For the past three Labor Day Weekends, the Ithaca Beer Company has thrown an all-out bash to celebrate craft beer from their brewery and dozens of others across the country and around the world. This Saturday, September 4th, the Ithaca Brew Fest celebrates its fourth year at Ithaca’s Stewart Park on the banks of beautiful Cayuga Lake. If you still haven’t made plans for this coming weekend, this might be something to add to the calendar.

I’ve always said that I am more appreciative of beer festivals that cap the number of drinks you can have, and the Ithaca Brew Fest is one such event. For $35, your ticket entitles you to a generous twenty samples of beer, rather than entitling you to a beer race with a free-for-all of fratboys to see who can drink the most beer in the four-hour session. Pouring this year are lesser-known upstate beers from Roosterfish, Wagner Valley, Bandwagon Brew Pub, and Rohrbach, as well as favorites that make it to the city, like Southern Tier, Ommegang, and Butternuts. They’ll also have food from Ithaca eateries, and live music from local bands (given the hippie vibe of Ithaca, you can imagine the bands will have that vibe, too).

It’s about a four-hour drive from Manhattan to Ithaca, and a hotel recommendation is available through the Brew Fest’s web site. If you don’t have access to a car, The Pony Bar is resurrecting its Pony Express bus trips for the festival. Final details are still being pinned down, but you can contact the bar directly to find out more.

You’ll be seeing a lot of green at the U.S. Open this year… and not just from the cash that will fly out of your wallet.

Every year, the best [healthy] tennis players in the world come to the USTA Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows to play in the U.S. Open. Unfortunately, the beer selections at the tournament are not nearly as star-studded as the draws. But never fear! Here’s your beer guide at the 2010 U.S. Open:

Show Me the Money: Like most sporting events, you might want to take out a small loan to buy alcohol at the U.S. Open. Thankfully, the prices here still aren’t approaching Yankee Stadium-levels of insanity. $7 will get you a small cup of draft beer, $8 will get you a 16-ounce can or bottle, and $9 will get you a larger souvenir cup.

Seeing Green: If you’re a tennis fan and like Dutch beer, you’re very lucky. Since they are a major sponsor of the U.S. Open, Heineken practically owns the tap handles at Flushing Meadows. With an exclusivity deal, Heineken and Heineken Light are essentially the only beers you can buy on tap in Arthur Ashe Stadium or in the Food Village. In addition, kiosks throughout the grounds pour both, and there’s a “Red Star Cafe” outside Arthur Ashe Stadium, and “Heineken Lounge” just across from the Grandstand.

All in the Family: Not surprisingly, Amstel Light, brewed by Heineken’s other Dutch brewery, is also available at the U.S. Open, but mostly in cans at rollaway kiosks that also serve Heineken in cans (it’s also on tap at Mojito Restaurant & Bar just to the east of the Arthur Ashe main gates). Meanwhile, Wine Bar and Food in the South Plaza outside Arthur Ashe adds a Heineken-owned Italian beer to the mix: Birra Moretti.

Buy American: Let’s be honest… this is the U.S. Open! Where’s the American beer? It’s hard to find, but you can get your hands on draft pours of Miller Genuine Draft and 16-ounce plastic bottles of Miller Lite. The only places I found these options were in the corridors around Louis Armstrong Stadium and the Grandstand. Admittedly, Miller isn’t American-owned (it’s owned by South Africa’s SABMiller), but at least it’s American-brewed.

At Long Last, Craft Beer: Okay, I know you came here hoping for a Citi Field-quality craft beer selection at the U.S. Open. After all, you can see one venue from the other! Sorry to say, but that’s about as far from reality as you can get. There’s nothing here from Brooklyn, Blue Point, Goose Island, or even Sam Adams. There is just one craft beer on tap at the U.S. Open, and it’s in the most inconspicuous place imaginable. At the Stonyfield Farm Cafe near Court 11 (pictured below), you can get a $7 draft of Peak Organic Summer Session Ale. This crisp, refreshing low-alcohol beer is surprisingly flavorful and perfect for al fresco drinking. When it comes to craft beer, it’s your only choice, but also not a bad choice, either.

Stonyfield Cafe, the only place to find craft beer at the U.S. Open

Be Happy: Look, it could be worse. You could be at a dive bar where all they serve are cans of Natty Light. Or even worse than that, you could be at a Monday night, alcohol-free Jets game at the Meadowlands. Enjoy the beer and enjoy the matches!

