Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight in and around New York:
Celebrate the birthday of Mike Burmil, your friendly neighborhood beer distributor from SKI, with a bevy of rare beers starting at 3pm and running all night at Blind Tiger Ale House(281 Bleecker St., at Jones St., West Village). Enjoy the 2007 Boulder Killer Penguin, Cigar City Big Apple IPA, Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and a whole lot more.
New Jersey’s Riverhorse is at The Stag’s Head (252 E. 51st St., at 2nd Ave., Turtle Bay) tonight starting at 6pm. Try their fall seasonal Hipp-O-Lantern on cask aged in oak barrels with vanilla, plus their Hop-a-lot-amus double IPA, and many more.
The final tasting in a Mikkeller tasting series is tonight at Taproom 307(307 3rd Ave., at 24th St., Murray Hill). They’ll be pairing Mikkeller beers with the “Sense of Touch” tonight at 7 and 9pm. For $20, experience beers from their Single Hop Series paired with different textures. To score a spot, call the bar at (212) 725-4766.
And remember, for more updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and check us out on Foursquare for great lists of beer bars, stores, and breweries!
It’s that time of the year again. Dissatisfied with having only one beer-drinking holiday each year, more and more beer bars in New York have been jumping on the Oktoberfest bandwagon - offering copious amounts of beer to coincide with Saturday’s start of Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.
For a little history, Oktoberfest began in 1810 as a celebration of the wedding of King Ludwig I to his bride Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The celebration grew as time went on (although it’s only been held 178 times because of cancellations due to war and disease), and has grown into a two and a half week party that brings over six million people to Munich each year.
But wait, you say, it’s September. Why do they call it Oktoberfest? Well, it was originally celebrated in October, but the Germans were practical about things: the weather in better in September, and the beer - usually brewed in July and August - is fresher, too.
So, from September 17th to October 3rd in Munich, two million gallons of beer will be consumed in fourteen huge tents dedicated to the mainstays of German brewing: Spaten, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, and Hacker-Pschorr each have more than two tents, where they serve up a Maß, a one-liter (about 34 ounces) glass of their beer, for $10-12 US. Oktoberfest is a celebration of excess when it comes to food, too; 140,000 pork sausage pairs were sold at Oktoberfest in 2007. That’s a lot of pig.
Okay, so nothing in New York will compare to the celebration in Munich. But we can try, right? Here’s a list of some of the spots celebrating Oktoberfest during Oktoberfest.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight in and around New York:
As mentioned earlier today, Rattle-N-Hum(14 E. 33rd St., at 5th Ave., Midtown) hosts “An Invasion of Awesomeness” today starting at 4pm with beers in the 12% Imports portfolio. They’ll have Evil Twin Biscotti Break, Stillwater/Mikkeller Barrel-Aged Our Side, and Hopfenestark Helles on tap, plus many more!
Because beer alone isn’t enough, the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room (95 E. Houston St., at Chrystie St., Lower East Side) opens their “Brinery” tonight at 6pm within the beer shop, with local pickles and beer samples from Captain Lawrence, including the Golden Delicious and Captain’s Reserve Imperial IPA.
In celebration of the Metallica/Megadeth/Slayer/Anthrax show at Yankee Stadium tomorrow, Idle Hands Bar(25 Avenue B, at 2nd St., East Village) hosts a “Big 4 Pre-Party” tonight starting at 7pm with Four Big Drafts for Four Bucks. Enjoy $4 brews from Ballast Point, Lagunitas, Smuttynose, and Oskar Blues all night long.
This week’s Ten Buck Tasting at Jimmy’s No. 43(43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village) celebrates Porters! $10 gets you six tastings of beers, including Troegs Dead Reckoning, Mikkeller Chipotle Porter, and the HaandBryggeriet Akevitt Porter, a Norwegian porter aged in Aquavit barrels. The tasting gets underway at 7:30pm.
And remember, for more updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and check us out on Foursquare for great lists of beer bars, stores, and breweries!
More events and announcements keep pouring in for New York Craft Beer Week, which kicks off this Friday night with Freaktoberfest and runs through September 25th. There are far too many events to keep track of every single one, so here’s a few of the latest updates on the week:
The following preview is appropriate for all audiences. Here’s a little video that Sixpoint Craft Ales released in advance of their new fall seasonal, Autumnation.
The brewery says you’ll be able to find Autumnation in their cans - ahem, “nanokegs” - on store shelves in the next couple of weeks. The beer is a hopped-up pumpkin-flavored ale, clocking in at 6.7% ABV and 69 IBUs (International Bittering Units, for the newbies out there). So, that’s why you see all the hops in there… like their other canned beers, this one will be wet-hopped, too - with Citra hops from the Yakima Valley in Washington State.
We’ll let you know where to find it as soon as we start seeing it on store shelves!
