Grit, Heart, and Beer
Bridge and Tunnel wants your help and fresh beer and Szechuan comes to the LES
The Doom and Gloom Tracker in this newsletter has been a brutal chronicling of breweries around the world closing their doors since I started it back in February. In the 30 editions of the newsletter so far in which it’s been a feature, there has only been one week when I was not able to identify a single brewery I’ve visited that wasn’t shutting down. New York City hasn’t been unscathed, either, with two breweries already shutting their doors this year (Gun Hill in the Bronx and LIC Beer Project in Queens), and Big Alice fully migrating to the Finger Lakes with the closure of their Barrel Room in Industry City last month.
So it’s no wonder that other breweries in town are on edge, and that’s particularly true of one that was self-built from the ground up with grit and heart: Ridgewood, Queens’ Bridge and Tunnel Brewery. Founder Rich Castagna started brewing beer commercially from his garage in 2012 and opened his taproom and brewery in 2014, self-built with mostly spare parts salvaged from elsewhere. Bridge and Tunnel has survived the Covid shutdown, opening a new Upstate location, and rising operating costs so far, but in the face of a rent increase as the brewery’s lease comes up for renewal, they’ve launched a Patreon to help sustain the business. Essentially, Rich is asking for help in the form of pledging a pint or two a month, a pint a week, or more in advance to keep the Bridge and Tunnel in business in Queens. The plan is that the dedicated revenue will help sustain the brewery into 2025 and beyond.
Will the pledges help us avoid another brewery closure in New York City in 2024? Let’s hope so, for both the sake of the industry and as a tribute to the hard work that Rich put into making his dream happen over the years.
Spicy Moon is Now Brewing on The Bowery
Spicy Moon, the vegan Szechuan restaurant that opened in the space on the Lower East Side previously occupied by Belse and Paulaner, has fired up the brewhouse again at 255 Bowery and is now selling beer made on-site. The restaurant, which also has locations in the East Village and West Village, took over the space shortly after Belse, a vegan restaurant with locations in California and Texas, abruptly closed after six months in operation in January of 2023. The state-of-the-art brewhouse, which was installed when German-based Paulaner initially built out the space in 2013, has not moved from the space in the decade since, is back in operation.
The beers so far have included a crisp Golden Rice Lager with New Zealand hops, a soft, pillowy Toasted Coconut Hazy IPA, the Neon Sour with passion fruit, orange, and guava, and a Coffee Vanilla Oatmeal Stout, with more beers to come. The food, which I’ve personally enjoyed so much you might forget it’s vegan, is worth sticking around for, even just for a nibble on the wontons or buns that make for great beer-friendly snacks. The beers are also being served at Spicy Moon’s other locations.
Spicy Moon is located near the intersection of the Bowery and Houston Street and is open seven days a week at 11:30am until 10pm on weeknights and 11pm on Friday and Saturday.
And yes, this means that New York City now officially has a “double hermit-crab brewery” (that’s a term I’ve used to refer to a brewery that opens in a space previously occupied by two other breweries).
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 3,531
Total breweries visited in 2024: 247
Total breweries visited in Wisconsin: 53
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #3529, Amorphic Beer, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Visited 2-Sep-2024)
It had only been three years since I was last in Milwaukee, and the beer scene somehow managed to grow significantly over that time, despite the industry’s slowing growth nationwide. I’m not entirely surprised — for a city that’s practically synonymous with beer, there seemed to be a dearth of small breweries in town on my last couple visits. And yes, while the behemoth that is Miller is probably the first brewery you think of there, craft outfits like Sprecher and Lakefront have been successful here since the 1980s, so there’s been a clear interest for beer beyond the fizzy yellow kind in the Cream City.
One of those new spots that popped up between my last two visits was Amorphic, a brewery name so fitting for the state of beer these days that I was surprised it hadn’t been used sooner. The brewery opened in late 2021 in the city’s Riverwest neighborhood, and it was one of the first breweries my friend Joel mentioned when he was rattling off recent openings in town. While they’ve become best known for their hazy IPAs and Czech-style lagers, Amorphic had several beers that, true to their name, did not fit into any style category. The Hendrix and Cuke took the Kölsch style and added cucumber, lemon zest, and gin botanicals to emulate a Vietnamese cocktail. The Porch Drops was a Hefeweizen/Hazy IPA hybrid, with banana and clove notes but a substantial dry-hopping with Citra and Mackinac hops. They're Here Aren't They? was an Imperial Czech Pilsner, aged in oak barrels with Sauvignon Blanc must. These beers were not only creative, but also delicious. I spent most of an afternoon here sampling the menu and was never disappointed.
The Doom and Gloom Tracker
At least 2 breweries I’ve visited closed or announced their closure this week:
Brewery #269, Modern Times Beer - Lomaland Fermentorium, San Diego, California (Visited 5-Dec-2014)
Brewery #400, Fourpure Brewing - Bermondsey, London, England (Visited 8-Aug-2015)
The Weekly Reader
The Southern Tier’s North Brewing closing after 12 years [Samantha Rich, WIVT]
More on the news of Modern Times’ brewery closure [Brandon Hernández, San Diego Beer News]
A chat with the glass ceiling-shattering Queen of Beer [Dave Infante, Taplines]
Beer’s declining market share is hurting barley growers [Heather Schlitz, Reuters]
Footnote to the Weekly Reader: in reading John Holl’s article I featured here last week, I discovered that the brewery that was my first Brewery Visit of the Week in the debut edition of this newsletter back in 2021, Little Animals Brewing in Johnson City, Tennessee, closed over the summer. See? I’m not always the only one bearing bad news.
One Last Thing
A reminder that next weekend is the Hop Growers of New York’s Wet Hop Festival at Torch & Crown Union Square. You can spend next Sunday afternoon enjoying beers using the freshest of fresh hops grown right here in New York State. If you’re looking for some motivation to go, here’s a hot tip: use the code BIG25NYC for 25% off tickets to the event.
And if you’re not near the city but elsewhere in the state and still want to celebrate New York-grown wet hops, they’ve got two other celebrations going on: one near Buffalo on September 28th and another near Albany on October 5th.
Cheers,
Chris