New York Beers at the Brooklyn Waterfront Beer Festival

May 23, 2012 Leave a comment

There’s going to be a lot of breweries bringing a lot of beer to the Brooklyn Waterfront Summer Craft & Specialty Beer Festival. You can find the full list here, but for your convenience, we’ve listed most of the beers from the New York City and State breweries that will be in attendance below.

508 Gastrobrewery Saison and Double Black IPA
Bluepoint Toasted Lager and White IPA
Brooklyn Gold Standard and Radius
Captain Lawrence Kolsh and Brown
Coney Island Albino Python and Sword Swallower
Empire Brewing Company Amber and White Afro
Fire Island Beer Co. Red Wagon IPA and Lighthouse Amber Ale
Greenport Harbor Summer Ale and Black Duck Porter
Ithaca Beer Co. Cascazilla and Apricot Wheat
Keegan Ales Black EyePA and Old Capital
Kelso CarollGaarden Wit and IPA
Lake Placid Craft Brewing Heffe Weizen and Ubu Ale
Long Ireland Beer Company Breakfast Stout and Celtic Ale
Ommegang Hennepin and Witte
Sixpoint Sol Apollo, Resin and Crisp
Southampton Double White and Burton IPA
Southern Tier Hop Sun and 2X IPA

The event will be on June 16 at 5 North 11th St in Williamsburg. For tickets, click here.

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NYC Brewers Guild Founders Bash

May 23, 2012 Leave a comment

Last night we attended the Founder’s Bash for the New York City Brewers Guild (NYCBG), held at the Brooklyn Brewery. This is an exciting time for craft beer in New York City – the Guild is the first of its kind in New York, because, as Steve Hindy (Brooklyn Brewery co-founder and president) pointed out, only now are there enough breweries in the city to have a guild.

The Brooklyn Brewery, The Bronx Brewery, Chelsea Brewing Company, Eataly Birreria, Harlem Brewing Co., Kelso of Brooklyn, Heartland Brewery, Rockaway Brewing Company, Shmaltz Brewing Company, and 508 Gastrobrewery are the 11 members of the Guild (we previously reported 10. Rockaway signed on after).

“This is a great night to celebrate” Hindy said.

The night, however, wasn’t without seriousness. Hindy mentioned that the point of the recently-revoked tax exemption was to promote brewing in New York State, and that without it, the Brooklyn Brewery will have to pay $600,000 a year in taxes.

The Guild will take over control of New York City Beer week, started in 2008 by Josh Schnaffer. Previously held in September, next year it will be from February 22 to March 3, 2013.

“It’s a vital community that we have here in New York City,” Schnaffer said, handing over the craft beer week tap handle to Jeremy Cowan, proprietor of Schmaltz Brewing, who is also heading the Guild.

“It’s a real treat that this is what New York City beer has become,” Cowan said.

There were a lot of great beers at this event, including some old favorites and new standouts. We of course revisited the delicious variations of the Bronx Brewery Pale Ale (draught, cask, and barrel aged).

The breweries really showed off their talent with sours and saisons. 508 Gastrobrewery brought its new Greenwich Geuze, a revelation for what a truly fresh geuze can taste like (for those of us who have not been to Belgium). It had all the bright tartness that we love in a geuze but the yeast character was more pronounced.

Brooklyn Brewery impressed us with the palate-cleansing tartness of Cuvee de la Crochet Rouge Riesling (a sour version of the Local 1 aged in Riesling lees) and the complex 175th Anniversary Carnegie Porter Brooklyn Collaboration.

The Gaia Saison from Eataly Birreria on cask paired well with their prosciutto sandwich. It didn’t have the strong carbonation or spice of most saisons but had a great smoothness that we hadn’t experienced in a saison before.

“This is the best time for craft beer in New York City,” said Cowan. “But it’s going to get a whole lot better.”

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Surprise Visit to the Barley Creek Brewing Company

May 22, 2012 1 Comment

This past weekend we road-tripped up to Binghamton University to see our brother/brother-in-law graduate from college. Can everyone pause for a minute to appreciate the coolness of that sentence? He graduated from college!

