NYC Beer Blog - A beer drinker’s guide to New York City

On December 10, 2007, the Wall Streeet Journal reports that “Small Brews Show They’re Not Weak Beer” by flexing their new-found muscle with their distributors.  As the Journal states, “[h]istorically, craft brewers have made relatively little fuss over distibutors, in part because they have been happy to have companies willing to hawk their brands.  But now, at a time when craft beer has become the industry’s fastest-growing segment, some small brewers are taking greater control over their destinies.  They are attempting to dump their distributors or fighting moves to sell distribution rights–often over allegedly poor services.”  Craft brewers seem “to be feeling their oats a bit,” says Benj Steinman, editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, an industry publication.

Since the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, there have been laws generally requiring beer to be sold through distributors, which truck the beer to the bar, restaurant or store.  The laws are intended to keep alcohol producers from running bars and restricting consumer choice.  Many states have enacted franchise laws to protect distributors from being dropped arbitrarily by a brewer after they have spent a lot to develop a brand.  Whereas distributors can sell distribution rights whether the brewer likes it or not, brewers can only terminate a distributor for specific reasons, like fraudulent business practices.

Disappointed with sales in upstate New York, Brooklyn Brewery has terminated its agreement, dating back to 2001, with one of its distributors, alleging that the distributor made late deliveries and delivered stale beer.  The distributor responded by suing Brooklyn Brewery in state court, alleging that it did not properly notify it of any problems.  The new distributor reportedly has rapidly increased sales.  The brewer’s president,  Steve Hindy, says trying to switch distributors ”is a big gamble for a small company like ours, because these lawyers are not cheap and you want good representation.” He also says heightened consumer demand for craft beers is giving small brewers confidence to “assert our rights more forcefully.”  As the Journal reports, “Also emboldening them: Many distributors that once ignored craft beers are now clamoring to add them to their lineup to increase profits.  It ‘is a whole different world for us than has existed in the last 20 years,’ Mr. Hindy says.”

Full article

Today’s NY Times  article An Ancient Medicine (Enjoy in Moderation), by Natalie Angier, states that according to the World Health Organization, 39 nations out drink us with Luxembourg topping the list.  Patrick McGovern, archaeological chemist at U. Penn says that “[a]s far back as we can look, humans have had a love affair with fermented beverages. And it’s not just humans. From fruit flies to elephants, if you give them a source of alcohol and sugar, they love it.”  Natalie Angier reports that “[o]ne of the oldest known recipes, inscribed on a Sumerian clay tablet that dates back nearly 4,000 years, is for beer.  Chemical traces inside 9,000-year-old pottery from northern China indicate that the citizens of Jiahu made a wine from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey, a varietal recently brought back to life by the intrepid palates at Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware.”

Full article

Dogfish Head Brewery’s Chateau Jiahu, “uses pre-gelatinized rice flakes, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers. The rice and barley malt were added together to make the mash for starch conversion and degredation. The resulting sweet wort was then run into the kettle. The honey, grapes, Hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers were then added. The entire mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, then cooled. The resulting sweet liquid was pitched with a fresh culture of Sake yeast and allowed to ferment a month before the transfer into a chilled secondary tank.  Truly a unique beer!”

Read more about this beer

Entrepreneur.com  recently wrote an article about the merits of craft beer.  Highlights include:

“Once upon a time, beer drinkers only had three major choices when looking to pop a cold one: Budweiser, Miller and Coors. Now the market is flooded with imports, seasonal brews and variations of the old classics. Choosing which beer to drink may have been easier back then, but now it’s much more fun.” 

“According to the Brewers Association, there are more than 1,400 craft brewers in the U.S., including microbreweries. Craft beer industry sales have increased nearly 31 percent over the last three years, outpacing beer, wine and spirits in supermarket sales.”

“‘Twenty years ago, people would have laughed at you if you talked about pairing beer with food, but now I think the average consumer has a better understanding of the breadth and variety [of beer] available today,’ says Ray Daniels, president of the Craft Beer Institute and founder of the Cicerone Certification Program, the first official beer sommelier certification program, launched in October 2007. ‘Unlike wine sommeliers, beer sommeliers are less about the snooty tableside presentation and more about better quality beer in the consumer’s glass.’”

Full article

Time Magazine reports this week (12/10) on how to survive the expected recession.  Among the several specific tips is one interesting general insight.  Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor’s, recently looked at stock performance during the 10 recessions we’ve had over the last 60 years.  The only three true bright spots–stocks that actually gained ground during a recession–were tobacco, household products and ALCOHOLIC beverages.  According to Stovall, “when the going gets tough, the tough get eating, smoking and drinking.” It rings true.  

In an article in todays Lower Hudson Online, it suggests local foods for holiday gifts.  Among their suggestions is local beer of course!  Their descriptions are here:

Captain Lawrence Beer

On Friday, Scott Vaccaro, the owner of Captain Lawrence Brewery in Pleasantville, will release his Nor’Easter Winter Warmer - Batch No. 2 (right). At 12 percent alcohol, this powerful dark ale, brewed with elderberries and aged in bourbon barrels, can be cellared just like wine. Captain Lawrence also features a seasonal brown ale, available now through March. “Giving our award-winning beer is like giving a piece of where you’re from,” says Vaccaro. “It’s the perfect way to introduce people to our region-specific flavor, locally produced.” Plus, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Once you have a growler, you can take it back for a refill at the brewery Fridays between 4 and 7 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 6 p.m. ($9.50 or $10.50 for the double IPA). You can also find the beers at Whole Foods Market in White Plains, or taste it at more than 200 restaurants in Westchester, Manhattan and Brooklyn. www.captainlawrencebrewing.com, 99 Castelton St. Pleasantville, 914-741-2337 (BEER).Defiant Brewing Co.

