Good morning from Liverpool, England, where I may be an ocean away, but BARch Madness will not skip a beat. Voting in the Pilsner and Stout Regions wrapped up overnight, and you’re the first to see what bars will advance to the next round of the friendly bracket to determine NYC’s favorite beer bar:
Pilsner Region
(1) The Grand Delancey vs. (8) Astoria Bier & Cheese
(12) Good Beer NYC vs. (13) Bar Great Harry
(6) Someday Bar vs. (3) Beer Run NYC
(7) Solid State vs. (2) Proletariat
Stout Region
(1) As Is vs. (8) The Jeffrey
(5) Bierwax vs. (4) Beer Culture
(11) Beer Karma vs. (3) The Pony Bar
(10) Brouwerij Lane vs. (2) Carmine Street Beers
Voting for the next round will begin later today on Twitter. Meanwhile, in the Saison Region and IPA Region, you still have a chance to decide who gets to advance to the second round — voting in those regions ends overnight tonight.
By the way, the return of BARch Madness is a gentle reminder to support your local beer bar. Take a look at full bracket — if there’s a bar on here you’ve never visited, take some time to grab a pint this weekend. After a rough past two years, they could really use the business.
Oh, and happy St. Patrick’s Day! Despite my surname, St. Joseph’s Day on Saturday is far more culturally (and gastronomically) relevant to me, but I’ll be going to an Irish Craft Beer takeover at a local brewery here in Liverpool tonight to celebrate. The beer won’t be green, nor will my attire.
New York City breweries pick up 18 medals at NYS Craft Beer Competition
Eighteen medals were given to nine New York City breweries in the annual New York State Craft Beer Competition, whose winners were announced last Friday at a ceremony at the New York State Brewers Conference in Albany. Among the biggest winners was Brooklyn’s Grimm Artisanal Ales, which repeated as Brewery of the Year (tied with Rochester’s Strangebird Beer) for the second year in a row and took home six medals — the most of any brewery in the competition.
This year, 53 judges reviewed 1,264 entries from 185 breweries in the competition, which is run by the New York State Brewers Association and Raise a Glass Foundation. That makes it the largest state-level beer competition in the United States.
Here’s a rundown of the medals that New York City breweries took home:
Category 1: Wheat Beer (American, Wit, Hefe) – 30 entries
Silver: Spacelab Wheat - Circa Brewing Co.
Category 2: Amber and Dark Lagers – 70 entries
Silver: Maple Tapper - Coney Island Brewery
Category 3: Golden/Blonde Ales (American, Kolsch, Cream Ales) - 47 entries
Gold: Kolsch #2 - EBBS Brewing Co.
Bronze: The Localist - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Category 6: American IPA – 52 entries
Silver: Mosaic Rewind - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Category 7: Hazy Pale Ale – 40 entries
Bronze: Magnetic Tape - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Category 9: American DIPA – 27 entries
Gold: TIGER THUNDER - Kings County Brewers Collective
Silver: Maximum Impact - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Category 10: Barrel Aged Sour – 28 entries
Silver: Borogove - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Category 11: Barrel Aged Non-Sour – 61 entries
Silver: Emerging From the Darkness - Kings County Brewers Collective
Category 12: Belgian Farmhouse – 25 entries
Silver: S9 Noble Saison - Transmitter Brewing
Category 13: Belgian Other (Trappist, Strong, etc.) - 48 entries
Bronze: A4 Belgian Quadruple - Transmitter Brewing
Category 16: Fruit & Vegetable Beer (sour) – 74 entries
Gold: Peche Dulcet - Wild East Brewing Co.
Silver: Marble of Doom II - Kings County Brewers Collectives
Bronze: Ordered States of Nature: Kriek 2021 - Wild East Brewing Co.
Category 23: Wild and Sour Ales – 21 entries
Silver: Satellites Are Spinning - Endless Life Brewing
Bronze: Persistent Charms - Brooklyn Brewery
Category 29: Coffee, Chocolate, Spice & Other Adjunct Beer (sour) – 10 entries
Bronze: Super Spruce - Grimm Artisanal Ales
Next year’s competition will be held in March, with winners announced next March 24th during the annual NYS Brewers Conference in Albany.
State Liquor Authority still suspending licenses over “Cuomo Snack” rule violations
Queens beer spot Astoria Bier & Cheese’s liquor license was suspended this week — for a week — and they say it was for violating disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s food-and-alcohol rules in July of 2020, the bar said on Instagram.
