I was at a pretty nice, pricey restaurant in the Meatpacking District last night, and it reminded me how much New York City’s high-end restaurants have come around on respecting beer as a part of a nice meal. I remember going to restaurants ten years ago who treated beer as a complete afterthought by beverage directors. I recall a practically encyclopedic wine and spirits list with paragraph-long descriptions at Wylie Dufresne’s wd~50 on the Lower East Side back in 2011. Beer was relegated to half a page in the back of the book, with no descriptions — not even beer styles. At most high-end restaurants in New York back then, beer was an afterthought, not even deserving of space on the menu, and relegated to a list rattled off by waitstaff who would often forget or vaguely describe a beer by its brand.
We’ve come a long way since those days. Tonight at Pastis — a French restaurant, no less — I had a KCBC Superhero Sidekicks and a Threes Vliet. I had the option of a Sour IPA, Brown Ale, Kellerbier, Cider, and even a non-alcoholic IPA from Athletic Brewing.
While the level of respect for beer on the culinary scene has risen in general over the years, credit also goes to the hard-working beer reps and sales teams who have fought for placements in these restaurants. It’s so nice to see not just any beer, but local beer well-represented on both menus and in the form of pairing dinners and other food-and-beer events. Thanks to them, I can recommend pairing a Vliet with the Moules Frites.
Alewife opens taproom in Sunnyside, Queens
Time to come in from the cold. After over a year serving beer outdoors at their brewery, and eight months after firing up their brewhouse for the first time, Alewife Brewing will officially welcome drinkers inside their taproom in Sunnyside, Queens starting tomorrow. The new taproom includes a huge space for drinking and an L-shaped bar that adjoins the production space. Their opening celebration on Friday will include two new beer releases — Where Are Your Friends Tonight?, a Cold Brewed Hazy IPA that’s a collaboration with 18th Ward Brewing, and Perpetual Cycle IPA, brewed with Salvo, Idaho 7, and Motueka hops.
Alewife is located at 41-11 39th Street, just a couple blocks from the 40th Street stop on the 7 Train.
The Beer Memory Hole: Barcade Philadelphia, 10 years ago
Ten years ago this week, a few friends and I made a crazy idea a reality. At the time, Barcade had three locations: Philly, Jersey City, and Brooklyn. So we decided: why not visit all of them in a single day? So we took an early train down to Philadelphia and rolled into Barcade there at the stroke of noon, and officially began our first Barcade Crawl. There was one other, far more intense excursion that added the two locations in Manhattan in 2014. It ended in a blur. This one was tame by comparison.
Anyway, here’s the tap list from Barcade Philadelphia on that day in 2011.
Abita Jockamo IPA
Allagash Black
Bavarian Barbarian Bulldozer Golden
Doc’s Pear Cider
Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre
Flying Dog Raging Bitch (nitro)
Flying Fish ESB
Founders Red’s Rye
Great Divide Hibernation Ale
Great Lakes Eliot Ness
Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen
Lagunitas Dopple Weizen
Lost Abbey Avant Garde Ale
McNeill’s Maibock
New Holland The Poet
Oskar Blues G’Knight
Rogue Smoke Ale
Sixpoint Signal
Sly Fox Pikeland Pils
Southampton Grand Cru
Stone Belgo IRS
Troegs Mad Elf
Victory Storm King Stout (cask)
Weyerbacher Merry Monks
A couple of noteworthy mentions on this list: Bavarian Barbarian, a brewery in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, announced their closure just two months after this crawl. Southampton is a more recent closure, but remarkably, every other brewery on this list is alive and well in one form or another. McNeill’s, a Brattleboro, Vermont outfit that made regular appearances here and at the Brooklyn Barcade, and while it’s a hard find in the city these days, the brewery is alive and hoping to reopen after repairs next year in time to celebrate their 40th year in business. The beers of two well-known breweries on this list, Great Lakes and Lost Abbey, have still never made their way to New York City. And G’Knight was a favorite of mine at the time, but the beer had a relatively new name — Oskar Blues received a cease-and-desist from Gordon Biersch earlier that year that forced them to change the name of a beer named for a Colorado brewing legend.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,494
New breweries in 2021: 420
Breweries visited in Maryland: 39
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2494, Guilford Hall Brewery, Baltimore, Maryland (Visited 5-Dec-2021)
Travel delays occasionally have good consequences. Upon arriving at Baltimore Penn Station and finding out my train home from a weekend with friends there (thanks for the heads up, Amtrak) and finding out on my own that my train was still somewhere in Northern Virginia, I realized I had enough time to visit one more brewery: Guilford Hall, a new spot that’s just a seven-minute walk from the train station. While the brewery itself just opened this past spring, it’s in a gorgeous brick building that dates back to 1898 — originally built as the Crown Cork and Seal factory. Guilford Hall makes great use of the space, with a booming taproom, an outdoor garden, and an adjoining production space.
In that production space, they’re making lots of European-style beers. I enjoyed the Guilford Lager, a wonderful Helles-style Lager that was clean and crisp with hints of biscuit. The Vienna Lager, my other choice, had a mildly sweet malt backbone with a snappy hop character. The beer list includes Czech, Belgian, and English style beers as well, but I had a train to catch. This will be my first stop off the train next time I’m in Baltimore.
Social Post of the Week
Brilliant beer label design for the season:
Beer of the Week
IPA
Harpoon Brewery (Boston, Massachusetts and Windsor, Vermont)
American India Pale Ale
6% ABV
It’s been a while since I’ve just ducked into a random bar in Manhattan. Since the pandemic, most of my nights out have involved a defined itinerary to places I know, love, and miss. But last night some co-workers and I ducked into the Tavern on Jane for one last beer. It’s no beer mecca, and while it’s not a total dive, I’m always skeptical of the quality of draft lines at places I don’t know. Heck, earlier in the night, one of my co-workers talked about how she worked at a high-end restaurant and never trusted their draft lines… and then went ahead and ordered a draft beer: Harpoon IPA — a beer near and dear to me from my early years imbibing in craft beer in New England. “Make it two,” I said. And I’ll be damned: it was as clean and bitter and piney as it’s ever been, and it was served in a sparklingly clean nonic glass. I probably won’t have this luck every time I duck into a bar, but I will attest: Tavern on Jane gets the brilliant basics right.
Long Read of the Week
Some beer fans breathed a huge sigh of relief when the pandemic seemingly didn’t wipe out thousands of craft breweries. But the aftermath of the pandemic may pose a larger existential threat to breweries in the form of supply chain issues that could dramatically raise the cost of doing business. Dave Infante is on the case in VinePair.
One Last Thing
Brewery #2500 is just nine days away: Birds Fly South Ale Project in Greenville, South Carolina. But there are plenty of other breweries in Upstate South Carolina, so if you’ve been, I’d love to know what other spots you recommend!
Cheers,
Chris