This month, Budget Travel published a list of beer bars and gardens that make up “New York’s Hopping Beer Scene.” Of the seven places recommended for beer drinking in the article, only one - Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden - serves any beer brewed in the New York area. The rest exclusively carry beers from Germany, or Belgium, or even Asia. It’s disheartening to see travel writers completely ignore the great beer that’s brewed in New York and the culture here around American craft beer - especially on the eve of New York Craft Beer Week.

Look, we’ve been through this before: Time Out New York named The Standard Biergarten - an all-German and Austrian beer garden with a three-deep list of draft beers - as New York’s Best Beer Bar in their 2010 Eat Out Awards, saying it “should please most brew geeks” (apparently, they’ve never met the myriad “brew geeks” that prefer ales to lagers). In May, Bon Appetit listed nine must-try beer bars in New York, most of which didn’t serve a single local craft beer - while in the same breath plugged the success of Brooklyn Brewery, Kelso, and Sixpoint in the article’s introduction.

This trend continues to boggle my mind. Who are these travel writers writing these articles for? If you want to travel to find good European beer, you should travel to Europe. Most of the beers served at these beer gardens are available elsewhere in this country, too. I’m not trying to be a snob here; European breweries make amazing beer. But why, in an age where demand for imported beer is down 9.8% nationally and demand for American craft beer is up by more than that amount, would travel writers write about New York’s beer scene and completely ignore the local beer that’s brewed here? We’re just asking for a little balance here. Otherwise, it’s insulting.

Beer tourism has grown exponentially over the past few years, but none of it is about traveling thousands of miles to drink beer that’s brewed thousands of miles further away. It’s about experiencing a unique local product that defines a region’s identity. Ayinger, Leffe, or Radeberger are not unique to New York. Sure, their availability helps makes New York’s beer scene more diverse, but it’s not even close to scraping the surface of this city’s beer culture.

Wake up and smell the hops, travel writers.

Each day through the rest of September, we’ll feature an event during NY Craft Beer Week, which kicks off tomorrow. With a complete list of events that’s a mile long, we’ll fish through all of them and tell you about the shining stars.

Brew York - not to be confused with a certain web site with a similar name - is a group of smart and talented craft beer writers, enthusiasts, and advocates (myself included) who get together every now and then for some pretty epic private beer tastings. The event they’ll be holding during NY Craft Beer Week, however, is very much public, equally as epic, and supports a good cause, too.

The all-day event, next Wednesday, September 29th at d.b.a. Brooklyn (113 N. 7th St., at Berry St., Williamsburg) will offer eight fantastic craft beers, many of them local, with proceeds going to benefit East New York Farms, a non-profit that addresses food injustice in poorer neighborhoods by promoting sustainable local agriculture and community development.

Among the beers on tap: Brooklyn Cookie Jar Porter, Captain Lawrence Birra DeCicco, and a cask of Southampton North Fork Fresh Hop ESB. They’ll also have offerings from Sixpoint, Greenport Harbor, Dogfish Head, Kelso, and Ommegang.

The event runs all day, and this isn’t a half-assed effort: 100% of the proceeds go to the charity. Oh, and the beer is 100% delicious.

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

• It’s Heavy Seas night at the Blind Tiger Ale House (281 Bleecker St., at Jones St., West Village), where the Maryland-based brewery will be serving up 16 brews starting at 4pm, including Peg Leg (an imperial stout), Big DIPA, and the ‘09 version of their Great Pumpkin. Heavy Seas founder Hugh Sisson will be on hand as well.
• East Village Tavern (158 Avenue C, at 10th St., East Village) will be among the first to unveil Dogfish Head’s new “Randall 3.0.” For the uninitiated, a randall allows beer to flow through fresh ingredients to provide some extra flavor (Blind Tiger has featured an older version on occasion). Tonight, they’ll be running the Sah'tea through jasmine and licorice leaves starting at 8pm.
• It’s the first day of fall today, but the autumnal equinox is at precisely 11:09pm tonight. So, at that time, The Diamond (43 Franklin St., at Calyer St., Greenpoint) will tap a keg of Southern Tier Pumking to honor the occasion. Seems like a good enough reason as any to drink beer.
• For those who seek solace in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s Sly Fox & Cheesesteaks Night at Standings (43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village). They’ll be pouring four beers from the Pennsylvania-based brewery, including Oktoberfest and Odyssey Imperial IPA, and serving free cheesesteaks from 99 Miles to Philly.

