Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:

• Our favorite brewery with an umlaut in its name, Tröegs, will be at Rattle-N-Hum (14 E. 33rd St., at 5th Ave., Midtown) today starting at 4pm with a couple beers from their rare Scratch Series, and favorites like Nugget Nectar, Mad Elf, and the Javahead Stout.
• Stillwater Artisinal Ales, the gypsy brewer out of Baltimore, will host a tasting at DBGB Kitchen & Bar (299 Bowery, at 1st St., East Village) tonight from 5-7pm. Brewer Brian Strumke will be on hand. For $25, join in at the bar with food pairings and beers like Of Love & Regret and their Cellar Door saison.
• Celebrate Breckenridge Brewery’s recent arrival to New York City tonight at Good Beer (422 E. 9th St., btw. 1st Ave. and Ave. A) with an event from 6:30-9:30pm. Get discounts on pints, flights, and growlers, including their delicious Vanilla Porter.
• Like it in the can? Get it in the can at Bierkraft (191 5th Ave., at Berkeley Pl., Park Slope) tonight at 7pm for their weekly tasting. Oskar Blues will be on hand pouring some of their line of beers, including cans like G'Knight (formerly Gordon) and Ten Fidy, plus some special draft offerings, too.
• This week’s Ten Buck Tasting at Jimmy’s No. 43 (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village) salutes Tripels - a distinct Belgian beer style. At 7:30, give ‘em $10 and you’ll be walked through a tasting of six different beers including Pretty Things Fluffy White Rabbits, Allagash Curieux, and Maredsous 10. 

Big Apple Brews in center field is one of the few spots left in Citi Field where anything resembling craft beer remains.

It wasn’t long ago - last season, to be precise - when Citi Field had the upper-hand when it came to beer selection at New York’s ballparks. And while the selection is still better at Citi than Yankee Stadium this season, good beer got harder to find thanks to some strong-arming by the Mets.

For the first two years, Citi Field offered four beers from Brooklyn Brewery on tap. All of them were found in the center field food court: Sabroso Ale at El Verano Taqueria, Blue Smoke Ale at Blue Smoke, Shackmeister Ale at Shake Shack, and Blanche de Queens at Box Frites. 

Those beers are no more. Rather than embrace the trend of the rapidly-expanding craft beer market, Citi Field has chosen to replace those beers with Anheuser-Busch/InBev-owned beers, and Brooklyn’s Twitter stream says they were “kicked to the curb” because the Mets were simply asking too much money to keep them in Danny Meyer’s center field concession stands. 

And yes, this is how absurd the beer industry is. Rather than the Mets paying for beer that their fans might actually enjoy, these small breweries have to bargain their way into a ballpark that is dominated by Anheuser-Busch products in nearly every corner. And now, at both Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, they’re almost entirely pushed out. You’ll notice that the faux-craft beer stand in center field at Citi Field - Big Apple Brews - sells almost exclusively Anheuser-Busch/InBev-owned domestics and imports, including Hoegaarden, Beck’s, Shock Top, and Goose Island.

Luckily, there are a few bright spots left at Citi Field. Brooklyn Lager is still available in cans in select spots in left field and in the Promenade Level, and Blue Point Toasted Lager is available at the Catch of the Day stand in right field. In the more exclusive areas, most bars in the Acela, Caesars, and Promenade Clubs offer some more craft offerings in bottles, including Brooklyn Pennant Ale and Hennepin from Brewery Ommegang.

But now, even though there are four breweries in New York City - the city that the Mets and Yankees call home - no beer from New York City is available on tap at either of their ballparks. And that’s a disgrace.

Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:

• Across the river in Jersey, The Iron Monkey (97 Greene St., at York St., Jersey City, NJ) celebrates their Craft Beer Fest starting today. Throughout the week, they’ll be rolling out rare kegs of beer, including Dogfish Head Olde School Barleywine, Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, Allagash Vrienden, and Brooklyn Monster Ale.
• What’s better than free beer? Not much. Bier International (2099 Frederick Douglass Blvd., at 113th St., Harlem) will have free samples of Duvel Green tonight from 6-8pm.

This is a beer garden.

The weather is finally starting to warm up, and that gives us all the itch to drink outside. So there’s going to be a lot of talk about beer gardens in New York City in the next few weeks. But far too often, the term “Beer Garden” tends to be thrown around in New York. And it has to stop.