News that’s fermenting in the beer world:

• Four spots to get beer-spiked desserts in NYC [NY Post]
• From the Department of Bad Ideas: The Boilermaker [Grapes & Grains]
• From the Department of Really Bad Ideas: Fried Beer at the Texas State Fair [DMN]
• Even techies agree: canned beer is the future of craft beer! [Gizmodo]
• What’s the world’s most overrated craft beer? Beer and Whiskey Brothers weighs in.
• Indiana’s Upland Brewing Co. releases the creepiest beer label ever [Beernews]
• Oh, did I mention I was profiled in Sunday’s New York Times? (Pro tip: don’t ever call me “Mr. O'Leary.”) [City Room]

Here is the beer-related going-on after work tonight. I speak singularly, since it’s a quiet Monday night:

• d.b.a. Brooklyn (113 N. 7th St., at Berry St., Williamsburg) is hosting the next free tasting in their “Liquids of Interest” series. Each week, d.b.a. owner Ray Deter leads an informal themed tasting Monday at 7pm. This week, it’s Beers of Canada. I can imagine it’ll include stuff from Quebec’s finest craft breweries, Unibroue and Dieu de Ciel. During the tasting, Ray also takes suggestions for the next tasting’s theme. I’m thinking “Brew York, New York’s Favorite Beers” makes for a good theme, no?

A chart from the Brewers Assocation tracks the growth of breweries in the United States

It wasn’t long ago that the majority of this country not only didn’t know anything but the “Big 3” breweries (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors), but didn’t have access to anything other than them, either. In the lifetimes of nearly everyone who is of legal drinking age, craft beer was nearly impossible to find except in a few places that specialized in it.

In New York City, we were lucky enough to be a proving ground for many great European beers - those beyond Heineken and Amstel - before the craft beer boom. But still, as recently as two decades ago, Samuel Adams was as crafty as American craft beer got in New York.

The tide started to turn in the 1980s, after a low point when there were just 80 breweries in the US in 1983. The turnaround was inspired by a number of early upstarts - Anchor and Samuel Adams being the most successful - and now has literally exploded. According to the Brewers Association, the number of American breweries are at an all-time high since the Prohibition Era: 1,595 operated during the course of 2009. It’s still nothing compared to the 4,000 that were in operation in the 1870s, but with transportation and packaging, beer freshness is guaranteed well beyond a 50-mile radius these days.

This year could be even bigger. Last week, the BA announced that craft beer sales were up 11.9% just in the first half of 2010. They’re still a small share of the total US beer market; less than 10% of beer sales are craft beer. But at the same time craft beer sales were up in the first half of 2010, total beer sales were down 2.7%. That’s a clear statement that people see the value of locally-produced, high quality beer.

Earlier in the year, industry officials said that new American craft breweries were opening at a rate of nearly one per day. There very well may be 200 new brewery openings this year. That trend is true in the New York area, too. Among the class of 2010 are New Jersey Beer Company, Barrier Brewing, Rocky Point Artisan Brewers, Eataly’s rooftop brewery, and Great South Bay Brewery. Upstate, a few more breweries have added to the total in New York State. And on top of all this, homebrewers in New York are getting more competent and have access to better ingredients than ever, thanks in part to places like Brooklyn Homebrew and Brooklyn Brew Shop.

It’s no wonder that more people than ever are talking about craft beer, and more bars than ever are serving it. Of course, proselytizing about craft beer does little to get people on the craft beer bandwagon. Tasting a flavorful, rich, fresh beer does wonders to win the hearts and minds of the world’s Bud Light drinkers.

This time of the year, I’m torn. The fall seasonal beers are slowly but surely appearing on tap handles and shelves across New York, yet it’s still summer. I’m someone who constantly seeks change, so I’m tempted to recommend a pumpkin ale or Oktoberfest-style beer. But seeing that a heat wave is on the way and summer is on its way out, I’d recommend grabbing one last summer seasonal before it disappears: Victory Brewing Company’s Summer Love.

Brewed as a promotional tool for the Philadelphia Tourism Bureau, this year’s version of Summer Love is a refreshing American Blonde Ale that was well enough revered to be distributed beyond Pennsylvania’s borders. It’s an easy-drinking, crisp beer with floral hints from the German hops. Unlike many other summer ales, which are often brewed in the tradition of the Kolsch style (typically “session beers” that are low in alcohol), Summer Love has a bit more of a kick with an ABV of 5.2%.

With summer winding down, this beer is going to be harder and harder to find, but this weekend, it’s on tap at Sunswick 35/35 in Astoria, The Pony Bar in Hell’s Kitchen, David Copperfield’s on the Upper East Side, Bierkraft in Park Slope, and The Copper Mine Pub in North Arlington, New Jersey. Get it while it’s hot… the weather, not the beer.