Here’s what’s fermenting in the beer world:

• A quick and easy guide to NY Craft Beer Week [Serious Eats]
• There’s more than just beer fermenting in Brooklyn: meet the borough’s distilleries [Time Out New York]
• Budweiser’s new marketing strategy: free beer [USA Today]
• Consequently: First Annual “Pour Out a Bud Day” [Bklyn Foodie]
• Pictures from Munich’s Oktoberfest 2010 [The Big Picture]
• Italy’s flourishing craft beer scene [In Transit]

It’s 5pm on a Friday, and you’re standing in Herald Square in search of freshly-brewed beer. Where do you go?

If you want a one-seat ride to a bar where you can get beer brewed on the premises, you have one option: Newark. You can ride the PATH to Newark Penn Station, just three blocks from the region’s newest brewpub, and the ride costs $1.75. Tell the MTA to take their $2.25 and shove it - you’re going to drink beer in New Jersey.

Port 44 Brewpub (44 Commerce St., at Mulberry St., Newark) opened last month on Commerce Street in downtown Newark, practically in the shadow of the Prudential Center. The building blends into the block, but look closely - the ornate facade was imported from Venice. The owners, John Feeley and Greg Gilhooly, are a former firefighter and police officer who took a gamble on a space in an area with few options for grabbing a craft beer. But given craft beer’s rising popularity, and the bar’s proximity to “The Rock,” as the sports arena is called, the gamble may pay off.

One smart investment they made was in their hiring of former Chelsea Brewing Company brewer Chris Sheehan. Sheehan has over two decades of brewing experience on both coasts that he brings to a place where he can call the finished product entirely his own. Not only does he fly solo on the brewing, but he also put the brewing system together - the winding pipes and hoppers were made from spare piping and scrap metal with help from a welder in the Ironbound district of Newark. Somehow, it all works quite well.

After months of preparation, it’s been just six weeks since Sheehan brewed his first batch at Port 44. Some of the beers is still a little rough around the edges; even Sheehan admits he’d make some tweaks to what he’s serving now, but it’s all very promising. The standouts were Devil’s Red, an American red ale with a tasty malt character brewed with Simcoe hops, and Longy’s Black Market Stout, a rich American-style stout named for Abner “Longy” Zwillman, a Newark-born beer baron who was known during prohibition as “The Al Capone of New Jersey.”

Sheehan is experimenting quite a bit with the beer. Port 44’s Siren Wheat (proceeds go to benefit a fund for families of injured police officers and firefighters) uses buckwheat to impart a more “wheaty” flavor. The Catskill Hop Harvest Ale is a mild pale ale brewed with 14 pounds of hops that Sheehan harvested from his family’s hop plants and other upstate New York hop farms. The Goldfinch Ale, named after New Jersey’s state bird, is a beer that spans styles - it has the crispness of a pilsner and the hoppy flavor of an American Pale Ale.

Port 44 itself is a large, two-level bar with an unpretentious decor that won’t wow craft beer drinkers, but also won’t intimidate Devils and Nets fans. A large circular bar on the main floor offers up some flatscreens TVs to watch sports, and a view of the fermenters that sit just inside the front door. On the second level, there’s another smaller bar and large seating area that overlooks the mash tun and brewkettle. There’s a full menu of your standard bar fare, and for now, there are “guest taps” that serve other New Jersey beers from Riverhorse, New Jersey Beer Company, and Cricket Hill. Sheehan hopes the place will be packed to the gills once the Devils and Nets seasons begin, since it’s just a two-minute walk to the arena.

While we always want to see a place that celebrates craft beer succeed, Port 44  deserves to succeed. The brewer’s experience comes through in the high quality of the beer. Sheehan said he wanted a new challenge, and his biggest is convincing Newark’s residents, visitors, and workers that craft beer has officially arrived in Brick City. Once they’ve come through the door and ordered a pint, the beer will speak for itself.

LivingSocial is offering a 51% discount on tickets to this Saturday’s Long Island City Craft Beer Festival at Water Taxi Beach. The festival has two sessions on Saturday: 12:30 to 4pm and 5:30 to 9pm. Discount tickets are down to $23 with LivingSocial’s offer, which is good through 5am tomorrow.

The festival will feature a bevy of craft beers from around the continent, including selections from Founders, Unibroue, Boulder, and Goose Island. You’ll also be able to get your hands on some great new local beers from Greenport Harbor, Barrier Brewing Co., and Long Ireland.

Best of all, both sessions guarantee scenic views across the East River - and during the evening session, you’ll get to watch the sun set behind the majestic Manhattan skyline (weather permitting, of course… the festival itself is rain or shine). And as a gentle reminder of the impending autumn weather, this might be your last chance all season to drink beer outside without wearing gloves.