Erica Shea and Stephen Valand are probably responsible for more of this city’s homebrewers than any other couple. Back in 2009, they started selling one-gallon all-grain homebrewing kits at Brooklyn Flea - the perfect size for a small New York kitchen. Five years later, their business has expanded nationwide, their kits are at major retailers, and they have a new book full of stories, interviews, and recipes from pro brewers, Make Some Beer: Small Batch Recipes from Brooklyn to Bamberg. They’re probably some of the best people to teach homebrewing, and now you have a chance to learn from them.

Next week, they’ll be teaching a Beer Making Class in Dumbo, and we’re giving away a pair of tickets!

Keep reading

The beer starts pouring at last year’s Lower Hudson Valley Craft Beer Festival (Photo via LHVcraftbeerfest.com)

It seems like there’s a beer festival every month here in New York. In June, though, the beer fests heat up as the weather heats. Here’s a rundown of four beer festivals headed our way next month. They each offer very different experiences at every price point for every set of taste buds.

Keep reading

Beer is brewed here.

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, we figured we’d answer a question definitively: what are their top rated beers brewed in the five boroughs?

To determine this, 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 Sixpoint was not included, since they do not register or label the origin of their beers.

Here’s the list of the five highest-rated beers from New York City…

Keep reading

Staten Island has brewed before. It had a long history of brewing in the late 19th century, and a large commercial brewery called Rubsam & Hormann operated as recently as 1960. The borough briefly flirted with craft beer with the short-lived Yankee Brewing Company in the early 2000s. But after a decade hiatus, brewing is back on Staten Island with this weekend’s opening of Flagship Brewing Company.

Keep reading

Air travel has lost its mystique in the modern age. We plod through airports, stand in long lines, pay baggage fees, and sit through insufferable and seemingly interminable delays. But there are a few bright spots left in air travel for craft beer drinkers. Some airlines are now serving craft on-board their flights and more airports are serving their local brews. Whether you’re waiting for a delayed flight or just passing through on a run-of-the-mill layover, here are some of the best US airports to taste the local beer scene.

Keep reading

Time for another edition of New Brews, where we tell you about the new beers arriving on draft lines and beer store shelves around the city. In this edition, we’ll tell you about the new offerings available from three New York-based brewers that you’ll see around the city soon.

Keep reading