Hello from downtown Los Angeles, where I’m spending the night before heading up the coast in the morning for a couple days of brewery-crawling in Ventura. I managed to squeeze in a visit to the wonderful Modern Times Dankness Dojo, a lovely, piñata-adorned taproom just a few blocks from the Staples Center. I hate superlatives, but before I stopped using them (my opinion of a brewery shouldn’t matter to you), anytime someone asked me what my favorite brewery on the West Coast was, I’d say it’s Modern Times. They continue to churn out great beer at their locations up and down the West Coast, and I’m excited to go back to their flagship location in San Diego next month before a Mets-Padres game.
Anyway, hope you enjoy your weekend as much as I plan to. Amusingly enough, I managed to choose a weekend in May in Los Angeles when there is rain in the weather forecast. Seriously, don’t be jealous of me, and don’t feel bad for me, either. At least you’re probably not in a place that could slide into the Pacific Ocean at any second.
Other Half to open Buffalo brewpub
Other Half Brewing’s fifth location will be their fourth in New York State. The brewery has announced plans for a new taproom in Buffalo. The location will be in the city’s Seneca One development downtown, where Other Half has been hosting pop-up can and bottle sales since January. Douglas Jemal, the developer of Seneca One, also owns the building that houses Other Half’s location in Washington, D.C. that opened last year. The 11,000-square foot space is expected to be open by this summer.
This makes Other Half the third brewery this year from New York City to announce an Upstate location. Big aLICe opened their new location in Geneva earlier this month, and Finback Brewery has teased out their forthcoming farm in Walton, in Delaware County.
Trip Report: a day trip to Long Island
Last Saturday, I hopped on LIRR and headed out east to visit the first of two new-to-me breweries that are walkable from the Babylon line. First stop: the new Sand City South in Lindenhurst, the second and larger outpost of the brewery that got its start on the North Shore in Northport. The sprawling taproom overlooks an even larger brewing space, where I enjoyed their Stormborn Belgian Blonde and Even Mo’ Queen, a DIPA collaboration with Tin Barn in Orange County.
Next, I hopped back on the train to go three stops over to Massapequa Park to check out Motion Craft Brewed. This spot had the very unfortunate position of opening just weeks before the pandemic in February of 2020. But they were busy on Saturday, and their Sign of the Times NEIPA — with all Simcoe hops — was as good as any hazy IPA I had last weekend.
You can easily make an afternoon out of this duo of breweries, and you could tack on 27A Brewing up the street from Sand City in Lindenhurst to make it a trio of breweries.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,181
New breweries in 2021: 107
Breweries visited in Rhode Island: 28
Total breweries in Rhode Island: 31
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #105, Grey Sail Brewing of Rhode Island, Westerly, Rhode Island (Visited 21-Jul-2012)
As a native Rhode Islander who embraced good beer in the early aughts, it was hard for me to find pride in my home state’s beer scene. From the time I came of age until 2011, there was just one production brewery in Rhode Island, and it wasn’t exactly winning accolades or earning praise from beer geeks. When I heard that Grey Sail Brewing of Rhode Island was opening in late 2011, I became hopeful that this was the start of a beer boom in Rhode Island. Indeed it was, and Grey Sail led the trend by setting the bar high.
First, a little something about that convoluted name. It was the result of a legal dispute that followed a cease-and-desist order from Oregon’s Full Sail in 2012. A layman would be hard-pressed to see why there would ever been brand confusion between two breweries with pretty distinct names on opposite coasts, but hey, there’s no harm in throwing the name of a state in there to plant a flag for its beer scene. Rhode Islanders have embraced Grey Sail – as have beer geeks across their northeastern distribution footprint – particularly for their Captain’s Daughter double IPA, which had a cult-like status for a while in the years before every brewery and their mother was making NEIPAs.
Their taproom, which sits across a driveway from the brewery itself, is in a beautiful colonial house that was purchased by Grey Sail and renovated to be used to feature its beers. It sits on a well-manicured plot with a bocce court, fountain, and grassy yard for sitting and enjoying beer. The pristine house has several rooms on the first floor lined with beautiful hand-painted murals that date back to the 1930s. Combine this with little nooks and crannies for seating to escape and enjoy a beer, and it’s one of the more unique taprooms we’ve come across – a far cry from the impersonal, open-air spaces in industrial parks. Those beers include the Flying Jenny Pale Ale, Pour Judgment IPA, and the Leaning Chimney Smoked Porter – named for the crooked brick smokestack in the center of their brewery space. When it first opened, Grey Sail’s taproom was actually by definition a bar, owned by a separate entity to avoid Rhode Island’s restrictions on serving beer at a brewery. But since then, the state’s beer laws have modernized, though the house remains the only spot where beer fans can enjoy all their beer in one place.
Now in their tenth year of operation, Grey Sail remains an important part of the fabric of the Ocean State’s beer scene. They continue to innovate in beer, pioneered CO2 capture among Rhode Island breweries, and the gorgeous garden next to the house has been a convenient option for outdoor drinking during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Historical Nerdity of the Week
Rhode Islanders are often very proud of where they’re from — although there are also many instances of the state making news for very strange reasons. But on May 4th each year, while everyone else is celebrating Star Wars Day, Rhode Island is celebrating the anniversary of their independence. The state was the first colony to declare its independence from Britain on May 4th, 1776 — two months before the rest of the country. The state’s General Assembly voted nearly unanimously on that day to declare itself the first sovereign state in the western world. Today, a statue of “The Independent Man” — a symbol of Rhode Island’s independent streak that began with founder Roger Williams and continues to this day — sits atop their State House in Providence.
Beer of the Week
State of the Art Series: Galaxy West Coast Style IPA
Industrial Arts Brewing Company (Garnerville, New York)
West Coast IPA
6.5% ABV
“I was going to suggest this beer to you, but you ordered it before I could,” Luke Manson, my bartender at Blind Tiger, told me. We both know: IPAs from Industrial Arts brewer Jeff O’Neil rarely miss. This one harkened back to his original work of genius, Ithaca Flower Power, but with a unique hoppy punch. This beer has some wonderful tropical fruit notes from the Galaxy hops — and a clean finish that leaves nothing for those hops to hide behind. IPAs you can see through is hard to come by these days, but they fill me with such delight when they’re as perfect as this.
Long Read of the Week
Let’s talk Cream Ales! This is not a particularly long read, but it’s a great primer if you’re not familiar with the style that’s practically synonymous with Rochester’s Genesee Brewery. Samer Khudairi has a nice backgrounder on this perplexing beer style on Hop Culture.
One More Thing
With summer practically here, I’ve got a question for you for the comments: what beer to you is synonymous with summer? It doesn’t have to be a seasonal beer… it could even be a one-off beer… but what beer reminds you of summer? I’ll share my thoughts on this — and yours — next week.
I don’t know that it reminds me of summer per se...but I drink a lot more of Carton Boat beer in the Summer months vs rest of the year.
Six Point Jammer, the original one, is the ultimate summer beer for me.