Angel City Brewing - Angel City Dunkel

I'm from the Los Angeles area, so it really makes me sad to say this, but L.A. sucks for craft beer. For a while now, all of the good breweries have either been way north of L.A. or down south near San Diego. While that's fine with me because I now live in San Diego, a significant part of me wishes that L.A. would make an effort to be a part of the growing craft beer scene. Slowly (very slowly) my dreams are coming to fruition.

Over the past few years, some decent breweries have been popping up closer and closer to L.A. The first one that caught my attention was The Bruery in Placentia. Then another decent brewery came to my attention: Fullerton's Bootlegger's Brewery. While these were closer to L.A. than most craft beers, they were still part of Orange County. Not close enough. I had heard of a few small breweries popping up in the city (like Eagle Rock Brewery in Downtown) but I had yet to find a bottle of L.A. beer down in San Diego. That was, until I found Angel City's Angel City Dunkel. I had heard of the brewery, but had never seen a bottle until a few days ago. Finally, an L.A. brewery had made it to San Diego! I couldn't pass it up.

Angel City Dunkel pours a deep chestnut brown color with a light brown head that settles on the top of the beer. The brewery lables this beer a Dunkel Lager, so I wasn't really expecting a ton in the smell. Fortunately, I was wrong. I picked up some freshly baked banana bread, roasted malt, banana, brown sugar and maple syrup.

The taste is slightly malty and nutty upfront, followed by notes of banana, bready malts and some coffee on the finish. The mouthfeel was surprisingly thick and really enhanced the flavors. This was a fantastic surprise and, hopefully, a sign of things to come from the brewers up in Los Angeles.

Final Grade: A-

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 26

Note: So out of nowhere, 2 of the beers that I reviewed a while back (Blind Pig and Schneider Aventinus vaulted back into the Top 100 pushing the number of Top 100 Beers Tasted to its highest number yet: 26. Oh yeah!