Meet the Stevens Point Brewery, known better as “Point Beer,” a Wisconsin favorite that’s entering the New York market. Dating back 150 years (they’re the 5th-longest continuously-operating brewery in the country), the brewery been quenching the Midwest’s thirst for generations, but they’ve been gradually making their way to the east coast in the past couple years.
While not exactly lauded by beer geeks, Stevens Point still puts out a well-crafted product with a rich history. SKI Distributors will roll out four of their beers starting this week. Their heritage beer, Point Special, is a American-style Lager that beat out the macrobreweries for the gold at the Great American Beer Festival in 2003. Their Cascade Pale Ale, an American Pale Ale brewed with Cascade hops, was awarded a silver at the World Beer Championships in 2008. Point Belgian White is exactly what you’d imagine: a Belgian-style white ale brewed with coriander and orange peel. Finally, their summer seasonal, Nude Beach, is a light-bodied, lightly-hopped wheat beer with a playful name.
If you’d like to try these for the first time, Rattle-N-Hum is having a launch party for Stevens Point on Friday night at 5pm. Thankfully, since this is completely legal and licensed, it will probably go over much better than the last time someone tried to serve beer from Wisconsin at a New York City bar.
For years, Manhattan’s homebrewers had to venture far off the island in order to get homebrew supplies. It wasn’t long ago that they had to go to the outer reaches of Queens just to pick up a packet of hop pellets. Then came Brooklyn Brew Shop, Brooklyn Homebrew, and The Brooklyn Kitchen, small businesses that brought supplies within reach with a subway ride. But now, Manhattanites won’t even have to venture off the island, as the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room at the corner of Houston and Chrystie has rolled out their new homebrew department.
Already, the supplies are starting to pop up on the shelves. Carboys, bottles, caps and cappers, tubing, brewpots, and even wort chillers are available now at the shop. The store expects to have grains, hops, and yeast for sale in the next couple of weeks. While the store probably won’t offer the same expert level of service that some of the smaller stores provide, the prices are in line with the competition in Brooklyn, and Whole Foods’ longer hours (8am-11pm every day) mean that it’ll be a great spot to pick up some last-minute provisions for that late-night homebrewing session.
If that last paragraph was all Greek to you, you might want to consider signing up for The Brooklyn Kitchen’s two-hour homebrewing class. For $125, you learn everything you need to know to get started with brewing, and you get $80 worth of equipment so you can brew at home. They’re holding a class tonight, but will also offer classes on July 15th and July 28th. And for anyone intimidated by a lack of space, consider that my small East Village kitchen, pictured below, is where I brew every ounce of all-grain homebrew I make.
Tonight, Saranac and Lake Placid will be served up in huge quantities at The Pony Bar starting at 6pm. There’s plenty of upstate beer on tap, including Lake Placid’s Honey Rye, Frostbite, and Ubu. Among the beers they’ll have from Saranac are the Imperial Stout and High Peaks Imperial IPA, along with Summer Brew, a blend of lemonade and German lager - a Radler, as it’s called - that will satisfy even the most sheepish beer drinker.
Over at Rattle-N-Hum, they’re dedicating more than ten tap lines and casks to Marin County’s finest, Lagunitas. They’ll be pouring their 2008 Gnarlywine, Hairy Eyeball, and Cappuccino Stout, plus a few others, too. That’s already underway, so get there soon for the best selection.
The great beer festival dilemma: are these people here for quantity or quality? (Photo via Metromix)
I love beer. And I love drinking beer with people. And I especially love drinking lots of different beers. So, many of my friends were baffled why I wasn’t attending the New York Brewfest this past Saturday. I gave them a very straightforward answer: any beer festival that offers a one-price, all-you-can-drink ticket will attract more people who go to get drunk than to enjoy the beer.
Look, I like getting drunk as much as the next guy, but in my opinion, the point of a beer festival is to sample a variety of beers that you can’t always find in one place. When a festival is designed to cater to the all-you-can-drink set, there are two underlying results: a rowdy crowd and long lines. That’s a dangerous combination.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I read some of the feedback on this weekend’s festival. One angry blogger posted a rambling screed that was echoed by commenters about the lack of organization, the hour-long ordeal to get into the event, and the crowd, then accused the organizers of the event of deleting angry comments on their Facebook page (the organizers say it was “to streamline comments through one channel”). Another blogger noted that people were cutting lines constantly, and another witnessed a well-placed twenty slip into a brewery rep’s hand in exchange for a water bottle full of beer. The lines leaving weren’t any better; Metromix covered the event and noted “by the time we headed back to Manhattan, the buzz was gone and we were facing yet another line that (literally) encircled the island.” Many commenters called the event a waste of money (tickets were $55) for what was described by one Twitter user as “one big shit show bro fest.”