Just because a bar has a German theme and serves German beer doesn’t make it a beer garden. By definition, a beer garden (taken from the German “biergarten”) is an open-air space where beer and food are served. The concept actually originated as Bavarian breweries planted gardens above cellars to keep their lagers cool enough to ferment underground. More entrepreneurial breweries turned these spaces into outdoor spaces with communal seating that serve beer and traditional food.

Again, we’re talking about outdoor spaces here.

We’re baffled by how Bierhaus (712 3rd Ave., at 45th St., Midtown East) - a perfectly good German beer bar in Midtown - meets the standards of a “beer garden” in this piece on Gothamist. It’s entirely enclosed. The press often refers to Radegast Hall (113 N. 3rd St., at Berry St., Williamsburg) and Bier International (2099 Frederick Douglass Blvd., at 113th St., Harlem) as “beer gardens,” but they’re also surrounded by four walls (although one has a small space with a retractable roof). These are not beer gardens. These are beer halls. 

What’s a beer hall? Well, look no further than the oldest American beer garden: Queens’ Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden (29-19 24th Ave., at 29th St., Astoria). The indoor space, which serves beer and food in large enclosed spaces with communal seating, is called Bohemian Hall. The outdoor space, which serves beer and food in large open-air spaces with communal seating, is called the Beer Garden.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp, but the local media seems to assume that anything German-themed that sells beer is a beer garden. And in an effort to market themselves, some of these spaces have called themselves “indoor beer gardens.” There’s no such thing as an “indoor beer garden.” It’s a beer hall, okay? 

Unless your purpose is to intentionally mislead people into thinking you have an outdoor space, there’s no reason you shouldn’t call yourself a beer hall. Embrace it.

Hill Farmstead, the small brewery in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, will be making two appearances in New York this weekend with an extensive beer selection of deliciously-crafted brews.

First, a little history on this brewery, which is hard to spot in New York, but well worth finding. After all, Brewmaster Shaun Hill makes some very good beer. Hill cut his teeth at other breweries in Vermont, like The Shed in Stowe and Trout River in Lyndonville. Beginning in 2008, Hill spent 20 months in Denmark, earning two gold medals and a silver medal at the 2010 World Beer Cup for beers he brewed at Nørrebro Bryghus in Copenhagen, and starting his own brewery, Grassroots Brewing during his stint there. Now, he returns to Vermont to start his own brewery at his family farm that focuses on flavorful, hoppy American beers.

Hill Farmstead started distributing in Vermont a year ago - last April, to be precise. They were in such high demand from the beginning that they couldn’t participate in the Vermont Brewers Festival in July - they didn’t have enough beer to meet the expected demand. They distributed a few kegs to Philadelphia last summer that were snapped up overnight, and then came to New York last fall. Since then, Hill Farmstead has brought some great beers - many named for Hill’s ancestors who worked on the farm - to New York’s craft beer bars. 

This weekend, you’ll be able to find many of them in one place… or rather, two places. After the jump, tap lists from two great Hill Farmstead events in New York:

Keep reading

We were pleased last year when Sixpoint Craft Ales had to move some of their brewing operations to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania because they had run out of space in the facility in Brooklyn. It’s good to see that a local brewery’s popularity has taken off, and the move allowed Sixpoint to focus on more small-batch brews.

Now, that move is paying extra dividends. Since the facility in Pennsylvania has a canning line, it appears that Sixpoint will start canning their beer in 16-ounce vessels. That became clear when the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau approved the above can label on Tuesday. Behold… tallboys of Bengali Tiger, their flagship IPA, now registered with the Feds.

(Side note: not to editorialize, but we’re kind of excited about this. You’d know if you knew how we feel about cans.)

This will be the first time that Sixpoint has individually bottled or canned their beer for retail apart from their Grand Crue, which surfaced in a few select New York City beer stores in 22-ounce bombers.

Late today, we got word that three other beers they brew in Wilkes-Barre - Sweet Action, Righteous Rye, and Sehr Crisp Pilsner - will also be canned. No word yet on when the cans will hit shelves, but given that it’s the perfect outdoor drinking vessel, cans of Sixpoint might be this summer’s feelgood hit.