Why Beachwood Brewing & Distilling matters.
Beachwood Brewing & Distilling is a craft-focused brewery and distillery where Bixby Knolls' historic uptown commercial character meets award-winning Long Beach beer, grain-to-glass spirits and an unusually integrated cocktail program built almost entirely in-house.
Set along Atlantic Avenue near East 36th Street and just steps from the former Petroleum Club of Long Beach, the brewery and distillery occupies Bixby Knolls' principal commercial spine between the residential streets of California Heights and Los Cerritos, with Long Beach Boulevard running parallel to the west and Signal Hill rising beyond the neighborhoods to the south. The taproom places brewing and distilling culture inside a low-rise Atlantic Avenue storefront, keeping the production-minded operation closely connected to the district's pedestrian commercial frontage. Twenty-four taps distribute Beachwood beer across the bar as cocktails introduce spirits produced onsite. Pinball supplies a separate recreational layer without displacing the production equipment, beer and cocktail work at the center of the operation. The result is a neighborhood drinking room whose taps, onsite distilling, cocktail bar and Atlantic Avenue position extend Beachwood's Long Beach brewing history into a broader house-produced beverage program.
What defines Beachwood Brewing & Distilling.
Beachwood Brewing & Distilling is best known for extending Gabriel Gordon and Lena Perelman's Southern California beer business into distilling after nearly two decades of development across restaurants, brewing and fermentation. Gordon and Perelman opened their first Beachwood restaurant and beer bar in Seal Beach in 2006, followed by Beachwood Brewing in Downtown Long Beach in 2011. That Long Beach brewery developed a substantial reputation around West Coast-style IPAs and other house beers before Beachwood opened its Blendery in 2015 to pursue small-batch sour beer inspired by Belgian Lambic traditions. The company took over the former Liberation Brewing space in Bixby Knolls in 2022, initially operating it as a taproom as its distilling project developed behind the scenes. Beachwood Distilling reached its full public debut in August 2024, adding spirits to a company already spanning conventional brewing and spontaneous fermentation. Gordon developed the distilling operation with Lena Perelman and longtime collaborator and master brewer Julian Shrago, carrying Beachwood's production expertise from grain fermentation into spirits. Gin, vodka and rum now emerge from the Bixby Knolls facility under a grain-to-glass philosophy, giving the Atlantic Avenue operation a distinct role within a company whose previous production had centered overwhelmingly on beer.
The cocktail program pushes that production model deepest by making spirits, tonics, bitters, liqueurs, cordials and fresh juices within the operation. Silk Tide Daiquiri uses a three-times-clarified milk punch preparation with caramelized pineapple milk, two house rum styles, pineapple and lime, creating a layered tropical drink through clarification and concentrated fruit. Humuhumunukunukuapua combines Valencia Gin with Orleans Bitters, pineapple, lime and orgeat, drawing citrus, spice, fruit and almond into another house-spirit preparation. Jungle Bird joins black rum and amburana rum with red bitters, pineapple and lime, allowing the wood-influenced rum to work against bitter and acidic components. White Lotus builds spiced and amburana rums around Thai tea syrup, cream and nutmeg, shifting the same rum base toward tannin, dairy richness and aromatic spice. Gin receives its own variations through Juniper, Valencia, English and Spring expressions paired with house classic, citrus or rotating tonics. The 24 beer taps preserve the brewery side of Beachwood beside that distilling work, with Amalgamator using Mosaic hops, Citraholic built entirely around Citra and Hayabusa using rice for a crisp Japanese-style lager. The breadth of house production makes the Bixby Knolls bar an unusually complete demonstration of Beachwood's evolution from craft beer into fermentation, distillation and cocktail construction.
How Beachwood Brewing & Distilling fits.
Beachwood Brewing & Distilling works as the anchor for a Bixby Knolls outing connecting a former rancho that shaped the development of northern Long Beach, a public park descended from the Pacific Electric era and a historical institution preserving the city's photographic, industrial and community archive.
Begin at Rancho Los Cerritos, where John Temple purchased the 27,000-acre property from the Cota family in 1843 and constructed the surviving two-story Monterey-style adobe the following year as headquarters for a cattle operation reaching 15,000 animals. Flint, Bixby & Co. acquired the rancho in 1866, and Jotham Bixby subsequently managed a sheep operation reaching 30,000 animals before declining wool economics encouraged subdivision of the property. A 4,000-acre lease with purchase option granted to William Willmore in 1881 eventually passed to the Long Beach Land and Water Company, which renamed his struggling Willmore City as Long Beach in 1884. The Bixby family later returned the adobe to residential use through an extensive 1930 to 1931 renovation, and the City acquired the surviving property in 1955 before National Historic Landmark recognition followed in 1970. Continue to Los Cerritos Park, whose first 1.9 acres Amelia M.E. Bixby donated to Los Angeles County in 1907 beside the Pacific Electric Los Cerritos Station. Long Beach annexed the grounds in 1924, then expanded them through acquisitions beginning in 1940 and continuing through the 1950s until the property reached its present 7.24 acres. The old station disappeared, but steps descending toward its former location survive beside the park, preserving a physical trace of the electric railway once used by residents traveling toward Los Angeles. Gary Gabelich Memorial Grove added another layer in 1985, commemorating the Long Beach resident who set speed records on land and water. Conclude at Historical Society of Long Beach, an organization founded in 1962 that eventually moved into the historic Harris Furs building on Atlantic Avenue after the City joined the search for a permanent home in 2006. Camden Developers financed acquisition and retrofitting of the 7,500-square-foot former commercial building, allowing the society to relocate there in September 2007 and open its first exhibition that December. Its holdings encompass subjects ranging from the Pike and Toyota Grand Prix to harbor oil maps, early neighborhood newspapers and Lawrence Inman's photographs of the Ford plant, preserving source material across the industrial, commercial and social development of Long Beach. The progression moves from the vast Rancho Los Cerritos property whose subdivision helped create Long Beach through a Bixby-donated park retaining traces of the Pacific Electric era and culminates in an Atlantic Avenue institution preserving the physical and photographic remnants of the city that developed across those former rancho lands.
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