Graduated!

Ahem. So on the way back, while driving through Pennsylvania looking for a place to eat dinner, we happened upon the Barley Creek Brewing Company.

We enjoyed a flight of beers, which included a Copper Top Ale, Rescue IPA, Cocoa Porter, and Spring Hop IPL (India Pale Lager). The Spring Hop IPL was our favorite of the bunch with a bright snappy hop character that was quite refreshing. Weighing in at 4.5% ABV the Spring Hop is a great session beer for the summer heat. The Cocoa Porter was dominated by sweetness and cocoa, definitely more appropriate for a cold, damp day. Both the Copper Top and the Rescue were well balance malt forward beers that would be easy to pair with the pub style fare served at the brewery.

A great place to enjoy beer and food while passing through the area.

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Brooklyn Waterfront Summer Craft & Specialty Beer Festival, June 16

May 18, 2012 1 Comment

The Hand Crafted Tasting Company, the people who brought you the NYC American Craft Beer Festival (now called the NYC Craft Beer Festival) in March, next month will present its first Brooklyn Waterfront Summer Craft & Specialty Beer Festival. The event will be on June 16 at 5 North 11th St in Williamsburg.

Similar to the first event, this one will have two sessions, one from 12:30 to 4 p.m. and the second from 6 to 9:30 p.m., featuring 150 beers from a reported 90 breweries. Here‘s the list of featured breweries. We’re happy to see many of our local favorites on there, including 508 Gastrobrewery, Greenport, Southampton, and of course Brooklyn Brewery and Sixpoint.

Snacks and food will be offered from local food purveyors such as Sheep Station, The Brooklyn Star, Cornelius, the Coolhaus ice cream truck and the Morris Grilled Cheese truck. The event will also feature live music.

“Between the outdoors, Williamsburg waterfront location, seasonal Summer craft beers, live music, and great food, we think [this event] will be a beer tasting block party people won’t want to miss.” said Robert Howell, Producer for Hand Crafted Tasting Co., in a press release.

Seminars will be held during this event, with topics including “Women in Craft” and “Urban Home Brewing Primer.”

Ticket options are general admission ($55 advance, $65 at the door), VIP ($75 advance, $85 at the door) and Connoisseur ($125 advance, $135 at the door). All early bird tickets are sold out. VIPs will have an advance hour of tastings, while connoisseurs will get the extra hour, plus access to a special connoisseurs lounge and waterfront deck for the entire session, extra rare beer tastings, and complimentary finger food by MexiBBQ.

Hand-Crafted Tasting Company is the Food & Beverage division of Mad Dog Presents, a concert production & event planning company.

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Pick of the Weekend: End of LI Craft Beer Week Bash

May 18, 2012 Leave a comment

This past week’s Long Island Craft Beer Week celebrations will close out this Sunday at the Black Sheep Ale House in Mineola with brews from every Long Island brewery that distributes. In recent years Long Island has become a hot-bed of brewing activity with new small brewers popping up every few months, it seems. Breweries like Greenport Harbor Brewing, Barrier Brewing, and Southamton Publick House have become well regarded by New York City beer drinkers. If you haven’t had a chance to taste offerings from the smaller brewers like Blind Bat, Spider Bite, and Port Jeff that are difficult to find in New York City, this is the perfect opportunity. Thankfully the Black Sheep Ale House is only a few blocks from the Mineola train station so there is no need to drive if you don’t have a car or know someone who does. All pints will be $4 from 4 to 7 p.m.

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The Pony Bar, Upper East Side

May 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon we went up to The Pony Bar‘s new location in the Upper East Side (1444 1st Ave. at 75th St.), which opened Tuesday. When we were there (about 3 p.m.) it wasn’t too crowded, with a steady stream of customers filtering in and out. The bartenders told us that at the grand opening the day before it was filled to the brim. We love The Pony Bar’s mission to only offer American beer, and while we were there we enjoyed a Brooklyn Brewery Gold Standard, Stoudt’s Karnival Kolsch, Flying Dog Sour Cherry and Kelso Cabernet Barrel Aged Sour Quad Bock.

