LPs and IPAs

Another NYC tasting room shuttering and a visit to the cellar

I’m not exclusively visiting breweries when I travel. Sometimes I’m visiting beer bars, too. And I found an absolute gem of a beer bar while in Bergen, Norway last weekend: Apollon Platebar. The beer list — 36 taps in all — was stellar, organized by style and spanning from some lovely local beers to some standouts from around the world. The music was wide and varied, from rock to jazz to blues to whatever whims the bartender (or on Saturday night, the DJ) wanted to spin. And there’s a twist you don’t see in the above photo: it’s not just a beer bar, but also a record shop, with rows and rows of vinyl to flip through.

I absolutely fell in love with this place and spent a little too much time flipping through records and seeing what weird and wonderful records I’d come across. It’s good that I haven’t become a vinyl-head — I worry that it would take up far too much space in both my life and my apartment, but I totally get the appeal now, especially when browsing involves drinking a lovely little Kveik Pale Ale from a Norwegian brewery.

Side note: Berlinetta Brewing in Bridgeport, Connecticut also has vinyl for sale, if you’re looking for this experience a bit closer to home. Now, the news…

Gun Hill to shutter Bronx brewery

Gun Hill Brewing Company will close its production facility and taproom on Laconia Avenue in the Bronx, the brewery announced on social media this week. The brewery, which first opened in 2014 in the borough’s Williamsbridge neighborhood, will continue to produce beer at Vosburgh Brewing Company in Columbia County, and will continue to operate their small brewery and taproom, Gun Hill Publick House, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn at Industry City.

Gun Hill cited the increase in costs and a lease renewal as motivations for the closure. Their brewing equipment went to auction last month. Gun Hill’s ten-year history has included four Great American Beer Festival medals, an epic barrel-aged beer festival each January, and countless community events throughout the years. The final day of operation for the Bronx location will be Saturday, May 18th.

The brewery posted the following statement on social media:

As many have already heard, our lease is up at the end of the month. With the drastic increase in costs over the last 4 years post-COVID, the economics of continuing to operate out of our Bronx location no longer made sense. As a result, we’ve made the difficult decision to close the 3227 Laconia Ave location on May 18th.

Our plan is maintain regular hours, staff permitting, from now until May 18th. Please be sure to check Instagram or Facebook (stories and/or posts) for any updates if we do have a staffing issue.

Then make sure to come out on May 18th to close out Gun Hill @ 3227 Laconia Ave with a bang! Father & Son’s Kitchen will be here all day and we’ll be celebrating our run.

We are very proud of all that we accomplished here, and we are forever grateful to everyone who has supported us in the tasting room over the last 10+ years. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you!

That being said, we are NOT closing Gun Hill. Max will continue to brew all of our beer Vosburgh Brewing Company and we will continue to distribute our beer as we have done. You can visit both Vosburgh and Gun Hill Publick House for any and all Gun Hill or Gun Hill related tasting room experiences. If you can’t make it to either location, be sure to ask your local spot to carry Gun Hill!

We hope to raise a glass (or 5) with you over the next two weeks!

Brewery Tracker

Total brewery count: 3,415
Total breweries visited in 2024: 131
Total breweries visited in Norway: 7

Brewery Visit of the Week

Brewery #3411, Schouskjelleren Mikrobyggeri, Oslo, Norway (Visited 2-May-2024)

I’ve often joked about “hermit crab breweries” — breweries that open within the space of a previously-closed brewery. But Schouskjelleren takes it to the next level, opening inside an old lagering cellar of an historic brewery in Oslo’s Grünerløkka neighborhood. This block was formerly home to the Schou Brewery, once Norway’s oldest brewery, which operated on the site from 1877 until its closure in 1981. The brand still exists — now owned by Carlsberg’s Ringnes Brewery — but the tradition of brewing beer at Trondheimsveien 2 returned in 2010 with the opening of Schouskjelleren. The cellars now mostly serve as the subterranean taproom for the small brewery, which is part of the larger cultural complex that utilized the former brewery property. I always love a good adaptive reuse of a brewery, and I especially love it when the reuse still involves brewing.

Anyway, I visited here multiple times while in Oslo because not only was the space beautiful, but the staff was incredibly kind and helpful, the beer was delicious, and the guest tap and bottle list was stellar, including lots of American beer that I can’t even get my hands on back home. I’ll have to come back on another trip to Oslo, for sure, especially if it’s in the darker months of the year, which are best suited for drinking underground.

The Doom and Gloom Tracker

At least 4 breweries I’ve visited closed or announced their closure this week:

• Brewery #179, Gun Hill Brewing Company - Bronx, Bronx, New York (Visited 17-Feb-2014)

• Brewery #394, Liquid Riot Brewing & Distilling, Portland, Maine (Visited 21-Jul-2015)

• Brewery #3315, Deeds Brewing, Glen Iris, Victoria, Australia (Visited 18-Jan-2024)

• Brewery #3401, Humble Monk Brewing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio (Visited 6-Apr-2024)

The Weekly Reader

• One of New York’s largest breweries is growing [Will Cleveland, Cleveland Prost]

• The long, winding story of Brewdog’s problematic CEO [Hannah Twiggs, The Independent]

• Another story of the demise of a once-popular beer brand stripped of its parts by a corporate buyer [Pete Brown, Pellicle]

• The story behind one of New Zealand’s most successful hop-forward breweries [Grace Lee-Weitz, Hop Culture]

One Last Thing

It’s Lager Appreciation Month at Kings County Brewers Collective, and as a self-proclaimed lager lout myself (who also finds himself drinking at KCBC quite a bit), I’m always pretty excited about this. This Saturday, they’re doing something called the Lager Olympics — an afternoon of lager fun with beer pong, beer can bowling, a limbo contest, stein holding competition, and even a dunk tank. The fun kicks off at noon on Saturday… hope to see you there!

Cheers,
Chris