Monday, December 29, 2008

New Old Lompoc News

By now you've heard that New Old Lompoc has joined the clash of local brewpubs to start distributing their beer in bottles. Look for 22-ounce bottles of Lompoc Strong Draft and C-Note IPA (pictured) on store shelves now.

C-Note is my standard choice when I'm at one of the Lompoc pubs -- it's so hoppy and delicious that I can rarely bring myself to choose something else. I'm happy to report that the bottled C-Note has all the pretty flower flavor you're used to in the pubs. That was a real fear I had -- sometimes there's a vast difference between a beer's draft version and the bottle, with Bridgeport IPA showing the wildest swing I can think of.

So, the bottled C-Note is tasty, and for a bomber it's a good deal: I picked up that bottle for $4. Now, happy hour price at the Hedge House is $3.25 for a pint; if Jeff Alworth is right about Lompoc using 14-ounce cheater pints, then you're coming out much cheaper buying C-Note in 22-ounce bottles. That's usually not the case with bombers: at Roots or Bridgeport your happy-hour pints are cheaper by the ounce than buying their beer in a 22-ounce bottle retail. Go figure.

[Update 2009/01/01: Lompoc Strong Draft is bottled under the name "Lompoc Special Draft". That's undoubtedly the ATF's way of protecting you from buying a beer called LSD just because you think it's strong. Dave brought a bottle of that over yesterday, and it's good stuff also, the roasty chocolatey flavors made it into the bottle. I'm always pleasantly surprised when I pry myself away from C-Note and enjoy a Strong Draft.]

One other bit of Lompoc news is that their website has recently been greatly improved. It used to be a dog-slow collage of images that wasn't worth the wait. The front page got fixed up a few months ago, but until more recently the pages for the other pubs like Hedge House still had the old look.

2 comments:

  1. Is the 3.25$ cheater price also the Tuesday price?

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  2. Hi Angelo: $3.25 is the Hedge House price I got from the website. The cheater-pint allegation is from Beervana, I haven't checked up on it myself.

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