Botanical Beer from a Botanical Garden
Vax requirements for NYC bars and a lager-induced train nap
The day trip to Nantucket I took last week was an overwhelming success. I managed to see some cool lighthouses, walked along a bluff, went to a buck-a-shuck happy hour at a beachfront bar, and naturally, visited AB-owned Cisco Brewers. The taproom, which adjoins a courtyard that’s also served by co-owned 888 Distillery and Nantucket Vineyards, was bustling last Friday afternoon, but everyone was acting so relaxed, as though they were on island time. Okay, this isn’t some tropical getaway, it’s Massachusetts, but it feels like things there just moved a bit slower, especially for someone coming from New York.
Cisco’s small-batch beers brewed on site were quite serviceable, but the Shark Tracker, a light lager brewed off-island that benefits Great White shark research, ended up being the beer of the afternoon for its crushability. It was a golden reward on a warm day where I had already walked about five miles around the island.
City announces vaccination requirement for indoor venues
With daily Covid-19 cases in New York City now surpassing the levels seen back when restrictions on the city’s restaurants and bars were lifted back in May, the city announced on Tuesday that proof of vaccination will be required for many indoor activities starting next week, including eating and drinking. The requirement will take effect on August 16th, with enforcement beginning on September 13th. The new rules have left some bar and brewery managers making plans for the change — often to their own relief.
Some of the city’s drinking venues had considered having a vaccination-only policy prior to the announce on Tuesday, but few had pulled the trigger. Regardless, the uptick in cases already had people taking the old precautions that came prior to the start of the summer. “Several of our bartenders have started wearing masks again on their own volition,” Mary Izett of Fifth Hammer Brewing in Long Island City, Queens observed, “and some customers do, too.” But a new citywide mandate for proof of vaccination is easier to follow. “People know what to expect, period,” says Izett. If only some [venues] are vax-only, it makes it harder to enforce and brings out the social media trolls.”
Zach Mack of ABC Beer Co. in Manhattan’s East Village says he was already considering reinstituting a policy of requiring proof of vaccination — something his shop and bar did before the new CDC guidance was issued back in May. “We actually decided during our management meeting [this week] to go back to requesting proof for indoor seating,” Mack said. But with a city-wide mandate for that proof, that policy will no longer stand alone, putting him at ease. “We weren’t expecting a lot of pushback on the change, but now that it’s uniform, my staff will be less on the spot.”
For those who are unvaccinated, many venues will continue to offer the outdoor seating that has become a common sight on streets and sidewalks across the city. Fifth Hammer had moved service indoors this summer, but will have to add window service back for unvaccinated customers. Outdoor seating is also an option for those who simply feel safer drinking outside given the rising case numbers in New York.
Both Mack and Izett are examining how they will enforce the city policy and how staff will accept proof of vaccination. Both their venues in May offered indoor seating exclusively to vaccinated customers, and accepted any CDC vaccination card or a photo of the card with a matching ID for verification. It’s still unclear if the city will provide guidance on how to verify proof of vaccination, especially foreign documents, since any of the WHO-authorized vaccines will be accepted through the city’s policy.
The challenge is that proof of vaccination can come in many forms, and the city has not yet been clear on what will be acceptable with the new policy. The state’s Excelsior Pass uses verified vaccine records to provide proof, but isn’t available to people who received their vaccine out-of-state. The city’s new app, called NYC Covid Safe, is a simply a photo repository for unverified ID and vaccine cards, which can be easily cheated with a photoshopped CDC vaccine card. And the photoshopping isn’t even necessary — false vaccine cards have been circulating on the black market for months.
But the policy of welcoming only vaccinated customers in taprooms, restaurants, and bars, sends an overwhelmingly clear message to the public: get the shot. “People just need to get vaccinated,” Izett went on, “and unfortunately, mandates may be the only way to get us there.”
Pizza Party brings slices and IPAs to Staten Island
Kills Boro Brewing Co. hosted their first-ever Pizza Party at Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center in New Brighton on Saturday. It was a picture-perfect afternoon for a very Staten Island-centric event. Eleven breweries from across the region poured their beers (and the occasional seltzer) at the event, including Flagship, Endless Life, Other Half, Brix City, and Collective Arts, just to name a few. I had some new-to-me standout IPAs from the likes of New Jersey’s Bolero Snort and Icarus, as well as Rockland County’s Two Villains, whose beer I hadn’t tried since visiting them just weeks after they opened in 2019. Homebrewers from Staten Island’s Pour Standards homebrewing club were also serving up their creations, which to my surprise included several very clean lagers. The host brewery stole the show with a beer I’ll highlight in the Beer of the Week section below.
The pizza was plentiful and served on an efficient ticket system, so there were lots of slices to go around. Bar pies with a sweet sauce, plentiful cheese, and nice light charred bottom were the general rule, as is tradition on Staten Island. They were heated in pizza ovens right in front of you, so no one suffered from cold pizza (though honestly, in direct sunlight, that might have sounded refreshing).
