Drinking Good in the Neighborhood
Montauk is now one of nation's largest craft breweries, Top Hops calls it quits on Orchard Street
As you read this, I will be taking my first post-vaccine beer trip — to the Seattle area. I’m very excited to spend a full day of that trip brewery-hopping in Ballard, a neighborhood that’s just jam-packed with breweries — twelve, by my count. There’s really only a handful of neighborhoods in the country where you can brewery-hop like this. Miramar in San Diego comes to mind. So does River North in Denver, the South Slope of Asheville, and Portland, Maine’s Industrial Way.
But how about in New York? What is the defining beer neighborhood here? There are several options.
Long Island City, Queens comes to mind, with Big aLICe, ICONYC, Rockaway, Fifth Hammer, and LIC Beer Project all within walking distance of each other. Gowanus, Brooklyn has six breweries, too: Folksbier, Other Half, Strong Rope, Finback Brooklyn, Wild East, and Threes. Together, Williamsburg and Greenpoint host Greenpoint Beer & Ale, Keg & Lantern, Brooklyn Brewery, TALEA, 18th Ward, Grimm, and Interboro. Bushwick and Ridgewood host KCBC, Evil Twin, Bridge and Tunnel, and Queens Brewery. And each of these has a noteworthy beer bar or satellite taproom for another brewery.
It’s tough to choose which of these is best, but one thing’s for sure: these neighborhoods make for a fun brewery crawl on a nice spring day.
Montauk makes first appearance on Brewers Association Top 50 U.S. Breweries List
The Brewers Association has released their list of the 50 largest craft breweries in the U.S. by sales volume — and there’s a surprising new entrant from New York on the list. Actually, it’s not too surprising if you consider how frequently Montauk Brewing Company’s beers have appeared on shelves in supermarkets and bodegas, and on tap at restaurants and bars. But indeed, the brewery that calls the East End of Long Island home is now the 49th largest craft brewery in the country. While the vast majority of their growth has been with beer that is brewed and packaged out of state, Montauk has been aggressively expanding their retail presence in New York over that time.
Montauk brewed about 50,000 barrels of beer in 2020 with their contract brewer, Massachusetts’ Wachusett Brewing. Additional beer is brewed with another partner, Two Roads Brewing in Connecticut, which itself appeared on the Top 50 list for the second time this year, jumping from 47th to 44th. Their growth has been substantial in recent years
There was jockeying for position between the two other breweries in New York on the list: Brooklyn Brewery dropped from 12th to 14th, while Matt Brewing in Utica, makers of the Saranac and Flying Bison brands, rose from 16th to 13th. Artisanal Brewing Ventures, which includes Sixpoint and Southern Tier in addition to Pennsylvania’s Victory, rose from 10th to 8th, but it’s just a net gain of one slot — New Belgium was removed from its 4th-place position after being purchased by Japanese mega-brewer Kirin in 2019.
Montauk wasn’t the only brewery to appear on the list for the first time. Debuts are usually a sign of big growth, so it’s worth noting that Michigan’s New Holland and Georgia’s Creature Comforts debuted below and above Montauk respectively. Seattle-based Fremont Brewing debuted at #45. Iowa’s Toppling Goliath appeared for the first time at #43, and the American outpost of BrewDog in Ohio debuted at #41.
Top Hops bids Orchard Street goodbye
After nine years on Orchard Street, Sunday, April 18th will be Top Hops’ last day in their original space on the Lower East Side. The next step in their plan is to find a new place for their flagship shop, which has spawned two other locations in recent years. They will be open Thursday through Saturday for the remaining three weeks. After closing the shop, they’ll continue to operate their online ordering for delivery and shipping, and their popular virtual beer classes that started at the onset of the COVID pandemic.
Their location in Essex Market will remain open as usual, and Top Hops at Urbanspace 570 Lex will reopen on May 1st.
Comings and Goings
A couple notes that don’t fit anywhere else, but may be of interest to you:
The Baroness on Crescent Street in Long Island City has called it quits after seven years, but plans to reopen in a new location.
Threes Brewing will reopen their indoor space in Gowanus on April 5th.
In Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, Vanderbilt Avenue Open Streets returns every weekend until fall, so BierWax will be offering lots more outdoor seating starting this Friday.
