Well, I’m home from Australia and New Zealand. And after a trip this long, you’d think I’d be totally exhausted and jet lagged, but on the day I got home, I dropped my bags, showered, changed into some clean after 24 hours in transit, and walked straight down to my local brewery for a beer. Then I ordered some cheap, unhealthy American Chinese food to eat when I got back to my apartment. It’s sort of my “welcome home” tradition — seeking comfort in familiar things after several weeks of very unfamiliar things.
Where to next? Well, for the first time in many years (Pandemic Lockdown aside), I don’t have a single trip booked. After a trek this long, I’d like to spend some time not being a stranger in my own home. I’d like to experience New York as a New Yorker again, and not live with a partially-packed suitcase permanently sitting in my hallway ready for its next adventure.
It’s not that this trip sucked the life out of me. Heck, it energized me to travel to even more far-off places. But every now and then you need to step back and appreciate the comforts of home. And after two marathon months of domestic and international travel, that time is now. See you around town!
Oh, by the way, this little thing I’m doing has stickers now. So if you do see me around town, come and ask for one, if you’d like!
A Sampler Tray of NYC Beer News
So much is going on this week on the city’s beer scene that it’s necessary to give it you in sippable servings. A sampler tray… or as they call in Australia, a paddle. Here’s a few quick newsworthy beer items for you New York beer drinkers.
Covenhoven marks 9 years with 90s Nostalgia
Crown Heights, Brooklyn beer bar and bottle shop Covenhoven marks nine years in business this weekend, and celebrates Friday night with a 90s Nickelodeon-themed party. Get out your slap bracelets and party down for a lineup of stellar beers and nostalgia starting at 6pm.
Das Bock is Saturday
A reminder that the New York State Brewers Association’s Das Bock festival — a celebration of New York-brewed lagers — is this Saturday at Plattduetsche Park in Franklin Square on Long Island. The fest runs from 11am-5pm and features beers from more than 45 breweries from across the state, plus German food and music. It’s a pay-as-you-go event, though the $30 admission gets you a commemorative stein and your first beer. If you’re in the city, the venue is a 20-minute walk from the LIRR at Stewart Manor, and along the NICE n6 Bus line, which departs from Jamaica.
KCBC kicks off Lager Appreciation Month
Every May, Brooklyn’s Kings County Brewers Collective marks Lager Appreciation Month — a month full of special lager releases and lots of shotgunning. They’ll kick things off this weekend with special food pop-ups on Friday and Saturday, a DJ set on Sunday, and lager-themed trivia on Monday. Starting on Friday and through the month of May, steins of their lagers are just $5 at the taproom, and you can get 3 four-packs of their lagers are just $39. Let’s get crushing.
Celebrate The Complete Beer Course
Speaking of KCBC, it’ll play host to the re-release party for New York-based author Josh Bernstein’s The Complete Beer Course. His instructional guide to beer was first released back in 2013, but a lot has happened in the past decade, from hazy IPAs to pastry stouts to non-alcoholic beer, so it was time for an update. He’s hosting a release party on Thursday, May 18th from 6-9pm at the brewery. Tickets are $45 and include a copy of the book, two beers on the house, some cool stickers, and a special edition can.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 3,091
Total breweries visited in 2023: 196
Total breweries visited on my trip to Australia and New Zealand: 98
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #3,078, Brightstar Brewery, Thebarton, South Australia, Australia (Visited 22-Apr-2023)
Sometimes, when you walk into a brewery taproom and it’s completely empty at 8pm on a Saturday night, you get suspicious that there’s something off about the place — maybe the vibe, maybe the beer, maybe the service. But when I visited Brightstar, tucked away in an old brick building in Adelaide, it just meant I got the one-to-one kind of service that I didn’t get anywhere else in Australia.
Thanks to that level of service, I learned straight away what Brightstar was going for: subtle, simple European-style beer — not that it wasn’t apparent from the beer list itself. Their Helles was the first beer I had and was clean, mildly sweet, and bready like the beer should be. The Berliner Weisse was delightfully tart, the Schwarzbier struck a perfect balance between clean and roasty without any chalkiness, and the Oaked Saison was an absolute delight, full of fruity esters and subtle wood.
Several times over the course of my travels through Australia, some beer nerds remarked that the country’s beer scene is “where the U.S. beer scene was about five years ago.” That meant a lot of breweries are churning out hazy IPA after hazy IPA, and weren’t taking chances on this sort of model of brewing, which has succeeded recently in places like Denver and Philadelphia and Portland. Maybe everyone else in Adelaide just isn’t ready for what Brightstar is doing. I hope they get ready soon, because the beer here was some of the best I had in Australia.
Long Read of the Week
When Courtney Iseman (whose newsletter Hugging the Bar also comes out each Thursday and is worth a subscription) reached out to me for some quotes for an article she was working on about the era of iconic New York City beer bars, I was immediately excited by the premise and couldn’t wait to read it. Her piece dropped in Good Beer Hunting last week, and it’s well worth your time, especially if you’re nostalgic for the crop of great beer bars in New York that were open in the late aughts and early teens.
One More Thing
A disheartening addendum to last week’s rant in this space: Anheuser-Busch has placed two executives on leave who were responsible for the Dylan Mulvaney Instagram post that faced a backlash from hateful bigots that wish for nothing other than to deny trans people’s existence. One of those executives was specifically and personally targeted by right-wing media for targeting stereotypical beer marketing and embracing diversity efforts in beer. It should’ve been really easy for A-B to take a stand against outright hatred, but it’s an expected response from a company that loves to talk out of both sides of their mouth — regularly aligning themselves with LGBTQ+ causes while also donating to politicians who wish to deny LGBTQ+ people their rights.
Cheers,
Chris