This weekend I noticed that Lookout Landing does this thing where they have a Beer Of The Series, which I think is pretty nifty. There are a not-insignificant number of beer geeks here on McCovey Chronicles, AND the Bay Area has better beer than Seattle AND when I met Jeff Sullivan at brewpub in Portland he ordered a Fanta, so I thought we should do something similar here, and do it better.

My general idea is to feature a beer or brewery from our opponent's home turf, or at at least with some relevance to the team or area. Stone for the Padres, Brooklyn Brewing for the Mets, etc. I have some other probably-over-ambitious ideas, too, but let's make sure this doesn't end up just me and rotorueter talking at each other, first.

Feel free to add your $0.02. If you have a fondness for a beer, brewery, event, or other beer-y thing that ties into an upcoming opponent, do share. Or something else we could be doing here. I'm kinda thinking of doing a local Bay Area beer for each series, too, but that could run out of steam pretty quickly. Anyhoo, I'm all ears.

The Giants travel south tonight to open a series tonight against a team I refuse to call anything but the Anaheim Angels. Orange County and the greater LA area had really sucked for beer for a long time, but the past five-ish years have been a bit of a renaissance in the Southland. Leading the charge has been Placentia's The Bruery.

In addition to the tasting room at the brewery itself (yes, the Bruery brewery), they operate a store in downtown Orange called Bruery Provisions, which has a great selection of their beer, guest beer, and cheeses.

The Bruery is definitely not a crowd-pleaser kind of place; they specialize in Belgian-style wild ales and other fairly-rare styles, and they do them all pretty damn well. That also means there'll definitely be some beer they make that you won't like, but hey, to each his own.

As we head into summer, I say you keep an eye out for their seasonal Belgian golden Trade Winds.