I’m always intrigued by beer desserts (especially chocolate stout brownies), but I’m not exactly rushing over to Diablo Royale Este in the East Village for their “Hopsicle Experience," described today by Urban Daddy.
It’s a can of Tecate, infused with simple syrup and lime juice, then frozen in the can with a wooden stick. When it’s served, a bartender takes a knife to slice the can open. They also offer the option of pouring tequila over it.
I’m skeptical for many reasons… the main reason being the threat of slicing your lip open on the edge of the sliced can.
Now, how about a chocolate stout-flavored fudgsicle?
It’s a quiet Monday night on the beer front, so that makes the decision of where to seek out craft beer tonight quite easy:
Starting at 5pm, Spuyten Duyvil is having the first installment of Rare & Obscure… and they’re calling this one the Franconian Gravity Kegs Meet The Great Lakes Edition. On tap, they’ll have four beers from Dark Horse Brewing Co. in Marshall, Michigan, along with a selection from Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, in a set of gravity kegs, they explore the wonders of the Franconia region of Germany with Märzens from Weissenohe, Ahornberger, Gunther-Bräu, and Lang-Bräu. Consider it a good opportunity to get your beer pallette trained for Oktoberfest.
I’m leaving town for the weekend and heading down to tour the Brew Ridge Trail. But fear not: the beat goes on, and there’s plenty of events going on over the weekend that will whet your whistle for craft beer.
As I mentioned yesterday, Mugs Alehouse is having their “A” Rated Weekend starting today, with some great A-rated beers from Beer Advocate, including Pretty Things American Darling, Ballast Point Sculpin, and Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin. They will be rotating taps all weekend, so stop in early and often.
The Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room will be featuring Peak Organic at a tasting tonight from 5-9. You can sample the Summer Session, IPA, Pale Ale, and Espresso Amber Ale.
Another event well worth mentioning again is Blind Tiger Ale House’s benefit for the Gulf Coast, which starts at 11am on Sunday and runs all day long. Beer will be at happy hour prices all day, and they’ll serve a buffet of cajun food at 3pm and 7pm. Proceeds will benefit the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
Standings will break out some of the good stuff from Dogfish Head on Sunday at 4pm, including Theobrama, Olde School, and Sah'tea. As a nice little bonus, they will serve free Belgian frites from Pommes Frites at 6pm.
That’s all she wrote for this week. Have a great weekend! We’ll see you back here on Monday.
If there was any doubt about the success of local beer in New York City, it can be put to rest with some of the news that emerged this week from two area breweries.
Eater was tipped off to the fact that Sixpoint Craft Ales is now brewing some of their beer at the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania - a rumor confirmed by the brewery’s registration of four beers - Bengali Tiger, Sweet Action, Righteous Rye, and Brownstone - in Pennsylvania. They have simply run out of room to meet the demand for their beer at their brewery in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Lion has a large facility, a long tradition of brewing, and a means of getting beer distributed quickly and efficiently. Sixpoint had very few options: disappoint consumers by not meeting demand, or sink a ton of money into a new space.
Other respected craft brewers have some of their beer brewed at Lion, including Lancaster Brewing Company and Penn Brewing Company. And if you’re worried about the "local beer" designation, remember this: Brooklyn Brewery brews most of their beer out of a facility in Utica, New York - 120 miles further from New York than Wilkes-Barre. In other words, this is no reason to panic. And as Eater quotes Sixpoint’s Shane Welch, it’s also no reason to celebrate the prospect of Sixpoint in bottles, because it’s not happening.
Meanwhile, in Westchester County, Captain Lawrence may be pulling their beer out of New Jersey. Why? Well, it’s certainly not because it’s not selling or because there are issues with the distributor. Again, the small brewery cannot keep up with the demand. You can already see how high demand is at Captain Lawrence when they sell out of their special releases within minutes. Until the brewery expands, Jersey beer geeks will have to cross the river to get their hands on the beer. Thankfully, expansion is expensive but possible - owner Scott Vaccaro hinted at it in an interview earlier this year.
It could be much worse: these breweries could be going out of business, or they could be alienating thousands more brand loyalists by pulling out of eight states like Oskar Blues did recently. These are “growing pains,” and all great breweries have them. The road to success is slow and bumpy.
Here are the beer-related goings-on after work tonight:
One of New York’s newest local breweries, Barrier Brewing of Oceanside, Long Island, is having a tasting tonight at Dive Bar (Amsterdam & 96th) on the Upper West Side starting at 7pm.
Tonight is Speakeasy Night at the Bronx Ale House. There will be giveaways, naturally, and they’ll be pouring Moll’s Mild, Untouchable Ale, and Double Daddy plus a few others. The event starts at 6pm.
If you’re heading across the river, New Jersey Beer Company will be having a meet the brewers event tonight at 6pm at Star Bar in Jersey City. This is another good chance to get acquainted with a newcomer to the New York-area beer scene.
There are plenty of beers that get high marks on beer rating sites like Beer Advocate and Ratebeer.com, but when it garners hundreds of reviews that average an A, you’ve probably got something good. In honor of those beers, Mug’s Alehouse, on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, will only pour beers with an A rating on either site all weekend long, starting Friday afternoon.
While some of the beers they're pouring have widespread approval, like the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA pictured above, the sites differ wildly on others. For example, the Oskar Blues Gubna Imperial IPA rates a 98 on Ratebeer with 400 reviews, but only a B on Beer Advocate with 421 reviews. The Sierra Nevada Porter, one of the more widespread beers reviewed on both sites, gets a B+ on Beer Advocate and a 96 on Ratebeer.
I know we’re just splitting hairs here. I rarely rely on reviews to guide my beer drinking because they’re mostly subjective. Everyone has a different rating scale and a different pallette. Depending on your tastes in beer styles, an A to you may be a C+ to someone else. Regardless, I think we can all agree that the beers that Mug’s is pouring this weekend are - at the very least - highly-regarded:
Flying Dog Raging Bitch (cask) Green Flash 30th St. Pale Ale (cask) Haandbryggeriet Odins Triple Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Goose Island Sofie Pretty Things American Darling Allagash Blond Ballast Point Sculpin Smuttynose Big A Oak Green Flash Imperial IPA Bruery Tradewinds Tripel Troegs The Flyin Mouflan Oskar Blues Gubna Great Divide 16th Anniversary Taras Boulba Mikkeller Centennial Lagunitas WTF Ommegang Zuur Porterhouse Wassler Stout (nitro) Left Hand Milk Stout (nitro) Blue Point Oatmeal Stout Sixpoint Bengali Tiger Sierra Nevada Porter Da Chouffe LaChouffe Jaipur IPA Dieu De Ciel Peche Mortel Schneider Hopfen Weiss Jolly Pumpkin Luciernaga Two Brothers Resistance IPA Lindemans Framboise Victory Helios Saison Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin
They’ll start pouring these beers on Friday afternoon straight on through until Sunday. If enough of you review the rarer beers on the list, you could bring down the grade enough to throw off the scale. Go ahead… ruin it for everyone else!
