Find the full list of events here.

Via draftmag.com

A big, empty beer bottle is more than fodder for the recycling bin: Try one of these five new uses for your empties.

SOAP DISPENSER  Fill a bottle with dish soap and insert a pour spout (available at most hardware stores), and you’ve got a soap dispenser that’s too pretty to store under the sink.

ROLLING PIN  Roll out pastry dough with an empty 750. Baking sugar cookies? Fill the bottle with water, seal and refrigerate; tacky dough won’t stick to the chilly glass.

CANDLE HOLDER  Trim the end of a tapered candle until the stump just fits inside a bottle; light, and let the wax drip over the glass. Cluster a few on your dinner table for instant ambience.

FLOWER VASE  Show off a single stem inside a bottle wound with jute or twine (secure the ends with a dot of hot glue).

OIL LAMP  Brighten up a night of warm-weather patio drinking: Fill a clean, dry bottle with paraffin lamp oil, and insert a wick and a ceramic or metal wick stopper. Wait for the wick to absorb the oil, and light.

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Great ideas! We save our 750-mL bottles for bottling our homebrews, but not all of them always work for that.

Via draftmag.com

The list of places to drink craft beer in Echo Park is growing faster than a horseshoe mustache on a bike messenger; even venerable dives have expanded their fundamentalist beer lists to include microbrews. Here’s a walking tour of the neighborhood’s newer additions, from east to west.

The Park: This small, seasonal bistro on the east end of Sunset offers three-course specials and a popular $5 burger night. There are just six bottles on the menu, but they’re eclectic, ranging from Scrimshaw Pilsner to Hitachino Nest Ginger Brew. 1400 Sunset Blvd., thepark1400sunset.com

Sunset Beer Co.: Sunset Beer, next door to a hair salon, has raised the bar for strip malls. This combo bottle shop/tasting room boasts a boggling craft beer selection and large, comfortable space for on-site pours. 1498 Sunset Blvd., Suite 3, 213.481.2337

Lot 1 Café: The corner of Sunset and Laveta Terrace is ground zero for the indie music/craft beer crowd. Lot 1 pours from a small, well-curated list; grab a Unibroue Blanche De Chambly and listen to the band bash it out in the performance space next door (the beer’s confined to the restaurant). 1533 W. Sunset Blvd., lot1cafe.com

Allston Yacht Club: There are no cleats to tie off your Chris-Craft outside this nice-for-the-neighborhood small plates restaurant, but there is Eagle Rock Revolution XPA and Craftsman Heavenly Hefe on tap, along with a solid bottle selection and an inventive cocktail menu. 1320 Echo Park Ave., allstonyachtclub.com

Red Hill: This long-in-the-making neo-American diner from Jason Michaud pays homage to Echo Park’s left-leaning history; its name’s a nod to the neighborhood’s Red Scare-era nickname. The new kid on the bloc pours from 10 taps that rotate craft classics to complement the farmers-market-sourced menu of veggie- and pasta-centric small plates. Come summer, the patio will fill with fellow travelers tippling away the long, hot afternoons. 1325 Echo Park Ave., redhillrestaurant.com

Masa of Echo Park: Masa serves up classic Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas and heady bistro fare. This always-packed restaurant and bakery was an early adopter of craft beer, serving Firestone Walker ales on tap since opening in 2004. 1800 W. Sunset Blvd., masaofechopark.com

El Prado: This Eastside craft pioneer is still going strong, and now has a boutique wine list to complement the beer, snacks and vinyl. 1805 W. Sunset Blvd., elpradobar.com

Mohawk Bend: Echo Park’s beer colossus towers over the scene like a benevolent, vegan-friendly Pasha. Mondays are $12 all-you-can-eat pizza night; Tuesdays, belly up for a pound of mussels, fries and a pint for $15. 2141 W. Sunset Blvd., mohawk.la

City Sip: City Sip may be the neighborhood Temple of the Grape, but alongside the regular tastings, “wine edjumacation” classes and some fine charcuterie, the popular wine bar has a small but surprisingly good beer list, focusing on California taps and Belgian bottles. 2150 W. Sunset Blvd., citysipla.com

1642 Beer and Wine: Hidden in a deco building a bottle-toss south of Sunset’s hipster carnival, 1642 is a darkly sophisticated, crepuscular safe house. It’s also the only place in the neighborhood you can listen to live jazz while sipping a Maui CoCoNut Porter. 1642 W. Temple St., 213.989.6836

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We recently went to Mohawk Bend and highly recommend it! We went for brunch and very much enjoyed our meals. Their tap list is BIG and has a fantastic variety of California craft beers.

Man’s best friend (dogs) and man’s best friend (beer) make quite a pair: Here, the stories behind our favorite canine-inspired brews.

Laughing Dog CSB: Founder Fred Colby’s 8-year-old yellow lab, Ben, graces most Laughing Dog labels with his charming grin, but the inspiration for this British-style ESB’s label is a little less sweet. As a puppy, Ben stuck his nose between people’s legs to say hello; one friend called him a crotch-sniffing bastard, and Colby shortened it to CSB.

Smuttynose Old Brown Dog: A dogless Peter Egelston first brewed this brown ale in 1988 and made up its name; by the time he launched Smuttynose Brewing in 1994 and adopted the beer as his flagship, he had Olive, a half-Weimaraner, half-Brittany spaniel, and used her as a model for the beer’s William Wegman-inspired label.