I’m highly amused by this ridiculous Other Half/Permanent Hangover collab that goes on sale at noon Thursday (though Broc Ruth’s got nothing on my Breweries Visited stat):
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,108
New breweries in 2021: 34
Breweries visited in Alaska: 9
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #116, Glacier Brewhouse, Anchorage, Alaska (Visited 19-Jan-2013)
At the suggestion of an acquaintance who was far more well-traveled than I was at the time, I flew to Anchorage, Alaska in the dead of winter in 2013 to attend the Great Alaskan Beer and Barleywine Festival. It was very dark and cold outside, but the indoor festival was a lot of fun, and I got to try some high-gravity beer from Alaskan breweries that typically barely distribute outside their small towns. The next day, as the sun inched its way over the south horizon at ten o’clock in the morning, I dragged myself out of bed to get to brunch at Glacier Brewhouse. It was the first of many visits over subsequent trips to Anchorage.
In the early 2010s, Glacier became known among beer geeks the world over for its high-gravity beers, particularly its Eisbock and Barleywine, which are often aged in whiskey or wine barrels for several years. But among locals, it was just a fantastic restaurant with tasty beer. And in the four times I’ve saddled up to the bar, I’ve never left without a memorable conversation with the person next to me. For example:
The brewer who works on remote Alaskan island who was spending his first day on the mainland in over a year (flights off the island are expensive, and he wasn’t a fan of the “big city” of Anchorage, anyway)
The guy in oil exploration who splits his time between Houston and Anchorage and taught me some fascinating facts about the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (prior to this, I had no idea what a pipeline pig was)
The weathered sportsman who offered me homemade moose sausage that he had in the cooler in his truck (I politely declined)
Perhaps it was because I was well-lubricated from the barleywines, but these conversations went much longer than I anticipated. But also, given the solitude of living in Alaska in these specific situations, they were probably seeking some social interaction. The coasters at Glacier claim it’s “Where Alaskans meet Alaskans.” It’s a good place to meet them if you’re not Alaskan, too.
Climatological Nerdity of the Week
I’m calling this one “in defense of Anchorage in January.” When I told people I was going to a beer festival in Alaska in January, they thought I was nuts. But the normal high temperature in Anchorage that time of year is 23°F (-5°C), which isn’t much worse than it can be in New York at the same time. On average, Anchorage hits 41°F (5°C) at least once in January, thanks to its coastal location and the nearby warm Pacific Ocean water. This year, Anchorage got a paltry three inches of snow in the entire month of January. If you need to be discouraged to visit Anchorage, perhaps your fear of earthquakes would be a better excuse — in 2016, a distant 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Anchorage at 1:30am on January 24th, just hours after the festival had concluded.
Beer of the Week
Vital Juices - Raspberry + Tart Cherry
Kings County Brewers Collective (Brooklyn, NY) in collaboration with Perennial Artisan Ales (St. Louis, MO)
Barrel-Aged Fruited Sour
5.9% ABV
I had this gem on the warm-ish Saturday afternoon we had last weekend, when a friend and I opted to drink at one of the two barrels stood upright for seating outside KCBC. It’s a great use for a barrel, but a better use is this beer — delightfully tart without puckering my cheeks, sweet without being cloying, accompanied by some mild funk. KCBC put out this beer two years ago, then in bottles last year, so this was a nice surprise to see on the menu at their taproom last weekend. It’s still on as of Wednesday night, so get it while you can.
Long Read of the Week
Aaron Goldfarb pens a piece in Vinepair this week about the golden age of brewpubs in Manhattan: the mid-1990s. If you weren’t around for it (and I wasn’t, but I’ve delved deep into some New York Magazine archives in the past to read more about it), you probably didn’t know there were a dozen brewpubs operating in Manhattan alone in 1996. They paved the way for long-running operations like Chelsea and Heartland, which were the only remnants of that era that lasted into the 2010s.
One More Thing
If you want the play-by-play of my brewery visits while I’m in Seattle and don’t already follow the Brew York Instagram account, give it a follow. And I can assure you there will absolutely be a live Twitter poll to choose my next beer at a brewery this weekend. Happy drinking!