The taps are lined up and ready to pour at Finback Brewery’s taproom in Glendale, Queens (photo via Facebook)

While the weather forecast for Saturday looks iffy, but the forecast for some great local beer looks very good. Three breweries in Long Island City will be open on Saturday afternoon for the first time, another Queens brewery will open its doors for the first time ever on Saturday, and several other local breweries will be open as usual, making it a great time to get out and sample the city’s local beer scene.

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In Queens, you can pick up your homebrew ingredients while you enjoy a pint at the new Astoria Beer & Brew (Photo: Chris O'Leary)

Because the city can’t seem to go a week without a new beer spot opening, First Look is our roundup of the latest places to open that specialize in craft beer - bars, restaurants, and stores. This week, we take a look at two new places Astoria, plus beer spots in Kips Bay and the Financial District.

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In Long Island City, a low-slung building sitting in the shadow of the Pulaski Bridge now houses the city’s newest brewery. Transmitter Brewing (53-02 11th St., at 53rd Ave., Long Island City) debuted their beers during Queens Beer Week, their small retail space adjoining the brewery is open for tastings and bottle sales each weekend. But more interestingly, they’ve introduced their own way to buy into the brewery: their own Community Supported Beer (CSB) program.

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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 from a brewing mainstay reborn, and show you how bar and restaurant “house beers” are a far cry from what they used to be.

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The annual TAP New York Craft Beer Festival was held this weekend at Hunter Mountain in the Catskills, and a couple local brewers came home with awards. The festival featured a head-spinning 78 brewers from all around New York State, making it by far the largest TAP yet. Some brewers at this year’s festival are proof of the rapid growth - a handful were less than six months old, competing head-to-head for awards with the stalwart brewers that have been around for a decade or more.

This isn’t surprising, of course. Just weeks ago, the governor noted that the sheer number of breweries in New York has jumped 180% in the last four years. The number of breweries invited to TAP this year topped a hundred - 34 of them new - and the number of breweries attending jumped over 20%. That made the competition for the festival’s awards that much tighter.

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Sixpoint Brewery announced today that they will roll out a reformulated version of their flagship IPA called Bengali starting next month. But in an interesting twist, the beer will be their first sold in six-packs of 12-ounce cans.

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