![\"LiberationBrewing\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/LiberationBrewing.jpg\")
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More than six years before the craft beer boom, local brewer Eric McLaughlin long held an interest in brewing his own beer. Having moved to San Francisco for film school, the former Lakewooder-now-Long Beacher was surrounded by NorCal\u2019s vast craft beer scene, from Russian River Brewing to Lagunitas, in addition to beer bars like Toronado in the city that served nothing but locally crafted brew.<\/p>\n
His driving desire has brought him here, where he\u2014along with partners Danny Regan and Mike Clements\u2014are hoping to take his brew skills to the next level with Liberation Brewing Company (LBC\u2014acronym very much intended to represent). They hope to join Beachwood Brewing, Belmont Brewing, and Rock Bottom as the fourth production brewery in Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently looking at locations in Cal Heights or the Zaferia District,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna initially start out small\u20143.5 barrels\u2014as long as the demands are met, then we would love to expand to a 10 or 15 barrel system as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"McLaughlin01\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/McLaughlin01.jpg\")
McLaughlin\u2019s talents in home brewing were honed entirely auto-didactically. His love for cooking and flavors\u2014a factor that drives many into both loving beer as a complement to food as well as inspiring one\u2019s inner brewer\u2014drew him toward the idea of creating beer. Reading forum after forum on Beer Advocate, he created his first beer, a Belgian strong dark. In the words of McLaughlin, everything that could go wrong did go wrong: under pitched yeast, no temperature control on any level, and a complete lack of finesse.<\/p>\n
Brew after brew, over and over, failure after failure, McLaughlin learned from his mistakes and continued his uphill journey toward being a bona fide brewmaster. Soon enough, he had built up enough genuine talent that Ohana Brewing in Los Angeles offered him a job.<\/p>\n
The 7 barrel system at Ohana wasn\u2019t immediately handed over to McLaughlin, who was willing to do any form of dirty work\u2014from shoveling grain to general house cleaning\u2014as long as it meant working at a commercial brewery. Many home brewers mistakenly think that everything they brew in their tiny 5-gallon batches can simply translate into micro brewing with massive equipment\u2014a mistake that McLaughlin didn\u2019t want to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been [at Ohana] since August,\u201d McLaughlin said, \u201cand it\u2019s been a genuinely great adventure because it taught me that simple is better. I\u2019ve only recently started brewing hoppy beers\u2014I wasn\u2019t really into it at first because a lot of brewers just throw a ton in and leave out the complexity\u2014but I\u2019m doing a lot of saisons. Even when it\u2019s cold outside, they\u2019re awesome\u2014and they pair well with food.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"McLaughlin02\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/McLaughlin02.jpg\")
The dirty work paid off: after submitting some recipes, Ohana permitted McLaughlin to brew. And for Ohana, the choice to allow him to experiment proved fruitful: McLaughlin\u2019s black saison garnered the brewery a silver medal at the World Beer Cup, a win over which McLaughlin noted he was \u201cstill in disbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n
The accolades have driven McLaughlin ever closer toward the goal of making Liberation a reality, where the trio of McLaughlin, Regan, and Clements [pictured left] hope\u2014City permits permitting\u2014to have an end-of-the-year opening.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Long Beach,\u201d said the Bluff Heights resident. \u201cAnd I can\u2019t wait for its beer scene to explode since it\u2019s coming up on its own. There are things in San Francisco I miss but I am so glad I ended up in Long Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eric McLaughling’s love of homebrewing has led him to take his brew skills to the next level with Liberation Brewing Company (LBC\u2014acronym very much intended to represent). He hopes to join Beachwood Brewing, Belmont Brewing, and Rock Bottom as the fourth production brewery in Long Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":211,"featured_media":68649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[81],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food","tag-craft-beer","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/211"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=3391"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}