All beers are $5, except from 4:20 to 5:20, when they’re $4. We’ve heard and read on Brew York, New York that pretty much everything at this incarnation of The Pony Bar is the same as the first one in Hell’s Kitchen: decor, menu, “new beer” bell (we have to confess, we haven’t been to that location).

We’re loving what’s going on with craft beer in the Upper East Side!

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Goin’ Whole Hog

May 16, 2012 Leave a comment

As you may have guessed, we love pork and beer. So we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to attend DBGB’s Extrava-CAN-za Whole Hog Feast featuring just that combination. But this time the beer was in cans. We had never been to a beer dinner featuring cans. Beer sommelier Jon Langley’s inspiration for the meal was simple: “We love cans. We’re throwing a bunch into copper pots and letting people have at it.”

DBGB beer sommelier Jon Langley

It was a laid back and comfortable affair, held family style. The beer was out in copper cooking pots and poachers that acted as ice buckets. Sixpoint was the featured beer, with Bengali Tiger, Sweet Action, Apollo, Righteous Rye and the Crisp to choose from, but there were plenty others. There was Anderson Valley Oatmeal Stout, Blanche de Bruxelles Witbier, Buttnernuts Pork Slap, Oskar Blues Dales Pale Ale and Mama’s Little Yella Pils, and Brooklyn Brewery East India Pale Ale and Summer Ale. We were like kids in the canned beer candy store.

We started with Brooklyn East India Pale Ale, because we hadn’t gotten the chance to have it from the can yet. Crisp and fresh. We sipped and chatted with our table mates, musing to each other that family style beer dinners are, in fact, an excellent idea. We could make recommendations to each other and talk about the food.

First course was a charcuterie degustation: rillette provencale, rabbit garrigue, head cheese, terrine ham persille and foccacia bread. We paired this with Apollo, which was a nice combination. The carbonation of the beer lifted the richness of the charcuterie off our palates, while the subtle banana and clove flavors were not overpowering.

For the main dish (a showstopper) we feasted on roasted suckling pig stuffed with tomato, nicoise olive, fennel and fresh herbs; served with asparagus, spring peas, fingerling potatoes and beer braised sauerkraut. We had Sixpoint’s Crisp and Dale’s Pale Ale with this portion of the meal. Both beers stood up well to the richness of the pig.

Lastly, we had baked Alaska, which we paired with the oatmeal stout. We knew when we saw the stout at the beginning of the dinner that we would save it for last. It did not disappoint, going well with the vanilla and pistachio ice cream in the dessert.

It was fun to have all of those beers to choose from, to make our own pairings and suggest ones to our fellow diners. A fine meal at DBGB.

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Bronx Brewery Joins Botanical and Community Gardens For Urban Hop Project

May 16, 2012 Leave a comment

In a news release, The Bronx Brewery today announced a partnership with The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG), a number of Bronx-based community gardens, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension on an Urban Hop Project, bringing hop growing to New York City.

A group of Bronx community gardens, including  in NYBG’s Bronx Green-Up program, have planted 125 Cascade hop plants this spring to be grown and harvested for a special Urban Hop beer. The beer will be brewed and released by The Bronx Brewery later this year.  “I’m very excited to work with these community gardeners and develop a beer that spotlights the local character of these hops,” said Head Brewer Damian Brown in the release.

Proceeds from the sale of the Urban Hop beer will be donated to the Bronx Green-Up program to support continued growth of community gardening in the Bronx.

“Bronx Green-Up is extremely grateful to The Bronx Brewery for their planned donation,” said Ursula Chanse, Director of Bronx Green-Up. “The funds will help [the program's] efforts to support urban gardeners by providing valuable growing information and planting materials, keeping the community gardens beautiful and viable.”

