Buy Me Some Peanuts and Corporate Beer
NY wins at World Beer Cup, TALEA in Manhattan, and some ballpark beer
Hey, how are we all doing? The news hasn’t been great lately, so I’m hoping to delight your inbox with a whole bunch of positive beer news.
While we’re on the topic of positive beer news, can we talk about beer menus that are both generic and excellent? I came across this beer list at Skytown in Bushwick over the weekend, and I think it’s difficult to top as a list that pleases nearly every beer drinker, as long as they’re not looking for a whale of a beer:
Soak this in. What’s wrong on this list? Absolutely nothing. Two Hearted. Allagash White. Pivo Pils. Throw in their can list, which includes my beloved Narragansett Lager, and I think this would be pretty close to my desert island beer list.
What’s on your desert island beer list? Let’s assume it has six beers. In this case, it’s six taps, but feel free to include packaged beer, too. Share it in the comments. Let’s create a more perfect beer list.
New York breweries take home four awards at World Beer Cup
Three breweries from New York State, including one from New York City, were awarded honors at this year’s World Beer Cup, a global beer competition that sported over ten thousand entries from fifty-seven countries. The biennial award ceremony was held during the Craft Brewers Conference last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The biggest winner in New York was Rockland County’s Industrial Arts Brewing, who took home two awards: a silver for Wrench in the Juicy or Hazy Strong Pale Ale category and a bronze for Metric in the German-Style Pilsener category. The latter was the third-most competitive category, with over 250 entries.
In the German-Style Schwarzbier category, Catskill Brewing in Livingston Manor took home bronze for their Nightshine Black Lager. And in the Session India Pale Ale category, Brooklyn-based Five Boroughs won bronze for their Tiny Juicy IPA.
The four wins for New York is a departure from the seven the state’s breweries won in the previous edition of the competition, which took place in 2018, as it was canceled in 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic. World Beer Cup will become an annual event effective this year, with the competition returning in 2023 during the Craft Brewers Conference in Nashville.
TALEA opens outdoor Midtown outpost at Grand Central
TALEA Beer Co. has opened a new location in Manhattan that’ll be an ideal spot for al fresco drinking this summer. TALEA Grand Central is officially pouring beer at the southeast corner of 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, underneath the Park Avenue overpass, across from Urbanspace Vanderbilt, and just steps from Grand Central Terminal.
The venue features a covered outdoor space with a large bar that’s fully stocked with beer from the Williamsburg-based brewery, plus New York State wine, cocktails, soft drinks, and snacks. They’ll also sell cans of their beer to-go. The space will be open Mondays and Tuesdays from 2-8pm, Wednesday through Friday from noon-8pm, and weekends from noon-5pm.
TALEA is the third Brooklyn-based brewery to open an outpost in Manhattan in the past six months. Other Half opened at Rockefeller Center back in December, and Threes Brewing opened their shop in the Moynihan Train Hall last month.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,683
Total breweries visited in 2022: 154
Total breweries visited in Georgia: 34
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2683, Terrapin ATL Brew Lab, Cumberland, Georgia (Visited 10-May-2022)
Corporate beer in major-league sports venues can be maddening. For someone looking for a local, independent beer at Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves, good luck. Beer from just one indie brewery in Georgia, Red Hare, is served here, alongside Yuengling. Otherwise, every single drop of beer sold to baseball fans here is owned by Miller Coors, though under the guise of variety; Leinenkugel, Blue Moon, Miller, Coors, and Athens, Georgia-based Terrapin are all on offer. The beer you can drink from Terrapin isn’t all brewed in Athens, though. Some of it is brewed in the confines of Truist Park at the Terrapin ATL Brew Lab, a five-barrel pilot brewery that’s right next to the ballpark’s Right Field gate.
Miller Coors has experience in running a brewery in a Major League Baseball park. The SandLot in Denver has been churning out beer since Coors Field’s inception in 1995 and produced the beer that ultimately became Blue Moon. So they capitalized on their experience here with Terrapin, with the stadium food concessionaire running the joint while they make fresh beer in-house that can be sold to folks both inside and outside the ballpark. Among those beers: a Rye Pale Ale that had a pleasant rye character and a Black IPA that was rich and roasty with a citrusy hop bite. They serve the house-made beers along side the more widely-produced Terrapin stuff that put the brewery on the beer map, like Hopsecutioner IPA or Wake-N-Bake Imperial Stout.
In a perfect world, every ballpark in Major League Baseball would have a brewery (today, only three do — EBBS at Citi Field being the other), but I’ll take a corporate-owned brewery serving fresh beer to sports fans over nothing.
Beer of the Week
Pilsner
Brooklyn Brewery (Brooklyn, NY)
German-Style Pilsner
5% ABV
I’m continuing the celebration of Lager Appreciation Month by featuring the newly-rebranded and reformulated Brooklyn Pilsner. A pilsner has been a longtime staple of the brewery lineup, but this reimagined version was downright delicious when I had a mug of it at The Grand Delancey last Saturday. It’s crisp, snappy, and drinkable, with a lovely floral noble hop character. This beer might become a summertime fridge staple for me — and the new can art is pretty sweet, too.
Long Read of the Week
Given that more than a few beer festivals are on the horizon here in NYC, this piece from Ash Eliot and Courtney Iseman on safety protocols for beer-filled events couldn’t come at a better time. I’m hoping that more festival organizers will take this advice to heart and create a more inclusive, comfortable environment for people who enjoy beer.
One More Thing
When I went to British Columbia last month, I mentioned in this newsletter how much I enjoyed the beer at Neighbourhood Brewing in Penticton. In fact, it was the one brewery that my friend and I visited a second time on the trip because we enjoyed it so much. So I yelped with joy when streaming the World Beer Cup award ceremony and seeing they won gold in the Fruit Wheat Beer category for their Sunshine City, a passion fruit-spiked beer that’s ideal for hot summer days out on Okanagan Lake. Congrats to Neighbourhood and the hundred or so other breweries I’ve visited that won awards last week. Proud of you!
Here’s a photo of Neighbourhood Brewing, for good measure:
Cheers,
Chris
My dessert island beers:
1. Lagunitas Sucks (But only the first run they did in 2011)
2. Beer Geek Vanilla Maple Shake
3. New Glarus Strawberry Rhubarb
4. Barebottle Planet Pilsner
5. Jester King Provenance
5. Mikkeller Black. (for when I need to blackout)