Traveling overseas alone can be an isolating experience. Being in a foreign place with no knowledge of the language and little grasp on the culture can suck the fun right out of a trip if you’re not in the right state of mind. But when you have a thirst for adventure and beer, diving right into a city by visiting a beer bar can be a great place to start. Exploring a beer menu and blindly ordering can result in some fun discoveries. And engaging the staff about beer can turn your bartender into your guide to that city and its beer scene.
That’s exactly what happened to me last weekend at Tales of Ales in Athens, Greece. The little beer bar and bottle shop tucked into a storefront in the city’s Historic Triangle became my home base for my short four-day visit to Athens. The bartenders offered recommendations from out of left field, from the Double Dry-Hopped IPA brewed with P.I.G.S. Brew Co. for the bar’s fifth anniversary to a Greek-brewed Flemish Red (!) from Kykao Brewery. The staff all knew me by my last night, and I brought them cans of beers from Fox Farm and I had packed in my bag from back home in Rhode Island. I met other beer nerds from Greece and beyond, including some New Yorkers (because of course) and one regular who walked in with an Other Half hat on (there always seems to be one, no matter where I go in the world). I talked about breweries I’ve visited across Europe with the staff and lent some regulars recommendations for their upcoming trips to New York.
Tales of Ales became my home away from home on this trip. I can’t thank them enough for their hospitality. I already can’t wait to come home again the next time I visit Athens.
The Beer Superlatives are Coming!
Each year, going back to 2012, I’ve put together a wrap-up of the best and worst of New York’s beer scene. The categories change from year to year, so I’m looking for your suggestions/nominations: what were the biggest moments of the year for beer in the five boroughs? What trends did you notice? What were your favorite new beers brewed in New York City? Leave a comment and let me know… and expect a full wrap-up of the year in the December 28th edition of the newsletter.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 3,252
Total breweries visited in 2023: 357
Total breweries visited in Greece: 1
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #3252, Paragon Brewery & Taproom, Ilioupoli, Greece (Visited 25-Nov-2023)
If you’re an American who’s seeking out brewery taprooms to visit in countries that lack the same taproom culture, you’re inevitably going to come across a brewery taproom that mimics American taproom culture. And in my one brewery visit in my brief trip to Greece over Thanksgiving Weekend, that’s exactly what happened. Walking into Paragon, you’re basically transported to an Anytown, USA brewery: high ceilings, a long bar with chalkboard menus, communal tables, those same metal-shop barstools that will almost assuredly make your ass go numb within 25 minutes, and a window behind the bar looking into the production space. The beers themselves also seemed familiar: a Helles called Riviera off a side-pull faucet, a heavily-hopped American Pale Ale called Falifornia, a single-hop IPA with Vista hops, and a couple of collaboration beers that hit the mark. This spot was well worth the trip out of Athens on the Metro for a visit, even if it was just to remind me of breweries back home.
The Weekly Reader
The other well-known tree lighting in New York State is at a brewery [Don Tse, Forbes]
Five months after unanimous legislative approval, New Jersey Governor makes idiotic veto of brewery reform bill official [Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor]
If you keep ordering beers with Cryo Hops and don’t know what they are, this one’s for you. [Pete O’Connell, Vinepair]
Knowing the “hype cycle” of craft beer [Doug Veliky, Beer Crunchers]
One Last Thing
I’m actually home in New York this weekend and excited to celebrate Gun Hill Publick House’s First Anniversary in Industry City. They have a big lineup of special beers picked out for the occasion on Friday night, where the celebration gets underway at 3pm with a food pop-up and runs all night long, complete with live music at 7pm. And speaking of Gun Hill, tickets just went on sale for their annual Barrel Aged Beer Fest at their brewery in The Bronx on Saturday, January 13th.
And speaking of milestones, Singlecut celebrates 11 years in Queens on Saturday from 1-6pm with the most expected theme possible for their 11th anniversary:
Stay you, Singlecut!
Cheers,
Chris
favorite new beer: Cosmic Vista, a dry-hopped farmhouse ale from Wild East