I’m on vacation this week, so it’s noon and I’ve already got a beer in my hand (a Wachusett Larry Imperial IPA, to be precise). But that won’t stop me from telling you what great beer opportunities await in New York City this weekend. And there are ALOT of them.

First, you probably can’t be in three places at once tonight, but you’d probably like to be. At Spuyten Duyvil, it’s a European invasion starting at 6pm, as brewers Jean Van Roy of Cantillon, Armand Debelder of Drie Fonteinen and Kjetil Jikiun of Nøgne Ø all saddle up to the bar. Among the draft selections will be Cantillon Rosé de Gambrinus and Nøgne Ø Sunturnbrew, a barleywine with smoked malt and rye.

If European beer isn’t your thing, head to The Double Windsor in the South Slope at 7pm when Shmaltz Brewing Company releases a new beer in their Coney Island Craft Lager line: Luna Lager. The beer is named, naturally, in honor of the recent reopening of Coney Island’s Luna Park. They’ll also be pouring their new He'Brew Rejewvenator ‘10: Year of the Grape, a hybrid of a doppelbock and a Belgian dubbel brewed with organic Concord Grape juice.

Elsewhere in Park Slope, The Gate is tapping a mind-blowing cask of Stone Ruination IPA tonight at 7pm. Ruination is mind-blowing by itself at 7.7% ABV and 100+ IBUs, but this particular cask is also double dry-hopped with Amarillo and Simcoe hops. Get it while the getting’s good!

If you’re down in Bay Ridge tonight, head over to Ski Bar for some good beer on the cheap: Brooklyn Brewery drafts will be $2.50 and $3, and they’ll be raffling off tickets to this weekend’s MCU Park Craft Beer Festival.

Speaking of which, if you’re in the mood for some outdoor drinking on Saturday, the folks at MCU Park (home of the Brooklyn Cyclones) are holding their first-ever craft beer festival from 4-9pm. For $40, you get 20 3-ounce samples, a lanyard and souvenir mug, and a ticket to the Cyclones game on June 21st against the Aberdeen Ironbirds. Among the breweries in attendance: Brooklyn Brewery, Kelso, Sixpoint, Captain Lawrence, Lake Placid, and 21st Amendment, just to name a few. Tickets are available online now, or you can buy them at the door for $50.

If you’re not a fan of warm weather and you long for chilly evenings and heavy beer, stop by Mugs Alehouse all weekend long for S.K.I. Beer Weekend (named for the distributor, not the sport, but still chock full of winter beers). They’ll be tapping lots of winter seasonals and serving them up starting Friday. A taste of the list: Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout, Cigar City Cuban Espresso Maduro, Speakeasy Godfather Reserve, and an aged Stone Double Bastard from 2006.

That concludes this unintentionally all-Brooklyn edition of the weekly wrap-up of good beer stuff. Enjoy the weekend!

Atwater: from their house to your hands.

Detroit hasn’t had a lot going for it lately. Adding to the crippling unemployment and poverty, one of their baseball team’s pitchers got screwed out of a perfect game last week. They just can’t win.

Except when it comes to beer, that is. Detroit’s own Atwater Beer will make its presence felt in New York City this week a bit more than normal.

First, Tuesday night, The Pony Bar is going to be pouring ten lines of their beer, and brewery owner Mark Reith will ring in the occasion there, too. That fun gets underway at 6pm, though you can imagine that if you can’t make it tomorrow night, there will still be leftovers later in the week. But then again, who wants sloppy seconds?

Then, on Wednesday at 4pm, The Blind Tiger will be hosting the “You Name Atwater” Event. In addition to an extensive list of Atwater beers, they’ll be holding a contest to name Atwater’s new pilsner, which they’ll be pouring on cask. The winning beer name will become the name of the beer, naturally, and you’ll get a $25 gift certificate to boot.

