A sampler tray at Big Sky, Montana’s Beehive Basin Brewery (Photo: Chris O’Leary)
There’s never a dull moment on the city’s beer scene lately, so we’ve got a wrap-up of the latest bits and bites of New York beer news in this summary. Among them, an update on our sweepstakes with a local brewery, some changes to the beer lineup at Bronx Brewery, a “save the date” for one of NYC’s best-regarded beers, ideas for a beer-filled Orphan Thanksgiving, and a how-to guide to opening a brewery in New York state.
While Black Friday is usually saved for shopping for unnecessary electronics purchases and insane clothing deals, but what about frivolous beer purchases? For the past two years, hundreds of people have lined up on Black Friday for the release of Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout at Top Hops(94 Orchard St., at Broome St., Lower East Side). The shop will continue to host the tradition this year, opening their doors at 9am and selling bottles of the Bourbon County Stout, Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout, Bourbon County Brand Barleywine, Bourbon County Brand Regal Rye Stout, and
Rare Bourbon County Brand Stout, which is $60 a bottle and aged for two years in Heaven Hill whiskey Barrels. They’ll make it easy to stand in line by giving away coffee and beignets to the whale-chasers who show up early. Come back at noon and they’ll be pouring a lineup of Goose Island rarities on tap, too.
If you can’t make it on Black Friday, or you’re the sleeping-in type, there are other opportunities to get a taste of these sought-after beers around the area.
Queens-based Bridge and Tunnel Brewery(15-35 Decatur St., at Wyckoff Ave., Ridgewood) opened their taproom to the public last weekend for the first time, marking a milestone for the outfit started by brewer Rich Castagna back in 2012. Previously, the brewery operated out of Castagna’s garage in his home in Maspeth, Queens, but demand for his beer and the challenges of brewing in a small space made a new brewery necessary. The brewery soft-opened on November and is open every Saturday.
Untappd is - pardon the pun - an untapped wealth of knowledge about beer. With millions of beer check-ins and ratings, there’s so much data to peruse. So, each quarter, we provide an update on a pressing question: what are the top rated beers brewed in the five boroughs?
So, here’s our update on the Top 20 beers brewed in New York City by rating. A reminder on methodology: we pulled the ratings for every beer brewed in New York City and their ratings. We also had a cutoff of minimum check-ins (100) for a beer in order for it to be included, so we could get a fair sample size. This means some smaller, newer breweries weren’t included, and only beers brewed in New York City by breweries that also brew outside (Brooklyn, Sixpoint, Grimm, Bronx) were included. We also excluded one-off beers that are out of production for more than a year or have been inactive on Untappd since the last issuance of our list. In total, we tracked 410 beers from 24 different beer brands brewed in the city, up from 360 beers the last go-around. The data comes from a whopping 591,000 user-inputted reviews on Untappd.
A disclaimer: all of these ratings and rankings should be taken with a grain of salt. As we’ve seen, scarcity drives popularity and skews rankings. So does the simple existence of beer styles; all but one beer in this top 20 list is an IPA, Imperial Stout, or Barleywine. There are inherent flaws in any statistical ranking of top beers, so keep this in mind… and we’ll touch more on that later on.
A whole bunch of new names have been popping up on beer menus around the city this fall. Just since the beginning of October, four breweries have shipped their beer to New York for the first time. Here’s a rundown of who’s new and where you can find them.
Four local breweries have new beers on the way this week, including some beers being packaged for the first time for you to enjoy at home. Here’s a rundown of the new stuff you can snag.