Caldera Mogli: Mogli belonged to Caldera brewer Jim Mills’ girlfriend, Nicki; back when she tended the pub, the black lab would tag along with her to work. Before Mogli passed away, he donated blood to a sick white lab named Penny Lane, who returned to health and, according to Nicki, mysteriously adopted some of Mogli’s traits. The dog lives on through Penny, and the porter Jim brewed in his honor.

Thirsty Dog Labrador Lager: Brewer John Najeway crafted this Dortmunder lager in memory of Max, the hero yellow lab who alerted Najeway’s sleeping family to a fire in their 200-year-old farmhouse in 2008. Max passed away the next day—before Najeway ever had the chance to put the dog on one of his beers—so he immortalized a photo of the yellow dog on the golden brew’s label.

Avery Ellie’s Brown Ale: Brewer Adam Avery named his iconic brown ale after his 100-pound travel companion, a chocolate lab named Elle who was a fixture at the brewery. After receiving a cease-and-desist from a certain fashion magazine, Avery changed his Elle’s Brown Ale to Ellie’s in 1995.

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Love it! Both dogs and beer make me happy. (Via draftmag.com)

Posted by Lisa Grimm

Bière de Mars: a perfect spring beer. [Photograph: Bernt Rostad on Flickr]

While many beer fans are aware that Germany’s doppelbocks were originally brewed to help medieval monks get through Lent, another traditional spring style gets a bit less press: France’s Bière de Mars. A variation on a Bière de Garde and a not-too-distant relation of Belgium’s saisons, this beer was traditionally made by French farmers in late winter or spring for relatively quick consumption—the ‘Mars’ in the name refers to the month of March.

In contrast to Germany’s monastic tradition, this particular stripe of French brewing originated at the household level. While the south of France was busy producing grapes and making wine, more northerly areas, in concert with their Belgian neighbors (and occasionally countrymen, depending on who oversaw which bit of land and when), made beer.

Tasting examples of both styles side by side is one clue suggesting that Bière de Garde is indeed closely related to Belgium’s saison; the styles share both a similar agricultural origin and a French-speaking background. Both types of beer were originally brewed for thirsty farmworkers, so a reasonably malty, though dry, and probably lower-alcohol beer was usually the result.

Another characteristic both beers share is that they were typically cellared—Bière de Garde translates as ‘beer for keeping’—and consumed some months after they were initially produced, so there is also a relationship with Germany’s lagers. Indeed, in the middle of the 19th century, a technical dictionary of the period suggests that Bière de Garde, Bière de Mars, and Das Lagerbier were all useful synonyms for ‘Blink’ beer—a term one is unlikely to come across in modern usage. While the Belgian connections are widely acknowledged today, it would seem that some reference to German lager traditions may also come into play—especially given the frequency with which commercial examples of Bière de Mars from Strasbourg are mentioned in pre-20th century texts—and Germany was right across the river (much of the time).

But what makes the springtime version of Bière de Garde so unique? While originally brewed for consumption in March (before the heat of the summer made brewing a riskier proposition), it seems that the seasonal aspect of Bière de Mars was already something of a memory before the advent of refrigeration. The beer’s reputation was firmly established beyond France by the 19th century, and it had become popular—and occasionally sneer-worthy—with the traveling set. Even an otherwise matter-of-fact British publication on trade laws and taxation, originally published in the 1840s, enthused about the beer of the Nord-Pas de Calais region:

Beer is brewed at all seasons in France, but that made in the month of March (“Biere de Mars”) is the most esteemed.”

Medical journals of the period also suggested that visitors to the Strasbourg area seek out Bière de Mars (as well as still-familiar names like ‘bock-bier’ and ‘Lambick’), for both health and leisure purposes, while many travel guides also supported this notion. Biere de Mars even developed its own lore, garnering an association with Napoleon that seems to have come about via a bit of (fancy) folk etymology—classically-educated British visitors asserted, often in jest, that ‘mars’ referred to the god of war and that the beer fueled the army before battles, while the direct (and less romantic) French-to-English translation of ‘March’ was overlooked.

Beyond the name games, any modern beer fan knows that popularity can breed contempt in certain corners, and later Victorian writers such as George Augustus Sala, a well-known journalist who wrote for both Charles Dickens’s and William Makepeace Thackeray’s publications, was glad to escape Strasbourg ‘…and Biere de Mars abominations’ for ‘very good’ German beer, while on this side of the Atlantic, the beer was slated as ‘…a countrified beer…known under the pompous name of biere de Mars’ and did not seem to be highly recommended by Stoddard Dewey, a frequent correspondent on Things French.

History was not kind to the style either, as the early 20th century saw the demise of many of the smaller producers—with the small matter of two world wars and the rise of mass-produced lager, it’s not surprising that only a few producers remained by the latter part of the century.

But the style has had a healthy, if small, revival, both in France and beyond. In America, Southampton Publick House features one of the most well-documented examples—brewer Phil Markowski knows these beers inside and out, having written a popular book on the subject, while New Belgium features a Bière de Mars as part of its popular Lips of Faith series.

One of the post popular versions for sale today domestically is made by Jolly Pumpkin—they take the aging element seriously by putting it in oak barrels before its seasonal release. French examples include La Choulette Bière de Printemps, which was reintroduced in 2010; La Choulette has been making French farmhouse-style beers since 1895, so it is a fitting return to tradition.

March need not play host only to green lager and Guinness—a nice Bière de Mars is a welcome and timely alternative at this time of year.

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Will you be drinking any Bière de Mars? (Via seriouseats.com)