Blind Tiger tipped us off to their beer list for the event, and here it is in all its glory:

Atwater Ur Pils (Cask - the yet to be named Pilsner)
Atwater Kolsch
Atwater Sticke Alt
Atwater Dunkel Lager
Atwater Michigan Amber Lager
Atwater Cherry Stout
Atwater Double Down Imperial Amber Ale
Atwater Vanilla Java Porter
Atwater Dirty Blonde Ale
Atwater Detroit Pale Ale
Atwater Teufel - Weizen Dopplebock
Atwater VoodooVator - Dopplebock

Saranac Summer Brew: an acquired taste (via dpstyles on flickr).

I’m heading out of town this weekend, off to Austin, Texas to sample some of their regional beers, great music, and get my hands on some badly-missed New Belgium beer, as I do anytime I go west of the Mississippi or south of the Mason-Dixon Line or to Chicago or seemingly every other part of the country but the Northeast. (Me? Bitter? No.)

The good news is that the good beer in New York marches on regardless of how many bottles of Shiner Bock I’m soaking up with my barbeque. Let’s start with Friday evening, where you might want to grab a few free samples of the brews from Ithaca Beer Company at the Whole Foods Bowery Beer Room. While you’re filling up your growler, sample their hoppy Flower Power IPA or the Ithaca Twelve, a tasty quadrupel from their Excelsior! Series. (Fun fact: Excelsior! is the state motto of New York, and it means “ever upward.”)

Are you looking to sip a cool lemonade this weekend, but feel like it’s missing something? You might want to track down the Saranac Summer Brew. Not exactly for the hardcore beer drinker, Summer Brew is a German lager blended with lemonade. It’s sweet, it’s refreshing, and at 3.5%, it won’t lead to heat stroke. It’s on tap at The Pony Bar right now, where you’ll find Saranac’s sister seasonal beer, Pomegranate Wheat. What? Don’t look at me like that. Sometimes a guy wants a fruity beer. You got a problem with that?

I feel like I’ve been neglecting the next beer in Brooklyn Brewery’s Brewmaster Reserve Series: Brooklyn Buzz Bomb Ale. After having one again this week at Hop Devil Grill, I was reminded how perfect this blend of ale and mead is for the summertime. There’s enough honey to attract a beehive in this thing, but it’s perfect for a warm summer day. You can also grab the Buzz Bomb at Swift Hibernian Lounge, Bar Great Harry, and Rattle-N-Hum.

Have a great weekend! I’ll bring y'all back something nice.

A post that’s been flying all around the Internet this week has been a feature on Men’s Health’s web site on the “Worst Drinks in America.” It’s the prelude to their latest book in their series Drink This, Not That. In the feature, they show a beverage and its equivalent in calories in the form of an unhealthy food or drink.

Coming in at #15 is their “Worst Beer:” Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Ale. Their shocking equivalent: For the 32g of carbohydrates in a 12-ounce bottle of Bigfoot, you could have an entire 12-pack of Michelob Ultra.

Yes, Men’s Health… because when I’m drinking beer, my main concern is carbohydrates. Never mind that Bigfoot Ale is a barleywine and clocks in at 9.6% ABV. Never mind that from a caloric perspective (the focus of nearly every other beverage in the list), it’ll only take three Michelob Ultras to match the calories in the Bigfoot. Never mind that the alcohol content of a Michelob Ultra is less than half of the Bigfoot. Never mind that Michelob Ultra is an assault on your tastebuds… it’s healthier for you!

To be fair, Men’s Health does offer a reasonable equivalent that could be classified as craft beer: Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown Ale. Unfortunately, its distribution is not as widespread as Sierra’s Bigfoot. Part of the experience of drinking a barleywine is its malt character and its high alcohol. Men’s Health wants to neglect you of that experience and instead offer you a more watered-down malty beer with a completely different flavor profile. The Fireside Nut Brown is 4.9% ABV, so it’ll take two of those to match the alcohol in one Bigfoot Ale. When all is said and done, you’ll be just as drunk, you’ll be disappointed in what you drank, and you’ll have saved yourself a whopping 5.3 grams of carbs.

If your main concern when you pick up a beer is saving yourself 5.3 grams of carbs, just stop drinking alcohol altogether. Alcohol comes from sugars. Sugars are carbohydrates. Why suck all the fun out of enjoying craft beer to save yourself a few calories? The bottom line: drink what you enjoy. Enjoyment is what the craft beer experience is all about.