Comings and Goings

A new NYC arrival and two taproom shutterings

Let’s start this week’s newsletter with some good news. A longtime brewery from Ohio is finally coming to town. This week, Cleveland, Ohio’s Great Lakes Brewing Company arrives in the city, nearly a decade after first selling beer elsewhere in New York state. The 35-year old brewery is beloved among Ohioans, particularly for their Christmas Ale, a seasonal staple that has spurred many imitators (as exemplified on my visit to Ohio last December). The Christmas Ale, along with the iconic Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and newer offerings like their Vibacious Double IPA and Midwest IPA, are now available at beer bars and shops throughout the city. It’s been a long wait, but good things come to those who wait.

Coney Island Brewing to close Brooklyn brewery and taproom

The brewery of New York’s playland is closing up shop. Coney Island Brewing Company will serve its last beer at its Brooklyn taproom next month, after eight years occupying the space under the third base stands at Maimonides Park, the home of the Brooklyn Cyclones.

It’s the second time Coney Island Brewery has shuttered in the neighborhood. Its previous incarnation, a short-lived “world’s smallest taproom,” operated a few blocks away in 2012, before being damaged in Superstorm Sandy. That iteration eventually moved to Clifton Park, New York with co-owned Shmaltz Brewing Co. before the Coney Island brand was sold to Boston Beer in 2013. Boston Beer, determined to have a presence for the brand in its namesake neighborhood, eventually opened a brewery at then-MCU Park in 2015, expanding it further into an adjoining space in 2019.

The expansion was a gamble just before the pandemic, and while the brewery survived Covid, sources at Boston Beer say there’s no path to profitability for Coney Island in the space moving forward. The brand, however, will live on. The brewery’s core packaged offerings are brewed at Dogfish Head in Milton, Delaware, and will continue to be distributed throughout the New York area.

The final day of business for Coney Island’s taproom will be November 9th.

Big aLICe to close original Queens taproom

After more than ten years in Long Island City, Big aLICe Brewing is closing up shop on their original location on 43rd Road this weekend, pouring their last beer this Sunday, October 29th. In an announcement earlier this week, the brewery’s founders said they’re “shifting focus” to their other locations: their Barrel Room in Brooklyn’s Industry City and their production facility and taproom in the Finger Lakes. The LIC brewery opened in 2013 and was one of Queens’ earliest breweries in the new wave of craft breweries, starting with a one-barrel system and selling hand-bottled beer through a CSA-type program. Big aLICe has grown over time, with the Brooklyn Barrel Room opening in 2019 and the Finger Lakes brewery in Geneva opening in 2021.

To mark the end of their run in LIC, they’ll have a lineup of special celebrations this weekend. They’ll start tonight with a special tapping of Fistful of Rubies, a 100% New York ingredient Kettle Sour aged for three months on cherries in red wine barrels. Friday, they’ll have live music from 6-8pm and a tapping of The Many Lives of Our Lives, their fruited barrel-aged sour that won gold at GABF in 2020. And on Sunday, they’ll finish things out one last time to toast where it all began.

Brewery Tracker

Total brewery count: 3,207
Total breweries visited in 2023: 312
Total breweries visited in New York: 279

Brewery Visit of the Week

Brewery #3191, Union Street Brewing Co., Hudson, New York (Visited 1-Oct-2023)

Okay, a great patio doesn’t necessary make a brewery great. And I know I’m torturing you by writing about a great brewery patio on what will likely be one of the last good brewery patio weekends of the year, but I need to tell you that Union Street’s patio is fantastic. It’s nearly as large as the taproom itself, it’s well-landscaped, it’s kid and dog-friendly (heck, they even bring out dog treats for the visiting dogs), and it’s just a great place to chill over a beer.

Speaking of the beer, it’s quite good, and Union Street is no one-trick pony, with a wide variety on their tap list. I particularly enjoyed the On the Dark Side Dunkelweizen (yes, a dunkelweizen! They still exist!) and the Planning an Escape IPA on my visit earlier this month. The food was tasty here, too. This spot is also the newest of three breweries within just a few blocks of downtown Hudson, having just opened over the summer. If you’re already plotting your next warm-weather road trip upstate, plan to spend some time at Union Street, and plan to sit on their patio.

The Weekly Reader

• New bill signed into law expands alcohol sales hours in New York [Jon Campbell, Gothamist]

• Get to know Kettlehouse Cold Smoke, the iconic Montana craft beer I just had a week ago in a Montana airport [Carmen Kohlruss, Good Beer Hunting]

• Get to know Brouwerij Van Steenberge’s Tripel Van De Garre, a beer I just had two weeks ago at its namesake pub in Bruges [David Nilsen, Pellicle]

One Last Thing

Going to work on getting my New York State brewery count up this weekend. In spite of the closures in today’s newsletter, there are still four times more breweries in the state now than about ten years ago, and there are still new and exciting places to visit all across the state. Support your local brewery… their future may depend on it.

Cheers,
Chris