Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:
Two Brothers and Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project come together for one night only at The Stag’s Head (252 E. 51st St., at 2nd Ave., Turtle Bay) for an event they’re calling “Pretty Things Come in Twos.” Among the beers from Pretty Things: St. Botolph’s Town and American Darling. Two Brothers will have Atom Smasher, Heavy Handed IPA and others. The whole thing gets underway at 6pm.
Founders Brewing will be out in full-force at Blind Tiger Ale House(281 Bleecker St., at Jones St., West Village) tonight. Will there be Breakfast Stout? Of course. Will there be Canadian Breakfast Stout? Hell yes. Will there be Kentucky Breakfast Stout? You bet your sweet ass! Will there be other award-winning beers from the Michigan brewery that aren’t heavy and/or aged in liquor barrels? Yeah, sure, but why would you want one of those?
If you like your craft beer on the cheap and you live in North Jersey, you’re in luck, because it’s Pint Night at Bistro 55(55 Route 17 South, at Grove Ave., Rochelle Park, NJ). Pints are $4 all night, and they’ll be pouring Ithaca Flower Power, Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, and plenty of others from their 12 tap lines.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:
It’s a Ten-Buck Tasting of English beers tonight at 7:30 at Jimmy’s No. 43(43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village). Toss what you know of English beers out the window. Forget Bass or Newcastle and saddle up for a tasting of beers from Harviestoun, Thornbridge, J.W. Lees, and others for just ten bucks.
Meet Kelso of Brooklyn brewer Kelly Taylor and his new Citra Pale Ale, a pale ale with English floor-malted barley and Sierra Nevada’s Citra Hop, at Bierkraft (191 Fifth Ave., at President St., Park Slope) tonight from 7-9pm. They’ll also be serving other small-batch specialities from the Fort Greene-based brewery.
Harpoon is uptown at Toast Uptown(3157 Broadway, at Tiemann Pl., Morningside Heights) from 7-9pm tonight, serving up their newest 100 Barrel Series beer, the Glacier Harvest ‘10 Wet Hop Ale, along with Munich Dark and the Leviathan Series Big Bohemian Pilsner.
It is so on. Each week, we rave about beer bars and breweries in and around New York City on here. But now, it’s up to you to decide who’s truly the best.
First, we’ve got categories by region for the best craft beer bars:
Best Manhattan Beer Bar
Best Brooklyn Beer Bar
Best Bronx Beer Bar
Best Queens Beer Bar
Best Staten Island Beer Bar
Best Long Island Beer Bar
Best Westchester/Rockland Beer Bar
Best North Jersey Beer Bar
Some of these categories will be chock full of nominations, and some won’t. But there are definitely some diamonds in the rough that even we may not know about.
Next, some specialty bar categories for the whole region:
Best New Beer Bar (opened on or after November 1, 2009)
Best Beer Bar to Bring a Date
Best Beer & Sports Bar
Best Beer Bar Food
Best Beer Bar Bartender
Best Beer Store
The bartender is my favorite category, and we can’t wait to see the responses. Too often, we overlook the people who slave over pouring us a perfect pint. Let’s give ‘em a hand.
Finally, a couple categories for the brewers:
Best NYC-area Brewery
Best New NYC-area Brewery
We’ll keep this simple. And we don’t want to spend hours of precious homebrewing time making trophies for a hundred different categories (yes, there are trophies).
Despite its appearance, this glass at Sierra Grille in Northampton, Massachusetts only holds eight ounces of beer.
Lately, at visits to a few brewpubs and beer bars outside New York City, I’ve come across something that has made my drinking experience significantly more enjoyable: the option of having beer served in half-pints.
Admittedly, there’s a good reason for this in a lot of places: as a beer geek, you’re likely to want to drink a lot of different beers. If you drank full, pint-sized versions of each of those beers, you’d be in pretty rough shape. And in areas where you need to drive a car, it makes sense to serve half-pints to limit alcohol consumption. But when you’re at a bar serving craft beer, does it matter if you’re driving a car or not? Rather than pouring a 4.2% Bud Light, you’re probably pouring a 6 or 7% IPA. Most of us drink those types of beers because we like them, not because we want to get wasted, regardless of whether or not we have to get behind the wheel of a car.
