Excessive Vliet Warning
Planning your fall beer travel and remembering more Covid-era beer bar casualties
I feel like I’ve been perpetually sweaty all week and nothing is cooling me down quite enough — not the air conditioner, not an ice pack, not even the cold can of Kolsch I’m drinking as I write this that I might consider pouring over ice to make it extra cold. Is that a sin? Who am I to judge? Desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s been unpleasantly hot most of this week, and feels-like temperatures exceeding 100°F call for a quick rundown of my current favorite local summer crushers.
KCBC Il Paradiso: I felt like I had died and gone to paradise upon first sipping this snappy Italian Pilsner, made with Tettnanger, Saphir, and Hallertau Blanc hops. It’s a little citrusy, a little earthy, and a whole lot of extra-crispy.
TALEA Weekender: Putting fruit in beer is usually TALEA’s thing when it comes to sours, but they can do great things when they put it in lagers, too. The key lime and sea salt in this 5% jam make this an outstanding alternative to a certain mass-produced light lager with lime flavor added.
Captain Lawrence Freshchester Pale Ale: I don’t think this would’ve made the list, except I speak from recent experience. My friends threw a cookout in Westchester on Saturday and served a sixtel of this out of their kegerator. With temperatures high and a strong desire to make up for lost socializing, this keg kicked in barely two hours. It hit the spot.
Threes Vliet: Lots and lots of Vliet.
Fall Destinations for Your Beer Travel Planning Consideration
If the Delta Variant doesn’t ruin everyone’s fall plans, there’s a chance you’d like to get out of the city and enjoy some beer in a crisp, cool spot come September. Here are a few weekend getaways that might fit the bill.
Cooperstown, New York
Brewery Ommegang might be one of the most picturesque breweries in New York, and it’s become as noteworthy a tourist destination in this upstate town as the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Nearby, you’ve got Red Shed, Council Rock, quirky Willow Rock and stalwart Cooperstown Brewing. If you’re looking to kick off fall on the right foot, Ommegang is the site of the BriteVibes Festival on September 4th — a celebration of New York State beer that’s accompanied by a live music lineup headlined by Delta Spirit. The best part? No scramble for a hotel room — you can camp on-site at the brewery.
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
A whole lot of beer people will tell you that you absolutely have to visit Portland, Maine if you’re into visiting breweries. And they’re right — but visiting Portland in the summer and fall can be ridiculously pricey. Portsmouth is a little cheaper and a little closer and still offers plenty of great beer. The legendary Portsmouth Brewery is celebrating thirty years in business this year. Nearby, Earth Eagle Brewings serves up unique brews in a cozy taproom. Across the river in Kittery, Maine, Tributary Brewing pours very straightforward, traditional beers made by Tod Mott, a New England brewing legend. Great Rhythm, Liars Bench, and Loaded Question are all near downtown, and the well-regarded Deciduous and Stoneface are within a 20-minute drive of Portsmouth. And you can still find some good lobster rolls, too.
Providence, Rhode Island
I’m a Rhode Island native and a big defender of the nation’s smallest state, whose beer scene has really come a long way over the past few years. This year, the scene got even bigger as Narragansett Brewing finally opened a brewery of its own right next to a waterfront park on Providence’s East Side. Moniker Brewery near downtown was one of several other pandemic-era brewery openings in the Ocean State (Revival Brewing’s new beer-and-pizza joint was another), and it’s not far from the delightful Bayberry Beer Hall. Long Live Beerworks is quietly making some of the best beer in Rhode Island, and that’s saying something when you’ve got Buttonwoods, Proclamation, Tilted Barn, and Grey Sail just down the road. Much like the Newport Mansions, it’s an embarrassment of riches.
A toast to more beer bars we’ve lost during Covid
As I’ve mentioned before, many great beer bars closed during the pandemic, and I’d like an opportunity to acknowledge these closures. So, occasionally this summer, I’ll offer some words on a few beloved beer places that have shuttered since last March. I’ve previously said farewell to others in previous editions of the newsletter.
