beer

Cheers to Beers

Drink up, the desert way.

Lizbeth Scordo Current Guide, Restaurants

beer
While Oktoberfest ends Oct. 7, the desert “season” is just getting started.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY GETTY IMAGES

Palm Springs and cocktail culture will forever be linked, like Eero Saarinen and the Womb Chair. That’s fine with us. We love mingling over mai tais at a tiki bar and the perfect martinis at a sexy steakhouse.

But sometimes we’re in the mood for an ice-cold beer. And there’s no better time to be a hop head than right now, with the craft beer movement proliferating in every corner of the country, including our Coachella Valley.

While Oktoberfest ends Oct. 7, the desert “season” is just getting started. We asked five local experts about the best brews for fall. Try a few and discover your favorite ... you can get back to your Manhattan next month.

THE GOLF CLUBHOUSE

Dave Hoffman

Head bartender, Ernie’s Bar 
& Grill, La Quinta

“You’re seeing a lot more creativity coming out of breweries, similar to the creativity that was coming out of the craft cocktail scene. There are so many different options now. One of my favorites is the 805 by Firestone Brewing Company. It’s a blonde ale, good for golfers coming off the course looking for something with a little more body [that’s] not too heavy. We have a rotating handle, and there’s a really good brown ale brewed by Golden Road Brewing out of Los Angeles called Get Up Offa That Brown we put on in the fall. You get that dark beer feel, and people like that as the weather cools off.”

805beer
THE WINE BAR

Christine Soto
Owner, Dead or Alive, 
Palm Springs

“Though we’re considered a wine bar, we sell as much beer as wine. In September, we started to serve Märzen, a beer traditionally served during Oktoberfest. My favorite beers right now are brewed by Solarc, an experimental brewery specializing in gruits. Gruits are special because they are an ancient beer style: pre-hops, brewed with herbs, and in Solarc’s case, teas and coffee sometimes. I drink more beer than anything. It’s sessionable, refreshing, and the perfect summertime drink — and summer is about six months of the year in Palm Springs, including October.”

solarcale
THE FANCY 
RESTAURANT

Marco Fernandez
Bar manager, Mastro’s Steakhouse, Palm Desert

Green Flash West Coast IPA from San Diego is one of our most popular craft beers. It’s perfect for the more adventurous beer drinker, with a golden-orange color and tropical, citrus aromas. But my favorite beer offering is the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier. It’s a golden wheat beer, full-bodied and smooth, and pairs so well with many of our fish and seafood options on the menu. And it has a tradition of quality. It’s from the Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan, the oldest operating brewery in the world, originally a monastery.”

westcoastipabeer
THE SPORTS BAR

Karin Lopez
General manager, Mariscos Mi Lindo Sinaloa, Coachella

“We sell lots of micheladas year-round. It’s a drink for when you want to relax, like, ‘Let’s have a michelada and talk about our day.’ Some people have coffee; our clients have a michelada. It’s pretty simple with lime juice, salt, Clamato, and whatever beer you want, and we garnish it with celery and lime. The rim is our own spice blend — people think it’s Tajín, but it’s a special recipe we make in-house. Our best-seller is with Modelo Especial, a lager. I always recommend the pilsner-style Pacifico, though, because you’re really going to taste the beer.”

 modelobeer
THE BREWERY

Brett Newton
Certified cicerone,
Coachella Valley Brewing Co.
Tasting Room, Thousand Palms

“We release our own Märzen lager in the fall. It’s light. It’s got a toastlike malt flavor and it’s a traditional German Oktoberfest beer. Another German-style beer is our Kölschella, one of our core beers. It’s similar to a pilsner, a traditional style from Cologne, Germany. It’s a hybrid ale, which means it’s brewed as an ale and fermented cold like a lager. We use a lot of local ingredients when we can. Our Phoenix is a Vienna lager made with Hadley’s dates. And we’ve used kumquats from the East Valley for our Desert Swarm.”

kolschella