Lew Bryson at Ale Street News discussed this earlier this year. It is, of course, the bartender’s responsibility to monitor alcohol intake. And at a craft beer bar, equal care should be taken than at a frat bar that pours Busch Light and holds beer pong tournaments. Here in New York City, just because most patrons are going home in a cab or train doesn’t mean that responsibility shouldn’t be taken less seriously. And if we’re facing the inevitability that people in New York are more prone to drink their faces off, at bars should at least give us the option to drink in smaller quantities.
To our knowledge, there’s only a handful of craft beer spots that offer half-pints of beers they serve in full pints. In Brooklyn, both d.b.a. Williamsburg and Brouwerij Lane offer smaller servings at smaller prices. In Manhattan’s, there’s the appropriately-named The Half-Pint and, believe it or not, The Tap Room at Colicchio & Sons, Tom Colicchio’s new iteration of Craftsteak on 10th Avenue. A fancy restaurant is not exactly the first place that beer geeks think of, but it has an extensive draft list that includes some rarer international beers. The Village Voice called this a “beer-geek friendly” move. They’re right; it’s great to be able to dabble in a few different beers in one sitting without worrying about draining your wallet or wearing down your liver. So why don’t more places in the city do this?
Maybe they never saw the point (there is, in fact, more to drinking beer than getting drunk). Maybe they don’t imagine they’d profit (they could seek guidance from Fette Sau in Brooklyn, where half-pints are served in addition to quarts and gallons of beer). Maybe they’re worried about the added amount of service involved at a busy bar (The Ginger Man, one of the few beer bars in Manhattan offering samplers of several different beers, doesn’t serve them during peak hours).
Regardless, it would be nice to see some beer bars here in New York give a nod to responsible drinking and sampling of many of their offerings without running the risk of suffering from a hangover the next day.
Anyone spot more places that serve half-pints in New York City lately? Let us know in the comments.
A new brewery has arrived on the New York City beer scene. Its IPA first popped up at Barcade at their 6th Anniversary Party on Thursday, and then appeared at Brouwerij Lane and Bierkraft over the weekend. They’ve confirmed it: not only are they on their way to New York, but their whole lineup will soon be all over the northeast. Meet Full Sail Brewing from Hood River, Oregon.
Okay, so the brewery is not exactly new, it’s just new to us. Full Sail’s been in operation on the banks of the Columbia River since 1987, and their beer is pretty easy to find out West. They’re the 14th-largest craft brewery in the United States, according to the Brewers Association.
Let’s meet the beer lineup. First off, the Full Sail IPA was the first to appear in New York, a full-bodied IPA that clocks in at 6% ABV with 60 IBUs (that’s International Bittering Units) - not painfully bitter, but with a nice citrusy hop kick. The Full Sail Amber is also kicking around New York. It’s an American Amber Ale - a style that’s much more prevalent out west - a medium-bodied malty ale with a nice hop kick. We haven’t seen the poetically-named Full Sail Pale Ale yet, but we’ll be on the lookout for this clean, crisp American Pale Ale. The Wassail is Full Sail’s winter seasonal ale with a tad bit more malt and more alcohol than their standard offerings. They’ve also got three other seasonals in their “LTD series,” and more rare one-off brews in their Brewmaster’s Reserve Series.
Finally, what’s with those stubby short bottles? If you’ve been longing to drink something out of short 11-ounce bottles that wasn’t a Jamaican import, let us introduce you to Full Sail’s Session Lagers. First up, their Premium Lager is a light-bodied, all-malt pre-prohibition style lager that took home the gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2008 for International Pilsner. Their Black Lager is a richer, darker, yet drinkable lager that also took home a gold at GABF in 2009 for American Dark Lager. Both of these beers appeal to craft beer geeks and entry-level beer drinkers alike - and typically can be found in 12-packs.
That’s all we’ve seen so far, but we’ll keep you up to date on what else from Full Sail shows up on shelves and on tap lines across the New York area. And if you’re across the river, have no fear: Full Sail will show up in New Jersey in the coming weeks, too.