Brewmaster Neill Acer says the water quality is one of the reasons he chose to open his Defiant Brewing Co. in Pearl River. If you want to share the magic that flows through the taps of that village - enhanced by the brewer’s art, of course - consider giving friends and family one of the two special seasonal brews now available. There’s Christmas Ale, flavored with nutmeg, cloves and allspice, or Abominable Snow Beer, with notes of sweet and bitter orange plus coriander. A filled 64-ounce growler is $11.50; refills are $7.50. 6 E. Dexter Plaza, Pearl River. 845-920-8602, www.defiantbrewing.com. 

Radegast Hall & Biergarten opened last weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The beer menu, which has a great selection of German beers on tap and in bottle can be found here. This spot has an outdoor area with a retractable roof and they have plans to install infrared heaters so that you can drink outside this Winter comfortably without being forced to overindulge in “liquid heat.”  

Read more 

Details: Radegast Hall & Biergarten / 113 N 3rd St., Williamsburg, Brooklyn

As seen in the nyc beer events section,

Nov. 27 .: 6PM / Downtown Bar & Grill [map] / Brooklyn, NY / Dogfish Head
3 NEW Dogfish beers
Official Site

Come check out an impressive selection of the Dogfish Head Brewery!

I recently went to the Whole Foods Beer Room in the Bowery to pick up a case of Dale’s Pale Ale.  I recently tried Dale’s Pale Ale at the NY Brewfest and the Brewtopia World Beer Festival.  This beer is commonly described as the best beer you will find in a can.  Located in Lyons, Colorado, the Oskar Blues Brewery is a small operation that hand-cans their beer 5 at a clip.  This hands-on approach makes Dale’s Pale Ale a must-try.  It is currently on sale at the Whole Foods Beer Room in the Bowery, for $14.99 / 12-pack of cans.  The beer is 6.5% ABV and quite hoppy.

Much to my surprise I also found the Stone Brewing Company’s 11th Anniversary Ale.   This beer was brewed in September 2007 and is an interesting new style, a Black IPA or India Black Ale.  Stone’s description “Resinously hoppy, roasted, a bit sweet, with a bit of alcohol warm” is spot on.  This beer is quite hard to come by and I would highly recommend trying it, if only to say that you have tried an India Black Ale

The Brazen Head, located in Brooklyn, will be having a Fall cask beer festival this upcoming weekend (November 2,3,4).  The event is tri-annual, but a cask ale festival in general is quite unusual.  The event will have 11 types of cask beer on tap throughout the weekend. 

The Pour, the NY Times blog about all things related to beer, wine, and spirits, recently included a post that is quite informative on cask ale.  For those of you who are not sure exactly what cask ale is or do not know as much as you would like to know, this post is chock full of information.  Many say that cask ale is the only “real ale” …so you better recognize!  Some highlights that I was not aware of regarding cask ales..

“Cask… is really a sort of archaic word as only a few rigidly authentic brewers in England still insist on using actual barrels. Most casks today are metal.”

“If you are curious about cask ale, I have one important piece of advice. Always call ahead to your destination to make sure they are serving cask ale. Each cask has a life of around two to four days, and if the bar or restaurant has not planned well, there can be a void in between casks. Call ahead to avoid disappointment.”

Read this very informative article here

Last weekend I attended the afternoon session of the Brewtopia World Beer Festival on Chelsea Piers.  The festival was set up like a runway that never ended with tons of stations representing breweries, beer bars, and beer organizations.  If you are interested in becoming part of the craft beer movement, beer festivals like the Brewtopia World Beer festival are the place to go.  You can find local homebrew groups, talk to actual commercial brewmasters who have often recently made the transition from homebrewer to commercial brewer, you can meet other craft beer enthusiasts, and you can drink 100 types of beer in an hour.  As my brother says, “It’s like an adult candy store.” 

If you want to go an extra step, I would highly recommend trying to volunteer at these events.  When you do this, you can arrive early to meet the brewery reps and VIPs before the rush of thirsty beer drinkers.  I myself volunteered this year and got to talk to several brewery reps.  

I specifically spoke with Ray Hill of Hill Brewing.  He brews a Pre-Prohibition Pilsner that was a completely new style of pilsner for me and it was quite delicious.  I spoke with him about how he got into brewing, which was quite interesting to me because I have always had dreams of being a successful brewer.  He said he started out brewing as a hobby and as more and more of his friends kept asking him if he sold his beer, he eventually decided to make the leap of faith and quit his IT job to buy the equipment and start brewing commercially. 

I asked him how he initially started to come up with recipes for homebrewing because to date I have mostly used the homebrewing kits and exercised very limited improvisation.  He said that his best strategy for developing a beer that he liked was to brew a clone recipe that mimmicks a commercial beer that he likes and then brew the clone several times altering certain components of the process to single out the specific part that he likes.  Essentially you start out with the framework of a commercial beer that you like and you accentuate the flavors that you like through trial and error and go from there.  I asked Ray Hill what books he would recommend to an amateur homebrewer like me and he said there is a book with clone recipes, which I found on Amazon here.

As always, people in the craft beer industry were incredibly friendly and interested in helping out anyone interested in taking part in the craft beer movement.  Mr. Hill inspired me to experiment with brewing a hefeweizen last night, which I made sure to improvise with.  Time will tell how it turns out. 

Coming soon will be a guide to homebrew stores in NYC.