Goodbye, Good Beer
A pioneering beer shop closes in the East Village, and the NEIPA world is flat
It took two weeks of being back home for me to finally talk about the elephant in the room (not the pink elephant) from my trip to Belgium. Among the Dubbels and Tripels and Quads and Belgian Blondes and Lambics, I had more than my fair share of Belgian-brewed New England IPAs on this trip. After going six years without a visit to Belgium, the beer scene had noticeably grown while also taking on an American influence. I drank NEIPA at an iconic beer bar in Bruges. I saw bottles from Hill Farmstead at a brewpub in Brussels. I counted no less than six hazies on tap from local breweries at a beer festival there.
It’s hard to deny just how much American craft beer has influenced the global beer community over the past decade, but the fact that it has fully penetrated regions that have a historical beer culture that deserves preservation is both intriguing and troubling. I’ve been to pubs in London with six NEIPAs and not a single English IPA. In Latvia, I drank a Cold IPA — a style that originated in Portland, Oregon — before I found one brewed in New York City. And I went to a bar in Brussels on my last night in town that had one Belgian-style beer among a sea of American styles brewed across Europe. Has the pendulum swung too far toward a homogenous, American-influenced beer culture around the world? I’m not sure. The Internet has made American beer trends easy to track by breweries overseas, but it has also helped to revive the popularity of historical European beer styles that practically vanished in the 20th century, like Grodziskie, Grisette, Berliner Weisse or Gose. I cringed a bit when I saw NEIPA being brewed in Ghent, but did I squirm when a Belgian-style farmhouse brewery opened in Geneva… New York? Of course not.
The beer world is flat, and the tastes of beer drinkers will be influenced by a global culture. I’ve come to accept that where a beer is brewed on the globe doesn’t matter nearly as much as how it tastes. Enjoy.
Good Beer NYC closes after 12 years
Longtime East Village beer shop Good Beer NYC closed this week after 12 years in business on Ninth Street, citing business struggles recovering from the Covid-19 shutdown. The shop-and-bar was a craft beer pioneer when it opened, and was the first beer-focused bottle shop with on-premise drinking in Manhattan, paving the way for others throughout the borough that continue to operate to this day. It’s the second closing of a longtime specialty beer shop in the city in recent months — St. Gambrinus Beer Shoppe in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn shuttered at the end of June.
The shop opened in a former clothing boutique in 2010, and personally filled my beer fridge for several years when I lived in the East Village. I filled growlers there often back when it was still en vogue, and their branded growler sits on my shelf next to my Bierkraft growler — another remnant of a beer shop that has long since vanished. I don’t think I’ve ever drank more beer standing up in any venue than I did at Good Beer, hovering around the center shelves and browsing the coolers. In my early years of beer writing, I previewed the opening of the shop, and I perused the selection to see what new breweries had started distributing in New York. Good Beer was a formative place for me when it comes to shaping my beer experience over the years, and I stood inside the empty room on Tuesday night, briefly pausing to take it in one last time before I bought a bottle of Southern Tier Warlock — a beer I purchased many times in bombers back in the early years of Good Beer, when I was prone to venting about seasonal creep when pumpkin beers showed up on Dave’s shelves during the first week of August.
This closure is pretty personal to me in a sea of beer-related closures in the city over the past two years. Someone on Twitter described owner Dave Cichowicz as a “delightfully jaded proprietor,” which added to the charm of Good Beer. Heck, on my last night living in the East Village, he helped me move a piece of furniture out of my apartment after he closed up shop for the night. He’s always been known to have a quip about a beer or brewery I’ll bring up in conversation. And beyond Dave, I know current and former staff members at Good Beer who continue to pour or sell good beer elsewhere in the city. It leaves a hole in my heart to know the city will be without this place. So long, old friend.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,798
Total breweries visited in 2022: 269
Total breweries visited in Colorado: 238
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2778, Carver Brewing Co., Durango, Colorado (Visited 20-Aug-2022)
Sometimes, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Carver Brewing Co. has been around since 1988. When Carver was opened by brothers Jim and Bill Carver, they were the first brewpub in the Southwest and the second brewpub in Colorado. They’ve been a mainstay on Durango’s Main Avenue for more than three decades, serving food and beer out of the same location all this time.
Now look, I’ve been to more than my share of 1980s and 1990s-era brewpubs. And a lot of them follow the same model they’ve seemingly followed since they opened: pub food and a beer lineup that doesn’t look like it’s been touched since the 20th century (think Amber, Red, Pale, IPA, Brown, Stout). That’s totally what I was expecting at Carver, and I have a soft spot for the nostalgia of old school brewpubs. But that’s not what Carver is. The Yankee Boy NEIPA was one of the smoothest, juiciest examples of the style I’ve ever had. The Black Bear, an Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels from nearby Durango Craft Spirits, was rich and chocolatey with not even a hint of alcohol burn. And yeah, they have a Raspberry Wheat Ale, but it claims to be “America’s longest brewed fruit beer,” and you don’t mess with tradition when you’ve been making the same beer for 34 years.
At the beginning of this year, Carver Brewing Co. was passed down to a new generation of Carvers, Bill’s kids, who I hope continue to innovate like this as the brewpub ages gracefully.
Social Post of the Week
Some pretty ugly numbers for the materials that breweries need to, you know, be breweries.
Long Read of the Week
While a looming rail strike may be averted in the U.S. — one that could’ve sent these material costs even further through the roof for breweries — there’s a great deal of financial pressure for breweries overseas that are dealing with another crisis: energy costs. The U.K. is dealing with a cost reckoning as the cost to power homes and businesses has increased up to fivefold, and that threatens to put breweries and pubs out of business, as Kate Bernot details on Good Beer Hunting.
One Last Thing
Venturing up to Rochester this weekend to see some New York breweries that aren’t south of Poughkeepsie for once. Looking forward to revisiting Fifth Frame and checking out the much-lauded Strangebird for the first time. And yeah, I’ll probably drink a Genny Cream Ale, too.
Cheers,
Chris
RIP Good Beer! 💔
RIP Good Beer. In my 5 years living in the EV, they were a staple in my life.