Sorry about the brief hiatus over the past few days. Like most other bloggers, we have a day job that takes up a lot of our time. And this particular time of year, it takes up almost too much. But never fear: the late hours and midnight oil-burning will soon be over, and we’ll be back to our normal posting frequency again.

But here’s what we missed over the past few days:

• The Four Loko freakout continued. We here at BYNY are staunchly opposed to the New York State Liquor Authority’s blanket ban and the FDA’s eventual order to four makers of these products, as it creates a slippery slope that suggests that they believe any mixing of alcohol and caffeine would be dangerous (even though the FDA swears up and down that it’s not their intention). We defend Four Loko knowing full-well that it is one of the most disgusting beverages we’ve ever tasted.
• The new show Brewmasters premiered on the Discovery Channel last night, starring Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione. While as beer geeks, we love the show, we worry that that mainstream media will identify Dogfish Head as representative of entire craft beer industry. That won’t do anything to bridge the divide between Bud/Miller/Coors drinkers and craft beer drinkers. While we love DFH’s creativity and find Brewmasters entertaining, quirky ingredients and $12 12-ounce bottles aren’t going to turn any outsiders on to craft beer.
• We went back to Good Beer (422 E. 9th St., btw. 1st Ave. and Ave. A) again and again for growler fills and bottles. They’re now updating their tap list on their Facebook page, and most growlers are running $15 and under.
• We found out that Breckenridge Brewery’s beers were approved for sale in New York State by the State Liquor Authority earlier this month. They’ll be carried locally by Union Beer Distributors, and we’ll let you know when we see them around.
• We had a very special beer at a very secret location on Saturday. And that is all we can say about that.

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

• It’s Wednesday, and this week, Blind Tiger Ale House (281 Bleecker St., at Jones St., West Village) brings Tampa, Florida’s own Cigar City Brewing into the house with a huge lineup of beers starting at 4pm. Among them, five different infused IPAs (think papaya, peach, and white oak), three infused versions of their Maduro Brown (think blueberry, vanilla, and mint), their huge Marshal Zhukov’s Imperial Stout, and the Double Black IPA, a collaboration with Vermont’s Hill Farmstead.
  
  Side note: be sure to sign this petition to keep Cigar City’s tasting room open, as it’s inexplicably under threat of closing by the Tampa City Council.
• Peak Organic is at The Stag’s Head (252 E. 51st St., at 2nd Ave., Turtle Bay) for free food and beer with a camping theme. Baked beans and toast and s'mores are on the menu, along with favorites like the Espresso Amber and Maple Oat.
• Over in Jersey, it’s Smuttynose night at Andy’s Corner (257 Queen Anne Rd., at Fort Lee Rd., Bogota) starting at 7pm. The New Hampshire brewery will take over all the taps, offering up favorites like the Really Old Brown Dog and the last of the Pumpkin before the season’s over.

Last night, Sierra Nevada celebrated its 30th Anniversary with a soiree at its Chico, California brewery. They had live music, a catered dinner, tours of the brewery, and samples upon samples of their standard beer offerings and rare brews that are impossibly hard to find.

Of course, the party doesn’t stop there. And on November 30th, that party will come to New York City when Rattle-N-Hum (14 E. 33rd St., at 5th Ave., Midtown) hosts their own anniversary celebration.

The brewery will take over all 40 taps and four casks at Rattle-N-Hum with some beers that you’ve never seen in New York, and some that you may never see here again.

The complete tap list - and an interesting observation about it - is after the jump.

Keep reading

After seeing last week’s piece on Manhattan’s first brewpub, reader Doug passed along a piece he wrote for the Downtown Express in June of 1993 that features a young Garrett Oliver extolling the virtues of craft beer: “I want to usher in a new era of beer drinking here,” he says. He was true to his word; within a couple years, Oliver would be at the helm of the brew kettles at Brooklyn Brewery and well on his way to craft beer notoriety.

We’ll have more on the next era of brewing in New York - including the aforementioned Zip City - in a later installment.

Clipping from New York Magazine, 7/16/84

In 1983, zero barrels of beer were commercially brewed in New York City. It had been more than half a decade since Rheingold and Schaefer had closed the doors of their Brooklyn breweries in one fell swoop. One man - a Brit - had a plan to bring beer back to New York: in SoHo, no less.

This became the Manhattan Brewing Company, a precursor to the New York craft beer scene that was open from 1984 until the mid-90s on the corner of Thompson and Broome. Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver bit his chops on brewing here before he left for his current longtime employer.

Once it opened in November of 1984, it attracted far less of a sophisticated beer-drinking set, and much more of a college crowd (when it opened, the drinking age in New York was still 19). Said of the brewpub in New York Magazine in 1988:

Fun if you like college kids, are one yourself, or are looking for an excuse to act like one.

Ouch.

The beers, though, were righteous. In fact, Manhattan won two medals at the 1989 Great American Beer Festival for European Pilsners, including one it brewed for sale exclusively at D'Agostino supermarkets. Manhattan Brewing Company made its mark on the beer scene before dying a slow, ugly death.

MBC had a tumultuous last few years, closing, reopening, and dealing with staffing changes before ceding its position as New York’s only brewpub to a bevy of others that entered that tried - and ultimately failed - to enter the market in the 1990s. We’ll talk about those in a future installment.

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

• Midtown newcomer The Three Monkeys (236 W. 54th St., at Broadway, Midtown) salutes Captain Lawrence tonight with a visit from the brewery at 7:30pm. Expect Freshchester Pale Ale and the Smoked Porter to be available for pours.
• Head to Bierkraft (191 Fifth Ave., at President St., Park Slope) tonight for their Sixpoint tap takeover starting at 7pm. They’ll pour the finest beers out of Red Hook from fourteen tap lines, including an old hit of the summer, the Signal rauchbier, the new Sweet Reaction, and a cask of Sweet Action.
• Standings (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village) will do what they do best tonight: serve up good beer and free food with their Dogfish Head Novemberfest. Starting at 6pm, they’ll have an impressive selection of taps from DFH, including Red & White, Bitches Brew, and Palo Santo Marron. And naturally, they’ll have free pizza, too.
• It’s Victory night at the Bronx Ale House (216 W. 238th St., at Broadway, Kingsbridge, Bronx), with a salute to the Downingtown, PA brewery featuring Victory Village, Scarlet Sunset, Moonglow Weizenbock, and many others starting at 7pm.