61 Local was big on local beer before there was much local beer to be big on. The beer menu on the wall, in the form of a map of the Northeast with an exaggerated Brooklyn at its center, celebrated our city’s local breweries when there were a mere four breweries in all of New York City (Sixpoint, Kelso, Brooklyn, and Chelsea). Its entire beverage list celebrated local manufacturers as the list grew deeper. 61 Local truly came full-circle for me, and it’s fitting that they closed when they did... in the first week of operation in early 2011, I visited and then-Sixpoint head brewer Ian McConnell was working behind the bar pouring his beers. On my last visit to 61 Local in late February 2020, Ian was there again… representing his Maine-based Banded Brewing for a tap takeover during NYC Beer Week.
The Diamond in Greenpoint was a beloved beer bar that was off-the-beaten path on Franklin Street. My favorite feature of the bar was without a doubt the old Whiteface Mountain gondola car in their cozy, welcoming backyard. I shared more than a few beers there with friends and dates. My second favorite feature was the regular cask offering — the Diamond was serving cask in its heyday in New York’s beer scene, but they also served it long after other bars stopped. If I was longing for cask ale in between trips to London, this was my go-to. The Diamond had some of the most loyal followers of any beer bar I knew in the city — and while I will miss this place dearly, I bet they’re heartbroken that it’s gone.
Finally, Professor Thom’s in the East Village wasn’t exactly a craft beer mecca, but it was without a doubt the place where I drank the most Harpoon in my beer-drinking career. I lived two blocks from here from the week after they opened until 2011. The Boston-themed bar was a frequent pourer of UFO, Harpoon IPA, and the Harpoon Ale that was rebranded as the house beer here. The bartenders I befriended there as a regular went on to pour at other beer spots in town. In its later years, I found myself going down the street to Standings because the crowds on football Sundays got too big, but that was a product of the bar’s long-standing success. I’ll miss the nachos most.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,315
New breweries in 2021: 241
Breweries visited in Michigan: 83
Breweries visited with names that begin with “Brewery:” 13
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2309, Brewery Faisan, Detroit, Michigan (Visited 5-Aug-2021)
I knew nothing about Brewery Faisan, tucked away in Detroit’s Islandview neighborhood, prior to stepping inside last week. But on a warm summer afternoon, this place really hit the spot. The brewery is less than two years old and barely squeezed in four months of taproom service before the pandemic hit. Now back to some semblance of normalcy, they’re churning out some pretty terrific Belgian-style beers — a rare find these days.
I ordered a Quiddity Witbier and settled into a comfy midcentury modern chair at a table made from reclaimed wood, sipped the beer, and reveled in the jazz music that was playing overhead. After a day that began with an early-morning rush through LaGuardia security and continued surrounded by crowds at a Detroit Tigers game, this was the first time I felt relaxed all day. Not every brewery has the power to relax me (take, for instance, any hype-beast brewery on a Saturday afternoon), but this one went above and beyond.
I moved onto another style that you don’t typically find at young breweries these days: a Dubbel called King Eider. Everything here was true to style and no beer was an attempt to reinvent the wheel. It was a refreshing change, and a truly pleasant place to drink beer.
Beer of the Week
L3 Italian Pilsner
Transmitter Brewing (Brooklyn, NY)
Pilsner
4.9% ABV
I’ve been commuting into Manhattan a couple days a week for the past month, and hopping on a Citibike after work to visit a brewery has become a new tradition, especially after a long day. So last week, I stopped into Transmitter’s beautiful spot in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, grabbed a pint of this gorgeous Pilsner, and watched the world pass on their patio (which, honestly, is a highly underrated place to drink beer in the city). This rendition of the popular-if-ambiguous style has a lovely herbal, grassy hop character and a touch of yeasty dough to balance out the bitterness. I now remember why this beer was an early favorite in my fridge during last Spring’s lockdown. I’ll be drinking more of this soon.
Long Read of the Week
As the demand for both sour beer and packaged beer increased during Covid, so did canned sour beer. But there are challenges to putting the style into an aluminum can, as Clare Goggin Sivits explains at Vinepair. I really want to get my hands on that Cascade Brewing Brunch Line she features — 8.5 ounces of sour beer is about all I can handle in one shot.
One More Thing
Wish my body luck in surviving this weekend’s bachelor party with a college buddy and fellow beer geek. I’ve, naturally, been put in charge of the brewery visits. There will be several. And we’re starting the crawl at 11am sharp on Saturday morning. I’ll report back next week.
Cheers,
Chris
Having the Weekender now at TALEA too bad I missed your vist here. Just realized the Brooklyn Cider House closed, not exactly beer but their stuff hit the spot on my few visits there.