| Subscribe Now |
Set your alarm: The Owl Farm celebrates their third anniversary bright at early on Saturday (Photo: Chris O’Leary)
This weekend marks the Summer Solstice, and the longest days of the year. So, buckle in for that sunshine, and get ready a whole slew of beer events worth checking out, including a couple of beer festivals, some live music, and a Park Slope bar’s big anniversary bash.
Bierkraft, the beer and sandwich shop that has been a staple for Park Slope’s beer geeks, abruptly closed on Sunday. The shop had been open since 2002, and was a pioneer in craft beer ahead of the wave of rapid growth in the industry in recent years. The shop served its last beer on Saturday night and quickly removed its web and Twitter presence, leading to speculation of its long-rumored shuttering. All signs point to the closure as permanent, as some employees were notified as they arrived to the shop for their shifts on Sunday.
Bierkraft had seen several iterations of growth over the years, with the addition of its backyard in 2011 and the announcement of a small on-site brewing operation that began in 2013. Last year, the shop was sold to new owners, and rumors abounded that the shop would close this year. Word slowly got out as passers-by noticed the shop’s gates were down on a busy Sunday, and the website and Twitter account for the shop were removed by Monday, and phone calls to the shop went unanswered. Employees confirmed they were let go, which all but guaranteed its closure.
Coincidentally, Bierkraft neighbor Zito’s Sandwich Shoppe announced its closure this weekend as well. Bierkraft is the fifth craft beer retailer Brooklyn beer shoppers have lost in the past nine months. American Beer Distributors closed last fall, both Breukelen Bier Merchants and Eagle Provisions closed this Spring, and Williamsburg’s Beer Street shifted away from the retail aspect to become a full-fledged beer bar last September.
Peter Salmond, Erik Norlander, and Oskar Norlander, at this year’s Brewers Choice during New York City Beer Week (Photo: NYCBG/Carla Coria)
A trio of homebrewers from the New York City Homebrewers Guild took home a top award on Saturday at the annual National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego. Oskar Norlander, Peter Salmond and Erik Norlander were awarded the title of Homebrewers of the Year, winning the award for their best-in-show beer.
Climbing Bines Hop Farm in Penn Yan is one of many farms that have helped boost New York State’s production of beer ingredients (photo via Climbing Bines)
While New York State’s beer scene has grown significantly in recent years, “drinking local” had one hiccup: the ingredients themselves came from distant places like Canada, the Pacific Northwest, Germany, and New Zealand. But slowly, with the support of the state and the new farm brewery license, the concept of using local ingredients in New York beers is no longer that far off. Two new beers available in New York City are celebrating the state’s bounty.
The legislative session in New York is winding down, with the Senate and Assembly set to adjourn this year’s session next Wednesday. In the final week, there’s a slew of bills that usually get rushed through committee and to the floor, and several of them will likely have something to do with beer. Here’s a rundown of what beer-related bills have been proposed this year:
An ad for Trommer’s Evergreen Brewery in Bushwick in the 1910 World Almanac published by the New York World
At the turn of the 20th century, New York City was in the midst of a brewery boom. The influx of German immigrants increased the demand for beer, and the lack of refrigeration made locally-produced beer a necessity in the pre-prohibition era of high demand. There were so many breweries in New York City in the late 1800s, it was hard even then to keep track of all of them.
Lucky for us, we stumbled upon the New York Public Library’s digitized collection of Brewers Guides to the United States, which listed the nation’s breweries at a time when there were so many that it took the recent craft beer boom to even come close to the beer boom times of the Victorian era. We wondered exactly where all those breweries in the boroughs once stood. And while it was tough to track some of the addresses down (street names change), we’ve managed to plot all 45 breweries operating in 1898 in Brooklyn and Queens (though the borough of Queens was not incorporated until the following year), according to the guide.
