As Generic as an Airport Chili's
The Yankees' beer selection is pitiful, and the pandemic doesn't faze NY's beer scene
I’m fresh back from a weekend of beer adventures in and around Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love’s beer scene continues to impress. While I made a couple of repeat visits to places like Second District and Forest & Main, there were two standouts that I definitely recommend for your future travels: Brewery ARS was a lovely place to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon outside sipping their Spring Ale, and I feel bad that I neglected to visit on past trips to Philly. And Human Robot was absolutely outstanding as far as their Euro-style lagers are concerned.
A vaccinated friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in 18 months drove me to a few suburban breweries in Lansdale, Ambler, and Glenside, and the beer ranged from mediocre to outstanding. Forest & Main led the pack, and had loosened their protocols enough to allow visitors to purchase four-packs and drink them on the picnic tables on their front lawn just as the sun started to peek out on Saturday. But to be honest, I was just as happy drinking the mediocre beer because I was drinking it with a friend. The whole day almost felt normal, until we came across one brewery that was unexpectedly closed. Nothing like a brewery COVID scare to jar you back to reality during a day of brewery-hopping.
Speaking of being jarred into reality, I’m going to a beer festival this weekend… in Florida. Going to give that Pfizer Juice — and my post-pandemic comfort with being around crowds of people — a good test. Stay tuned.
Despite pandemic, New York beer still sees growth
New York gained 37 breweries in 2020, according to new state-level data from the Brewers Association released earlier this month. Despite a pandemic that led to brewery closures throughout the state and nation, there was a significant net gain last year — a gain that matched the one made in 2019. There are now 460 breweries in the state, by the BA’s count, ranking New York second in the country, only behind California’s astonishing 958 breweries. New York ranked third in 2019, but pulled ahead of Colorado, who only had a net gain of 7 breweries in 2020.
Meanwhile, those 460 breweries made 1.26 million barrels of craft beer in 2020. That’s a decline of 6.7% compared to 2019, but this was a nationwide trend, and it makes New York the third largest producer of craft beer in the nation, behind California and Pennsylvania. That’s up from sixth just two years ago, with comparable volume. If you need a better gauge of 1.26 million barrels of beer, that’s almost 312 million pint glasses of beer — about two beers a month for every adult of drinking age in the state.
In New York City, there was a net gain of breweries in 2020 as well. There were five openings and just one closure in the five boroughs last year.
Assessing Yankee Stadium’s 2021 Beer Options
Yankee Stadium has never been a huge supporter of craft beer, but this year’s list has managed to hit epic new lows. It’s a soulless, corporate beer list befitting of a soulless, corporate ballpark. While Citi Field is throwing a few bones to craft beer supporters, Yankee Stadium is not. At all. Gone are offerings from Bronx Brewery and Brooklyn Brewery, which were available back in 2019. There is not a single independent craft brewery represented in the ballpark’s beer menu right now.
Prepare for a beer list as generic as an airport Chili’s. The only beers even remotely bordering on local and craft are two from Anheuser-Busch-owned, Long Island-based Blue Point, the Yankees logo-adorned NY Pinstripe Pils and Toasted Lager. Want an IPA? That’ll be the Goose IPA from A-B owned Goose Island. That’s it. That’s your only option. Hope you like it. How about a wheat beer? Enjoy Belgian White from MillerCoors-owned Blue Moon. Want something else? Go down the street to Bronx Drafthouse (which reopened just in time for baseball season).
If you do like options, there’s some good news: your options are seemingly endless when it comes to macro lagers! Bud Light, Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, Coors Light, Stella Artois, and Heineken are all available this year. Sam Adams, which had two offerings in the Stadium in 2019, is nowhere to be found, which is probably good optics considering it’s the official beer of Fenway Park.
Oh, and if you want a 25-ounce can of that “crafty” beer, it’ll set you back $16.25.