The beer-and-cheese shop was cited for “failure to comply [with] local regulations” on July 18th, just a day after the Cuomo-issued Executive Order went into effect, requiring the State Liquor Authority to enforce new rules that food be served with any alcoholic beverage. Astoria Bier & Cheese has a kitchen, and says the claim that resulted in the suspension “just isn’t true.” Several regulars at the shop say that the business was very much compliant with the Covid-era regulations from the start of reopening following the Spring 2020 lockdown. A similar violation on the same date was issued for The Trestle, a bar on the same block, suggesting that this was part of a State Liquor Authority “sweep” of bars looking for violations of the barely 48-hour-old rule.
The suspension means that Astoria Bier & Cheese will have to reschedule a cat-themed beer event planned for this weekend, will not be open on St. Patrick’s Day, a popular beer-drinking holiday, and will not have work for their employees.
There is no scientific evidence that requiring food to be served with alcohol prevented the spread of Covid-19, especially in the context of outdoor drinking, which was all that was allowed in New York City in July of 2020.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,601
Total breweries visited in 2022: 72
Total breweries visited in Oregon: 85
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #2032, Public Coast Brewing Co., Cannon Beach, Oregon (Visited 14-Sep-2020)
I will forever remember this brewery as being the first brewery I’ve ever visited during a power outage. It was a foggy September evening when I wandered over to Public Coast after seeing the infamous Goonies rocks down on the beach here in Cannon Beach. I stepped up to the bar, ordered a Coconut Brown, and found a seat in a booth. Two sips in and… the lights went out. At first, we all thought someone leaned on the light switch. But when we noticed all the street lights outside were out, that was a bigger problem. When I searched social media to find the lights were out up and down the Oregon Coast, that was the biggest problem.
I asked for another pour of beer, since it wasn’t going to get any colder. I went with the ‘67 Blonde, which was a nice refresher for a humid — if cool — evening. The lights eventually came back on, but the POS stayed down, so I paid in cash and came back the next day to grab some beers to take with me on my travels down the Oregon Coast. The Coconut Brown, a rich but not cloying beer with a pronounced but not overpowering hint of tropical coconut, was just as enjoyable in cans as on draft, and it was my most memorable beer of a two-week trip to Oregon. Maybe because I drank it in the dark, or maybe because it’s just so damn delicious.
Social Post of the Week
This beer is hitting shelves in NYC as you read this:
Beer of the Week
Brooklyn's Hottest New Club Is The 23 Simultaneous Dance Cardio Classes In Prospect Park Every Morning
Evil Twin Brewing NYC (Ridgewood, New York)
Hazy IPA
6.8% ABV
Shockingly, I’ve never featured any #EvilTwinBeerNames in this newsletter. Maybe I’ve been embarrassed to admit when I’m having a pastry stout or yoghurt sour or some marshmallow IPA, but this is none of those. This is a very balanced hazy IPA, where the Galaxy, Mosaic, and Strata Hops bring out pineapple, grapefruit pith, and weedy dankness all at once. It’s got the aromatic backbone of those burn-your-palate-off IPAs of the early 2010s, but is quite balanced.
Side note: can I make a confession? My all-time favorite beverage from Evil Twin isn’t a beer. It’s Evil Water Mimosa, a hard seltzer with Chardonnay grapes and oranges that was my go-to brunch beverage when brunch became homemade breakfast tacos at home during Second Lockdown™ in November 2020. It remains the only hard seltzer I’ve purchased more than once. I hope it comes back again.
Long Read of the Week
There’s an enlightening piece from Kate Bernot of Good Beer Hunting this week about the push to formalize Ukrainian Golden Ale as a beer style — something both motivated by national pride and complicated by the Russian invasion of the country. For those looking for more technical information on the style, here’s a description from one of the organizers of the effort to get the style recognized by the Beer Judge Certification Program.
One More Thing
Last week, I took Anheuser-Busch up on an offer to join a guided virtual tasting of their four Budweiser-branded beers: Budweiser, Budweiser Select, Budweiser Zero, and the new Budweiser Supreme. Honestly, I do this every now and then to stay centered about the types of beer that still fly off shelves while we live in our little craft beer bubble. I have to admit: I hadn’t had a nice, fresh Bud Heavy in a very long time, and it’s still damn delicious for what it is. A warning to those craft breweries making their own crispy bois in an attempt to break into the mass-produced premium beer market: you’ve got an uphill battle ahead of you.
Cheers,
Chris
Wow! Fun and informative read today. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day and enjoy your time across the pond!