It’s a shame that the festival left so many people angry, because it had so much potential. Where the organizers of the New York Brewfest succeeded was in securing a venue - an island with a great view of Manhattan on a warm late spring day - that was so picturesque, and in attracting so many great breweries both locally and nationally. Unfortunately, even with the selection of brewers, most weren’t pouring many beers outside of their standard offerings. A rare beer here and there could’ve been nice to appease the beer geeks in attendance.
On one hand, it was so crowded that I couldn’t talk to the brewers, and each beer required a double-digit wait, but the beer was delicious, and after one or two exclamations of, “That guy has a notebook, he’s my hero!”, I was able to block out the douchebaggery and focus on enjoying a fantastic, perfectly placed display of craft beer.
But it shouldn’t have to be this way. For next year, the organizers should take a page from the playbook of other outdoor summer beer festivals that do a much better job managing crowds and enhancing the experience for people who truly enjoy craft beer.
For example, my favorite beer festival in the nation is the Vermont Brewers Festival held every July in Burlington, Vermont. For $25 (less than half the price of NY Brewfest), you’re offered access to dozens of breweries from Vermont, Quebec, and nationwide. The ticket affords you a sample glass and fifteen sampling tickets, along with a very clear listing of what beers each brewery will serve. Sure, the lines get long - not consistently, but only for the breweries with the most unique offerings. Breweries rarely run out of beers. And to keep the crowds small, sales are capped, and there are three sessions: one on Friday and two on Saturday.
The Oregon Brewers Festival, also held each July in Portland, Oregon, takes a different approach: a pay-as-you-go approach with exclusive, unique offerings. It comes to mind as an event that draws a crowd not made up predominantly of beer geeks, yet manages to be entirely unobnoxious. Each brewery pours just one beer, but it’s almost always a rare, big, or somehow unique brew. Patrons buy packages of tokens with a tasting mug and use the tokens to pay for their beer. Their largest package - $50 - gets you 40 tokens, but that doesn’t equate to 40 beers. Instead, one token offers you a small tasting, and four tokens pays for a full mug. This gives you the flexibility to drink more of the beers you enjoy. On top of this, the festival is a come-and-go-as-you-please event that lasts for four full days. Admittedly, the crowd here is a bit more rowdy, the lines are a bit longer, and there’s less interaction with brewers, but it manages to avoid a full-on rush while remaining a very popular event that’s lauded by beer geeks and fizzy yellow beer drinkers alike.
While many of the ranting accounts I’ve read of New York Brewfest end with “I’ll never go again,” I don’t think that’s fair. I’m hoping that this young event can learn from its mistakes and create a great festival that’s profitable, organized, and respects beer.
If you haven’t seen Anat Baron’s documentary Beer Wars, you haven’t lived. It chronicles the challenges that small breweries face in competing against the behemoths of brewing like Anheuser-Busch and Coors. It’ll make you laugh, make you cry, and possibly dash your dreams of opening your own brewery. (Hey, that just leaves more time to drink other people’s beer.)
On Sunday night at 6pm, as part of the closing ceremonies of the NYC Food Film Festival, Beer Wars will play to the crowd in the festival’s Brooklyn Burger ‘N Beer Garden at the Tobacco Warehouse in Dumbo. The documentary will be accompanied by a shortened version of George Motz’s Hamburger America, the preeminent documentary about burgers.
Naturally, if you’re watching documentaries about beer and burgers, you should be eating them. The festival came through here, with beer served from Brooklyn Brewery, Shmaltz Brewing Company, Dogfish Head, and Stone, as well as burgers with Pat LaFrieda meat and toppings from Whole Foods. Tickets are priced at $45 in advance and $55 at the door and are available online now.
Oh, did I mention that Dogfish Head founder and beer celebrity Sam Calagione will be on hand at the event? So will Rhonda Kallman, another small brewer featured in the film, along with Beer Wars’ director Anat Baron.
Speaking of Sam Calagione, if you’re looking to spot a beer celebrity, he’s in town tonight, too. He’ll be at Rattle-N-Hum from 5-7pm as the bar pours 13 drafts from his many offerings, including Olde School, Black & Blue, and Red & White. Afterwards, he’ll be heading up to Toast at Broadway and 125th Street from 7-9pm to toast with the uptown folk who don’t want to hoof it down to Midtown.
And in case you’ve exhausted all your chances to meet the superstar of craft beer, Rattle-N-Hum is also hosting a field trip to the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Deleware on July 10th. Included in the $80 cost is a tour of the brewery given by the man, myth, and legend himself.
Just be careful how many of these events you go to… the last thing you want is a restraining order requiring you to stay fifty feet away from any Dogfish Head tap.