By the way, if you’re thinking after reading both this rundown and last week’s Citi Field beer list, “well, can you blame them right now? The stadiums are at limited capacity,” other teams in the majors haven’t gotten that memo. Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is offering cans from Flying Fish, Troegs, Yards, Conshohocken, Levante, and Sly Fox, just to name a few. At Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, Bale Breaker, Reuben’s, Silver City, No-Li, Fremont, and Pfriem are just a few of the beers on the list. Wrigley Field in Chicago is serving up beers from Bell’s, Half Acre, Spiteful, Maplewood, and 3 Floyds. All of these stadiums have similar capacity restrictions to Yankee Stadium and Citi Field.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,145
New breweries in 2021: 71
Breweries visited in North Dakota: 3
Breweries visited in South Dakota: 6
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #546, The Knuckle Brewing Company (Visited 16-Apr-2016)
It was snowing in the Black Hills on the day in April 2016 when my late dad and I went to The Knuckle, but within minutes of descending the treacherous road through the hills from Deadwood into Sturgis, the snow turned to rain, and we’ve never been more relieved to see rain. The drive was white-knuckled, which was a strange coincidence, since the brewery awaited us on a block downtown is part of The Knuckle Saloon, a sprawling complex that’s part bar, part restaurant, part gift shop, and part museum honoring the history of South Dakota’s Black Hills. The bar opened in 2000, catering to Sturgis locals, but built out large enough to handle the throngs of people that come to the town during the summer, when car and motorcycle rallies are its big draw. A portion of the huge building became the bar’s in-house brewery in 2014, and the bar serves a whole lot of that house-brewed beer during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Superspreader Event, which brings hundreds of thousands of visitors to the town of six thousand.
The Knuckle’s taproom seems to value function over form, with no garish touches to the bar or extravagant furniture in the seating areas. But who can blame them? This is first and foremost a place to drink beer (and eat the occasional brick-oven pizza they serve at the brewery). Those beers don’t come with any fancy ingredients and they’re not overwrought. Their Black Hills Golden Lager is as clean a pilsner as I had in South Dakota. There’s a witbier, an IPA, a Blonde Ale, a Porter, and their flagship Knucklehead Red, which balanced its sweet caramel malt and bitter Willamette hops with ease. I’m not even a red ale fan, and that beer pleased me as much with its flavor as with its price point: six dollars for thirty-two ounces. Guess when you don’t have all those fancy frills, you can charge a lot less for your beer.
Historical Nerdity of the Week
On the same trip that took my dad and I to Sturgis in 2016, we also visited Devils Tower in Wyoming, a beautiful and imposing igneous rock formation that’s over 800 feet high. In October of 1941, a Texan named George Hopkins parachuted from a plane onto the top of Devils Tower. The rope that he planned to use to repel slipped off the edge, so he was stranded for six days on top in fifty mile per hour winds, cold, and rain. Eventually, after a second failed attempt at giving him a rope, a mountain rescue team scaled the tower to get him down. Why did George do it? He made a $50 bet with his buddy Earl that he could land on the tower by parachute. There’s no indication of whether Earl ever paid up.
Beer of the Week
Czech 10°
Human Robot (Philadelphia, PA)
Czech Pale Lager
4.2% ABV
The aforementioned Human Robot was a delightful stop at the end of a Friday evening brewery-crawl in Philadelphia last week, and this beauty was the first thing I ordered. This beer was true to style and served through a side-pour tap into proper glassware. It’s crisp as all heck, with a touch of sweetness and tons of spicy and floral Saaz hop character. Sometimes, it’s hard to describe perfection, and this beer was damn near perfection.
Long Read of the Week
Perhaps you’ve heard of Reinheitsgebot — the centuries-old German beer purity law, but do you know how it has evolved over time, and how it shapes beer in Germany over five hundred years later? Jeff Alworth dug up his 2016 piece from the archives of All About Beer about the law, and it’s worth a read even if you think you know all you need to about one of the nerdiest German words in beer.
One More Thing
If you read all the way to the end of last week’s newsletter, you might have seen a trivia question in this space. If you were stumped, the title of the newsletter, “The Drinktator is the People,” was a subtle reference to Threes Brewing’s delightful oak-aged wheat saison. Congrats to reader John R. in Manhattan for his correct answer chosen at random, which won him a koozie (for those cans of Vliet) and bottle opener (for those bottles of The Dictator is the People) from Threes. I’ll do another giveaway soon.