If you’ve ever wondered, “where can I get my hands on a beer that I’ve never had before and I’ll never have again,” we have your answer. Tonight, head to The Diamond(43 Franklin St., at Calyer St., Greenpoint) starting at 7pm for the Brooklyn Brewery Ghost Bottle Night.
What’s a ghost bottle? Well, it’s a bottle of beer so rare - brewed in batches so small - that you’ve likely never seen it before, and you’ll probably never see it again. The beers are bottle-conditioned; some are barrel-aged versions of beers from Brooklyn that you’ve had, but some are one-off beers you’ll never see again.
How a crew of art and film students with no management experience created the Barcade empire [Inc.]
Rattle-N-Hum is having their first annual golf outing on September 10th
With the growth in popularity of growlers comes Fuzzy Beer Math [Eat Drink Post]
Staten Island slowly catches onto the craft beer trend [SI Advance]
Lots of ink for Jersey craft beer: new bars, breweries in the works [Star-Ledger]
We do not condone this: Grub Street recommends Sixpoint tallboys, paper bags to drink in public
More growth in craft beer industry in first half of 2011; 725 US breweries “in planning” [Brewers Assocation]
A gentle plug: if you’re on Foursquare, follow Brew York, New York, and we’ll give you tips about where to go for craft beer, what to order, and a side of brewing history.
Things keep rolling along from the geniuses in Red Hook at Sixpoint Craft Ales. Via Facebook, they’ve announced that Diesel - their hoppy, flavorful stout - will be hitting the shelves in cans for the start of the winter, marking the sixth beer they’ll be putting in cans - ahem, “nano-kegs” - since they launched the cans in May.
We’ll alert you later this year when we see Diesel on store shelves. In the meantime, Autumnation, their fall seasonal brewed with pumpkin, which just received Federal label approval last week.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight in and around New York:
It’s Vintage Beer Night at Barcade(388 Union Ave., at Ainslie St., Williamsburg) today starting at 5pm, with a bunch of great brew that’s been stashed away for a special occasion. Look out for the 2005 vintage North Coast Old Stock, the 2009 Dogfish Head World Wide Stout, the 2007 Brooklyn Monster barleywine, and many more mind-bending brews.
Standings(43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village) has their “Rogue Rendezvous” tonight starting at 6pm, with Double Dead Guy, Brutal Bitter, Dad’s Little Helper, and more on tap. Plus, they’ll have free pizza at 8pm.
Tonight, Bierkraft (191 Fifth Ave., at President St., Park Slope) dedicates their taps to lagers! They’ll have a bunch of lagers on tap starting at 7pm, including the new Greenport Harbor Second Anniversary Lager, Kelso Nut Brown Lager, Hofstetten Kubelbier, and more.
Over in New Jersey, The Iron Monkey(97 Greene St., at York St., Jersey City, NJ) hosts Lagunitas tonight at 6pm, serving six beers, including New Dogtown Pale, Lucky 13, Little Sumpin Sumpin, and more. Plus, they’ll be giving away glassware and an autographed poster signed by the brewers.
Yesterday, Shmaltz Brewing proprietor Jeremy Cowan, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and a cast of proud freaks, weirdos, and geeks cut the ribbon on a tiny Coney Island storefront that becomes the next sideshow along the beach: Coney Island Brewing Company(3008 W. 12th St., at Surf Ave., Coney Island). The brewery stakes the claim as “the World’s Smallest Brewery,” a space roughly the size of a New York City living room that will pump out about three gallons of beer each week. In addition, the storefront will sell brewery merchandise and bottles of Coney Island Lagers and Hebrew, which continue to be brewed upstate.
The quirkiness of the brewery is shown in a number of ways: they also claim the “world’s smallest brewer,” a sideshow performer called The Illustrated Penguin, who demonstrated his Human Blockhead act before the crowd at the ribbon cutting. Their beers will also exude the weirdness of Coney Island: among the brews on the docket are a Cheesecake Ale brewed with graham cracker in the grain bill, a Pumpernickel Bagel Porter, and a Korndog Kolsch created by some visiting homebrewers. Those beers will be sold in commemorative bottles, which will be a hard get, considering each batch only churns out about 12 bottles of beer.
Homebrewers from across the region came to Hospoda(321 E. 73rd St., at 1st Ave., Upper East Side) on Monday night to compete to win one of the three above coveted awards - and the gold key comes with a trip to the Czech Republic.
The Pilsner Urquell Master Homebrewer Competition kicked off in New York on Monday (and continues tonight in Washington, DC, and on Friday in Chicago). The challenge they issued to homebrewers was simple: brew your own interpretation of the famed Czech pilsner.
Of course, it’s not that simple, since the creating a clone of a commercially-produced beer isn’t easy - even for one that has a simple recipe. To complicate matters, lagering beer requires even more equipment, and keeping lagers cool while fermenting is even more of a challenge during the hot summer months.