New York State was once the largest hop producing state in the country, providing nearly 90 percent of the hops back in the 1880s. Reviving that industry and bringing renewed interest in local sourcing for this ingredient has been the mission of Steve Miller, a hop expert from the Cornell Cooperative Extension, who held a hop growing and harvesting workshop for the gardeners. He is pictured along with Damian and some of the gardeners  in the photo here.

“When Damian and Chris [Gallant, General Manager of The Bronx Brewery] asked me to be involved I said yes right away. What a great idea to capture the flavor of New York City,” Miller said. “The gardeners are all excited because hops are such an unusual crop. We have a new industry starting up all over the state, bringing endless nuances of flavor to New York beers and now we even have hops in the Big Apple. I can’t wait to try the end product!”

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The Evolving Bar Scene on Franklin Ave in Crown Heights

May 15, 2012 3 Comments

Many of you know that when we moved to Brooklyn almost two years ago we came from the Bronx, where we had limited options to enjoy craft beer. We used to have to travel an hour or so for a good beer bar. No longer! At that point, Franklin Park was the neighborhood place to go. Labeled a “Beer Garden,” it has outdoor and indoor space with two bars and a pretty standard, locally focused craft beer selection.

Since then, Franklin Park has been joined by three new places on Franklin Avenue alone: Barboncino, a wood oven pizza restaurant and bar; The Crown Inn, a beer bar under the same ownership as Franklin Park; and 739 Franklin, a brand new bar that opened at the beginning of April. Here are our assessments of these fine establishments:

Barboncino

A pizza restaurant that doesn’t look like much from the outside, Barboncino’s doors open into what seems like a whole other world of exposed brick walls and wood floors. There’s an entrance for the restaurant and a separate one that leads right to the bar. The food is so good here, we haven’t had a bad meal. We especially enjoy the roasted pepper with burrata appetizer.

As for the beer, we appreciate that it’s mostly locally and seasonally focused, and that we’ve been able to get Brooklyn Chocolate Stout on draft, not a common option.

The Crown Inn

We love the ambiance at the Crown Inn. It seems as though every surface is covered in hard wood or exposed brick and the lighting is low with alternative music coming through the background. A nicely sized back patio recently opened for the warmer months, and about two weeks ago, the Black Tree Sandwich Shop opened inside the bar, offering artisanal sandwiches, charcuterie, farm fresh eggs and snacks.

The beer selection is a good mix of local craft beers and quality imports. There’s always a variety of styles and different drafts to try. Happy hour is from 4 to 8 p.m. every day (including the weekend) and features $4 drafts.

739 Franklin

Our neighborhood’s newest bar, the most distinctive feature of 739 Franklin is its television projector, beaming sports games onto the back wall of the bar, so large you can see it from the street. Oh, and it’s also got a ton of lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling.

We weren’t expecting much by way of craft beer (they have a huge liquor selection) but were pleasantly surprised to find no macros on tap – instead brews from Empire, Kelso, Rare Vos, Ithaca and Sixpoint. Service was excellent here, and they just started serving food. The menu had items such as sliders, paninis, guacamole, hummus and fries.

Yea, we’re pretty happy we moved here.

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Tomorrow: Whole Hog Feast at DBGB Featuring Sixpoint Cans

May 14, 2012 Leave a comment

DBGB (Chef Daniel Bouloud’s new restaurant on the Bowery where “the French brasserie meets the American tavern” ) is having a beer and food Extrava-CAN-za featuring pork and Sixpoint cans tomorrow night.

It’s exciting to see a beer dinner showcasing brews in cans. The menu – a Whole Hog Feast – will start with house-made charcuterie, move on to Chef Olivier’s Pennsylvania Green Village Farms slow roasted Provencal suckling pig, then finish with a flaming vanilla, pistachio and raspberry baked Alaska.

The dinner starts at 7 p.m. and it’s $80 per person, call 212.933.5300 to reserve. DBGB is located at 299 Bowery at Houston St.

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