Proceeds from the event benefitted the venue, Snug Harbor. It’s a kind gesture from Kills Boro, who will soon be the park’s neighbor — construction is underway on a larger brewing facility and taproom just off the east side of Snug Harbor that the brewery hopes to open early next year.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,308
New breweries in 2021: 234
Breweries visited in Connecticut: 39
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #1859, East Rock Brewing Company, New Haven, Connecticut (Visited 26-Jan-2020)
The Sunday Scaries suck. They especially suck when you’ve got a two-hour commuter rail ride home ahead of you before you can call it a weekend — a ride that will undoubtedly numb your ass from the uncomfortable lightly-padded seat while you’re squeezed next to a twenty-something city-dweller who visited their parents in Fairfield for the weekend and has a yappy dog stashed in a bag beneath them.
Anyway, if you’re a lager-loving procrastinator who’s looking to put off that long Metro-North trip home from New Haven, you really can’t do much better than East Rock. The brewery specializes in German-style beer and offers an appropriately booming and airy beer hall where the beer is served overlooking the brewhouse. Their Vienna Lager is appropriately malty, their Weisse Bier is appropriately spicy with banana and clove character, and their Blackberry Gose was tart, briny, and non-traditional. Their Goat Herder IPL was a nice welcome mat for IPA drinkers who might be thrown off by the lack of an opaque hoppy ale on the menu board. The beers were very clean and dialed in, and now I seek out their packaged beers (some in bottles, a rare sight these days) whenever I’m at a package store in Connecticut.
East Rock is open until 7pm on Sundays, so you can only procrastinate for so long, unfortunately. But you’ll have plenty of time to catch that 7:38 train back to Grand Central, and you might even slip into a lager-induced nap on that ride home.
Train Nerdity of the Week
Perhaps you’re fairly new to New York City, or rarely rode Metro-North’s New Haven Line prior to 2014. In that case, let me introduce you to a concept that was extremely familiar to suburban Connecticut commuters until the early 2010s: the Bar Car. While the New Haven Line’s bar cars lasted the longest, these rolling bars-on-the-rails were common sights during evening commutes across Metro-North and Long Island Railroad throughout the twentieth century. Suits would regularly meet daily in the bar car, and these bars had regulars and MTA-employed bartenders knew their names and their drink orders that they’d fill in flimsy plastic cups. Unfortunately, these bar cars met their demise when the old train cars they were compatible with were replaced with the shiny new M8s that currently run on the line. The designers of the M8 had a concept for a new bar car, but unfortunately, the plans to build them were dropped due to concerns they would limit train capacity — and because the MTA had no interest in operating bars again.
Beer of the Week
Garden Variety
Kills Boro Brewing Co. (Staten Island, NY)
Pilsner with herbs added
4.9% ABV
At Kills Boro’s Pizza Party on Saturday, they poured this delicious pilsner. It’s “dry-hopped” with thyme, rosemary, sage, and basil grown just steps away from the event in the Snug Harbor Botanical Garden. The earthiness of the hops and herbal character of the beer made it an impeccable complement to the pizza served at the event. And it stood out in spite of two other Pilsners that Kills Boro poured — the Pretentious Italian Pils with Saphir hops and the Mozzarella “Italian-American” Pils with Citra and Mosaic hops. While Kills Boro is a favorite among some of the haze-bro set in New York, don’t sleep on their lagers.
Long Read of the Week
Let’s forget about beer for a second and talk physics. Why doesn’t a beer coaster fly and spin the way a frisbee does? Is that a question you’ve actually considered before, perhaps when attempting and failing to use a coaster as a weapon to annoy a friend across a room? David Kindy at Smithsonian has the explanation.
One More Thing
This newsletter was powered by a Cinderlands Cobra Toes Kolsch that I picked up on my trip to Pittsburgh two weeks ago. Grassy, earthy, and thirst-quenching.
And hey, thanks for reading! Shout out to several readers of this newsletter who I met for the first time over this past week. If you enjoy this email, please consider telling a beer-drinking friend about it.
Cheers,
Chris
Great retrospective of the Bar Car. I was a NH Line commuter for years, but go off in Mamaroneck so I never had the pleasure of the bar car. When I was younger and worked at Time Inc, all the old Timers (pun yes) who lived in New Canaan and elsewhere were part of the Friday 6:20 club. Many missed their stops... As a Westchester commuter, we had our own tradition-- the $3 Bud Tall Train Beer. That lasted for years, and then they did away with the beer carts in GCT. Have no fear, when they went away, something better came along, The Beer Table along the Lex Ave corridor. They always had excellent beers, but the line could be problematic especially if you had a train to catch. Nowadays my train beer has become a shuffle across the basement to the selection in by beer fridge. Definitely more cost effective...