Hardcore Punkin' since 2002
A trip down the beer memory hole and a visit to Orange County's crown jewel
So, just slightly more than two months from now, I have a milestone birthday coming up. For that birthday, I’d like to invite my friends to join me at my 2,500th brewery, which means I have exactly 66 days to visit 98 breweries. This part is actually not a huge challenge. I visited 107 in an identical span between May and July, and that was without an extended Thanksgiving holiday.
The real challenge here is settling on a 2,500th brewery. And this has become a real pickle of a diddly. The specifications are pretty broad: I want to visit a noteworthy brewery that makes delicious beer. I’d prefer it be in an easily-accessible location (that is, not a three-hour drive from a major airport). I’d like the location to be in a somewhat warmer climate (Texas is out of the question, though, because fuck Texas these days). It also obviously can’t be a brewery I’ve already visited, so that puts 2,402 breweries out of the question.
So, any suggestions? I’ve got a map of the breweries I’ve visited to help you eliminate some possibilities. I’m open to anything that meets my criteria. Please, help solve this entirely minor and entirely solvable crisis.
Other Half pops-up at Rockefeller Center for the fall
After hosting an outdoor pop-up in Rockefeller Center last year, Other Half Brewing has returned to Midtown for another seasonal appearance. Three days a week this fall, you can sip cans of their beers outside on the plaza. They’ll also be offering a selection of cans to-go for Manhattanites who don’t want to trek to their two Brooklyn locations. They’ll be camped out Thursday through Saturday on the South Plaza between 48th and 49th Streets, right next to the Nintendo Store. Hours will be 2-8pm Thursday and Friday and noon-8pm on Saturday.
The Beer Memory Hole: Blind Tiger, 19 years ago
Welcome to a new series where I find an old tap list from a New York City bar that shows just how far the beer scene has come. This week, for our first installment, we take a trip back to October of 2002. I wasn’t old enough to drink, and Blind Tiger Ale House was in a different location than when I first found it: on Hudson Street near West 10th Street, the current location of a Starbucks. The move to Bleecker Street came in 2006, but beer wasn’t served until 2007, after wrangling with community members and the State Liquor Authority for nearly a year.
Anyway, Blind Tiger was in the midst of its Oktoberfest celebration this week in 2002, and here’s their draft list from that moment in time:
Oktoberfest Beers
Allgauer Oktoberfest
Brooklyn Oktoberfest
Ramstein Oktoberfest
Schneider Wiesen Edel-Weisse
Sierra Nevada Octoberfest
Brooklyn Hefe-Weisse
Brooklyn Pilsner
Chimay Triple
Heavyweight Stickenjab Alt
Brooklyn Pennant Pale Ale
Magic Hat #9
Hoegaarden White
Anchor Liberty
Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale
Magic Hat Blind Faith
Rogue St. Rogue Red
Original Sin Hard Cider
Leffe Blonde
Yuengling Porter
Southampton Pale Ale
Brooklyn Brown Ale
Tetley's English Ale
Guinness Stout
Boddingtons
Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale cask
Running through the list, there’s a whole bunch of interesting callouts. Brooklyn Brewery was an old standby for the Tiger at the time, and it was also one of only two breweries operating in New York City (Chelsea Brewing Company, on Pier 59, was the other). Ramstein Oktoberfest, while not making regular appearances in the city anymore, is still brewed every fall in Butler, New Jersey. Pour one out for the two dearly departed breweries on this list: New Jersey’s Heavyweight Brewing, which was a mainstay at craft beer bars in New York City in the early aughts and closed in 2006, and Southampton Publick House, which stopped brewing in the late 2010s after its head brewer Phil Markowski left to launch Two Roads in Connecticut.
Hoegaarden, Leffe, and Boddingtons were still owned by the slightly smaller Belgian brewing conglomerate Interbrew at the time (which would later merge with InBev and be purchased by Anheuser-Busch). Buffalo Bill’s isn’t sending beer to New York anymore, but these beer pioneers are still alive and well in Hayward, California, where I visited their brewpub in 2018. Magic Hat isn’t making beer in Vermont anymore (it’s now a contract brand brewed in Rochester). Rogue was, for many years, the only craft brewery in Oregon that distributed to New York. Despite this, they were far from the largest in the state, which gave East Coasters a warped perspective of the state’s beer scene (Widmer, Ninkasi, and Full Sail would come to New York later; Oregon’s largest craft brewery, Deschutes, is still not available here).
What’s most striking about this tap list for present-day beer drinkers: there is exactly one IPA on the list — Magic Hat Blind Faith, an English-style IPA that was hoppy by 2002 standards but could pass as a run-of-the-mill malty Pale Ale today.
Meanwhile, Anchor still makes Liberty Ale. Sierra Oktoberfest is still a treat every year when it comes around. And Dogfish Head Punkin’ is still a sought-after fall favorite. Some things, thankfully, never change.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,402
New breweries in 2021: 328
Breweries visited in New York: 240
Rank of New York among all states: 1, just ahead of California (239)
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2400, The Drowned Lands, Warwick, New York (Visited 9-Oct-2021)
“How have you not been to Drowned Lands yet?!” It’s a question I was asked on several occasions over the past few months. There are some easy answers: for one, it’s not exactly easy to get to from the city. For another, I don’t own a car and it’s a necessity to get there. Needless to say, there would have to be some coordination and mild coaxing of a friend with a car in order to finally get there. That finally happened last weekend, a little over a year after I had my first beer from them and realized they were definitely going on my to-visit list.
This was, of course, before I even knew what a gorgeous space they had — a space that’s very much in keeping with the aesthetic of their brand. The century-old building that houses the taproom is part of the sprawling space that once housed a state training school and correctional facility. Now, it’s home to some lovely beers, many of them kissed by wood in the foeders that face out onto the taproom.
If you’ve had been from Drowned Lands, you probably already know what to expect: a little of everything and everything good. Some clean, easy-drinking stuff, some nice hop-forward beers, and some sneaky good high-gravity stuff. It’s a lineup to satisfy all beer drinkers and a setting, with vaulted ceilings inside and a huge patio and lawn outside, to make everyone feel at home.
Social Post of the Week
Beer of the Week
Birra Portico
Schilling Beer Co. (Littleton, New Hampshire)
Italian-Style Pilsner
5.4% ABV
I cannot believe that beer made at my favorite brewery visit of 2020 took more than eight months to make it into the newsletter. Shame on me.
Anyway, if you haven’t tried any of the beers from Schilling and you live in New York City, you’ve either made a horrible mistake or you don’t like lagers. Because that’s all they do, and they do it all very, very well. This particular can is just a simple, clean pilsner with a pleasant lemon and hay hop character and a gentle malt sweetness. I’ll be honest: it’s not my favorite Schilling beer, but that’s only because their other beers set the bar very, very high.
Long Read of the Week
For the past few years, I’ve been a judge in the North American Guild of Beer Writers annual awards. My favorite category to judge, naturally, is the travel category. The award winners were announced over the weekend, so I’d like to share the first place winner: Bailey Berg’s wonderful piece about beer in Fairbanks, Alaska, which appeared in Good Beer Hunting last Spring. Every year, I use this category to inspire new trips, and a wintertime trip to the cold and dark depths of interior Alaska is in my plans this year.
One More Thing
Finally, here’s a photo from Schilling Beer Co.’s back deck from my visit last year, in case you needed a better explanation of why it was my favorite brewery visit of 2020 beyond “the beer is stinking awesome.”
Cheers,
Chris