clue before we turned in our answer sheet.  That move cost us two points and so once again, we found our team losing by a mere 2 points to the brainiacs in Buzz Light Beer.

 

Then came the final round, the sixth round, and we did horribly.  Or so we thought.  As the quiz master read off the correct answers, our hearts were pounding.  We got 3 or 4 answers right but the clencher came when we got the bonus question a second time.  We sent Sean up again to roll the die and he rolled a 4.  What does a 4 mean, we wondered?  Well, it meant that the Lagalots got to steal a point from any of the teams.  Sean and his strategic thinking knew right away to steal from the Buzz Light Beer team.

Checkmate, bitch

 

So, the quiz master was reading off the final scores.  It turned out that we had tied with the Buzz Light Beer team, both of us with a score of 35.  I thought we were going to have a quiz-off between us.

A Mexican Quiz-Off

 

And then we found out that we were tied before the bonus point-stealing factored in so when the points were stolen, we ended up with the most…securing our place as the Pop Quiz Trivia winning team of the night and all time!  Woo Hoo!

Now I’ve got a growler of Set Sail IPA in my fridge and Carie surprised her man with a growler of Rita Red Ale today.  #Winning rules.  I can’t wait to go back to Trivia night next week.  The whole team will be together so our “B team” will have a chance to gloat about our win.  We’ll see if the Lagalots can keep up the winning streak.  By Odin’s eye, make it so!

Trivia Night @BackstreetBrew, bring it

Brewery and Tasting Room open for business?  Yes!  Thanks to the injection of balls into my life, many good things have happened.  First, I get to go to the Backstreet Brewery in #Anaheim on days they were previously closed.  So I can now stop in for a #RitaRedAle on Monday’s and Tuesday’s, as long as ball season continues.

I also have found that I enjoy a good night of trivia. 

Even with the Honda Center and the Angels Stadium packed for the Wednesday night, there was breathing room at the sanctuary of Backstreet.  I heard from @paulminick that Noble and the surrounding parking was full up but the trend hasn’t caught on to park at Backstreet.  Even though they encourage it, not many people were parked there for the games. Which is good for me, maybe not so good for Backstreet.  But I prefer a light crowd.

So I found myself with the old man, and my sasser in law, Heather, with her man, @paulminick.  Paul is like, really good at trivia.

There was a conspiracy in his family to withhold knowledge of the Trivia Crack app because everyone knew he would just kick their asses.  And he did.  He is a fountain of infinite knowledge and he doesn’t have the haze of smoke fogging up his brain either.  I was glad to be on a team with him.

Here is a picture of what happens when you get too drunk at Paul and Heather’s wedding back in 2013.  That’s how I know I had a good time.  I still have the scars to remind me.

The beers were flowing at an exponential rate into our bellies.  I had the Jagged Little Pilsner, which I have had before and enjoyed.  At first, Sean tried the Rita Red Ale and it was delicious as usual.  Paul and Heather started out with the Hefewiezen and the Imperial Stout.  The Hefewiezen was cloudy and tasted bland, but refreshing.  You know how certain beers just don’t have a lot of flavor but they taste great going down and you enjoy the drunk you get off of it?  That’s how it was.  The Stout was full of coffee smell and taste and I am glad I didn’t order it, it doesn’t go down fast.  It was smooth and creamy but not what I look for in a beverage.  I’m just not a stout kinda girl.

2 beers in high regard, at Backstreet

Our team, the Lag-a-lots, did extremely well in the first round.  However, we all missed an essential part of one of the questions.  So when we went for “double or nothing”, we got nothing.  I thought 15 minutes gave you fame.  I could’ve been wrong, but I doubt it.

 

There are six rounds with a varying amount of questions per round.  You write your answers on a blank card and turn it in to be judged accordingly.  When it’s time for the next round, of beers as well as trivia questions, the guy who runs the challenge gives out new cards for the new round.  And so on.  You can answer as a team or an individual.

Well, the competitors seemed competent as they continued to answer questions as well as we were.  We all stayed around the same point score as the others, but there were at least 3 groups ahead of our team.

While I stuck to my #JaggedLittlePilsner the whole night, everyone else mixed it up.  Sean ventured into the Pale Ale territory with a pint of Lucky 7, which had strong spicy notes, and the Trifecta Pale Ale, a 5.9% brew with remnants of lemon and pine.

Not to bring breaking news or anything but we didn’t win.  It sucked.  I hate not #winning.

(But the funny part is that we weren’t…winning that is.)

But we professed that we would go back another night and conquer the trivia challenge.  We also invited our friends Ck and Carie to join us.  With their knowledge we are sure to win.  Too bad the prize is 2 growlers because it will take six of us to win.