Here are the beer-related goings-on for your thirsty Thursday:
It’s Vermont Beer Night at Mudville 9(126 Chambers St., at W. Broadway, Tribeca) tonight, with selections from Otter Creek, Wolavers, and Magic Hat. If buying beer doesn’t suit your fancy, there will be free tastings, too, and giveaways.
To move one state eastward in terms of beer, head up to the Upper East Side for David Copperfield’s(1394 York Ave., at 74th St., Upper East Side)Smuttynose Night. New Hampshire’s finest brewery will be serving up some short batch stuff, plus Farmhouse Ale, Pumpkin Ale, and the last of the Summer Weizen. Plus, beers are all $1 off every Thursday night.
To get the Northern New England trifecta, go to Barcade(388 Union Ave., at Powerst St., Williamsburg) tonight for Allagash Night. It’s a rip-roaring list of drafts from our favorite Maine brewery, including Curieux, Bourbon Black, and the Fluxus 2010 - a chocolate stout.
If you’ve got the itch to have some beer from much further away, the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room (95 E. Houston St., at Chrystie St., Lower East Side) is hosting an Innis and Gunn tasting tonight from 5-9pm, with free samples of the oak-aged Scottish import.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:
This week’s big event at Blind Tiger Ale House(281 Bleecker St., at Jones St., West Village) honors Sierra Nevada with an impressive and extensive beer list that includes a keg of the 2006 Bigfoot Barleywine, Fritz & Ken’s 30th Anniversary Stout and Charlie, and Fred & Ken’s 30th Anniversary Bock. Plus, you’ll get one of the first opportunities to enjoy Sierra Nevada’s new autumn seasonal, Tumbler, an American Brown Ale.
Further uptown at The Stag’s Head (252 E. 51st St., at 2nd Ave., Turtle Bay), they’ll be pouring a few selections from Harpoon starting at 6pm, including three beers from their Leviathan Series, plus two beers that are just coming into season: Oktoberfest and Munich Dark. If you’re hungry, you can get your hands on some free crab cake sliders, too.
Standings(43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village) will serve up four brews from Long Island’s Blue Point tonight, including Sour Cherry Imperial Stout, Rastafa Rye, and Double Blonde. As with all Standings events, you can line your stomach with free pizza tonight, too.
Across the East River, Huckleberry Bar(588 Grand St., at Lorimer St., Williamsburg) is serving a beer-and-food pairing menu tonight, including cheeses, grilled sausage, and beer from Duvel, La Chouffe, and Ommegang. Flights of beer and cheese are just $6 and include four different beers of your choice.
I got thinking about canned beer during last night’s Canned Beer Night at Spring Lounge. What do so many people have against canned beer? Last week, I won a 12-pack of Harpoon IPA cans at Professor Thom’s during their monthly Third Thursdays with Harpoon event. I had the choice between the cans of IPA or a variety pack of bottles that included Munich Dark, UFO White, and their Belgian Pale Ale. Everyone with me wondered why I chose cans over bottles, and I swiftly began my diatribe in support of canned beer.
There is nothing wrong with canned beer, as long as it’s good beer. In fact, signs point to it being better than bottled beer. For example, light is one of beer’s worst enemies, and even brown bottles let through a small amount of light. Canned beer doesn’t have that problem. Canned beer is lighter to ship, and more compact to ship more of it at once. That brings down shipping costs to the breweries, and with some hope, those savings will be passed on to the consumer. Its lower weight is better for the consumer, too; it’s much easier to carry around a 12-pack of cans on a hike than a 12-pack of bottles. And there are plenty of places where canned beer is allowed where bottled beer is not - parks, pools, beaches, rafting trips ban glass bottles (and most of them ban alcohol), but would turn a blind eye to a can*.
Another argument against canned beer is that it has a metallic taste. These are not the old cans that your dad used a churchkey to open when you were a kid. Cans today contain a coating that protects beverages from the aluminum. There may be trace amounts of the metal, but nothing that significantly impacts taste. If you’re uneasy about drinking out of a can, pour the beer into a glass or cup. That’s the way beer was meant to be consumed, anyway… the small opening on a can or bottle doesn’t allow the aroma of the beer to be released.
The only thing that keeps me from saying that canned beer is superior to bottled beer is that so few breweries can their beer, meaning that some of the best beer remains in bottles and only bottles. But the situation is improving: many breweries that can beer are making a name for themselves, like Colorado’s Ska Brewing, Minnesota’s Surly Brewing Co., and Oregon’s Caldera Brewing. Well-established players like New Belgium and Harpoon are canning some of their beer now, and Maine’s Baxter Brewing - set to open this year - will be canning their beer exclusively.
So I beg of you all, stop being afraid of the aluminum. What’s behind it might not be the swill you remember from college.
* I’m not encouraging illegal public drinking, obviously… although I’m sure it would be much more difficult for the NYPD to spot a guy drinking a can of 21st Amendment Back in Black on his Brooklyn stoop than a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:
If you’re a big fan of canned beer, Spring Lounge(48 Spring St., at Mulberry St., Little Italy) is the spot to go tonight for their Canned Beer Night. Starting at 5pm, they’ll be serving up cans from Oskar Blues, Sly Fox, 21st Amendment, and Butternuts. Plus, they’ll have the low-brow canned favorites like Gennesee Cream Ale, Rheingold, and Schaefer (whose slogan was once “the one beer to have when you’re having more than one.” Stay classy).
There’s another Ten Buck Tasting tonight at 7:30 at Jimmy’s No. 43(43 E. 7th St., at 2nd Ave., East Village). This week, it’s Bottom-Fermenting Beers. For the uninitiated, that generally means lager yeasts instead of ale yeasts… but lagers can still produce quite a variety of different characteristics aside from your mass-produced American lagers.
It’s another “Very Cool Sh*t Night” at Rattle-N-Hum(14 E. 33rd St., at 5th Ave., Midtown) tonight, highlighted by selections from Belgium’s De la Senne, Denmark’s Mikkeller, and Norway’s Haandbryggeriet. They’ll also be serving bread and cheese from Murray’s starting at 5pm.
As we previewed last month, the next beer in Brooklyn Brewery’s Brewmaster’s Reserve series is Detonation Ale. After a raucous release party this week in Prospect Park, the beer is now starting to pop up all over town. So far, we’ve spotted it at Hop Devil Grill, d.b.a., and Life Cafe in the East Village, The Wild Goose on Staten Island, and the most logical place - Brooklyn Brewery itself. It’s also on deck for tapping at The Bronx Ale House very soon.
Be on the hunt for this well-balanced, drinkable, and very sneaky IPA that clocks in at 9.2% ABV. And be sure to get it before it self-destructs.
