Everything you need to know about L.A. Beer Week

By John Verive

March 4, 2016 10 AM PT

The eighth annual L.A. Beer Week kicks off June 18 with a beer festival in downtown L.A.

With craft beers from across the state, and more than 40 L.A.-based breweries, the festival will take over the Los Angeles Center Studios with live music, local food vendors and hundreds of beers to sample.

Besides featuring many of the new breweries that have opened in L.A. since last year’s Beer Week, such as Mumford Brewing Co., Arts District Brewing, Dy River Brewing and Brouwerij West, the Brewers Guild is also organizing some special guest breweries for the festival. While the list is still being confirmed, here are some names that will get L.A.’s beer geeks excited: San Diego’s Societe and the cult favorite Sante Adairius Rustic Ales from Capitola, Calif., that rarely, if ever, pour beers in Los Angeles.

Local nonprofit Food Forward has also been announced as the beneficiary for the event, with a portion of the proceeds from the festival being allocated to support the organization that already has ties to the L.A. beer scene.

“The LABW Kickoff will be a true celebration of how far L.A. beer has come to be a destination for locally produced craft beer,” said L.A. Brewers Guild executive director Frances Lopez in a statement. “This year’s L.A. Beer Week will also end with a bang with Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp Across America tour stop in Long Beach.”

You’ll want to look out for the brews poured especially for the Beer Camp, when the tour stops at the Queen Mary Waterfront Events Park on June 25. Featured will be five collaboration beers and the Robust Stout, created by L.A.’s Smog City Brewing and Beachwood Brewing, San Diego’s the Lost Abbey Brewing Co., Bagby Beer Co. and Societe Brewing. Eschewing the hoppy IPAs that nearly all of the collaborating breweries are best known for, they instead developed a dark and roasty ale that showcases complex malt flavors of caramel, coffee and deeply browned toast.

Early bird admission to the festival goes on sale on today, and a limited number of discount tickets ($40 general admission and $60 VIP) are offered before the tickets increase in price by $5 April 1.

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