Put Down Your Phone and Just Enjoy
Breweries by train, Oklahoma's beer revival, and carrots in your beer
Ever get beerja-vu? (Deja-brew?) Like, you’ve sworn you’ve had a beer before, but then the brewery tells you it just came out last week? I suppose that’s easy in an era when breweries are playing to their strengths, but it’s happened to me twice in the past five days, including at one brewery here in New York City.
That reminds me — you know what’s definitely fallen out of favor with me? Untappd. As a total nerd who geeks out on quantitative data, I loved logging my beers and referring back to ratings. I’d even spend nights punching in the beers I logged on paper or in the notes app on my phone at beer festivals (which some people felt was a cardinal sin, but I rarely rated those beers). But these days, I feel like I spend enough time on my phone being antisocial as it is, and beer-drinking is an inherently social activity. Put down your phone and just enjoy your beer. I don’t think there was any breaking point for me, and I still enjoy the concept of Untappd as a reference tool (with a giant grain of salt), and I like what it’s done for breweries in terms of offering better tools for communicating to consumers… but are there any other long-time Untappd users that have just tired of the chore of logging a beer in an app? Let me know in the comments.
Go By Train! Five brewery excursions by New York City’s commuter rail
On a hot summer day, it’s almost always cooler in the suburbs than it is in the concrete jungle of New York City. If you’re looking for a quick escape from the city by train to cool off with a cold beer, there are a whole bunch of breweries that are accessible with a train ride out of Penn Station or Grand Central and a quick walk. So grab a backpack, grab a train ticket, stay hydrated, and consider these day-tripping options this summer.
Bright Eye Beer Co, Long Beach, NY
Train Stop: Long Beach, LIRR Long Beach Branch
Trip Time from Manhattan: 57 minutes
What to know: This beachside brewery is practically spitting distance from the LIRR terminal at Long Beach, and is conveniently on the walk from the station to the beach. A hot tip for beachgoers: you can buy a combined train/beach pass from any LIRR vending machine. On your way back to the city, the Long Beach Branch boasts three other breweries at stops along the route: Long Beach Brewing and South Shore Craft Brewery at Oceanside, and Barrier at East Rockaway.
What to try: When was the last time you drank an Altbier? How about one with New York State ingredients? The Mad Good Altbier is a nice departure from the hop-forward beers out there. The Regular Slice Blonde Ale hits the spot on a hot summer day.
Twin Elephant Brewing Company, Chatham, NJ
Train Stop: Chatham, NJ Transit Morris & Essex Line
Trip Time from Manhattan: 1 hour, 4 minutes
What to know: A relaxing 20-minute walk through quaint suburbia puts you at this taproom that spots a friendly vibe and cozy patio. Twin Elephant just celebrated their sixth anniversary, and if you’re on the east side of the Hudson, you might not know much about them. But they have a ton of Jersey stans who promise you it’s worth the trip.
What to try: Their Nosh series of American IPAs are always reliably bright and hoppy, but don’t sleep on their Zen Fountain Fruited Sours or the Forevrmore, a light, hoppy, crushable take on an English Pale Ale.
Obercreek Brewing Company, Wappingers Falls, NY
Train Stop: New Hamburg, Metro-North Hudson Line
Trip Time from Manhattan: 1 hour, 40 minutes
What to know: This under-the-radar beer darling of Dutchess County is not just an attractive day-trip option for its beers, but also for its surroundings. Tucked into rural farmland that’s a little over a mile walk along country roads, it’s worth the haul for a relaxing place to drink their uncomplicated, delightful beers on a sunny, warm day.
What to try: Any of their DIPAs will do the trick, their French Press Coffee Stout (pictured above) is a nice afternoon pick-me-up, and be sure to get a bottle of one of their farmhouse ales to share with your drinking companions.
North Fork Brewing Company, Riverhead, NY
Train Stop: Riverhead, LIRR Greenport Branch
Trip Time from Manhattan: 2 hours, 14 minutes
What to know: In a town that boasts six breweries, it’s hard to stand out. But this brewery in an old firehouse that’s about three blocks from the LIRR station stands out for both its venue and its beer. Go on a brewery crawl of Riverhead, but be sure to carve out plenty of time here to enjoy North Fork’s fine beverages, some of which include hops grown on their own farm about 15 miles further out east.
What to try: The Sticky Bandit IPA uses Magnum, Cascade and Chinook hops grown on their hop farm and the Glazy Boi uses yeast doughnuts from North Fork Doughnut Company — this spot truly celebrates local.
Fox N Hare Brewing Company, Port Jervis, NY
Train Stop: Port Jervis, Metro-North/NJ Transit Port Jervis Line
Trip Time from Manhattan: 2 hours, 35 minutes
What to know: How adventurous are you feeling? If you’re “five-hour train round-trip from the city to visit a brewery” adventurous, Fox N Hare is very much worth your time. Located just a five-minute walk from the end of the train line on Port Jervis’ Front Street, the brewery’s excellent and varied beer lineup caters to every drinker’s taste. A bonus: your train ride will go over the highest and longest train viaduct east of the Mississippi.
What to try: Start with a Primitive Pils, but don’t miss the Delaware Rye-sing, a Rye IPA that harkens back to a simpler time in beer, and references the mighty river that’s just two blocks from the brewery.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,694
Total breweries visited in 2022: 165
Total breweries visited in Oklahoma: 18
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #1741, Heirloom Rustic Ales, Tulsa, Oklahoma (Visited 25-Oct-2019)
There wasn’t much to Oklahoma’s beer scene six years ago, and that was mainly a result of the archaic beer laws that governed the state’s breweries before a bill was passed in the state’s legislature in 2016. That law finally allowed breweries to sell cold beer over 4% ABV, something that led to a strange song-and-dance on my first visit to the state in 2015 where I could buy low-point beer but also get free tastes of high-point beer. Another bill passed in 2018 fully reformed how breweries can operate in the state, and the floodgates quickly opened. On a visit to Tulsa in 2019, most of the breweries my friend and I visited were less than two years old. Among those was Heirloom Rustic Ales, a brewery I enjoyed so much on a three-day visit to the city that I visited twice.
Heirloom was co-founded by Jake Miller, who I got to chat with on my second visit that weekend. His resume included stops at Florida’s Saint Somewhere, Oregon’s Wolves and People, and a little Oklahoma outfit called Prairie that you might have heard of. His philosophy is pretty simple: slow beer — as in, beers that take time. A oak-fermented lager with Callista hops called Whitecaps was my first introduction to Heirloom, and it really impressed. The Cavern Hymn, an impeccable Kolsch that had me longing for a trip to Cologne, is still on the menu today, two and a half years after my visit.
These days, the beer list is even more lager-heavy — a result of Heirloom suspending their mixed fermentation program in favor of focusing on lagers in 2020 — a bold move considering Miller’s resume, but one that in my experience plays to Heirloom’s strengths. I look forward to crushing a Hard Times, their house lager, on another visit soon.
Social Post of the Week
Beer Twitter hated the Anchor Brewing rebrand. No one else did, apparently.
Beer of the Week
King of Carrot Flowers
Ratio Beerworks (Denver, CO)
Saison with Carrot Juice and Elderflower
5.9% ABV
In last week’s newsletter, I noted that this beer had just come back out and that I was looking forward to drinking it on my trip to Denver. Well, I’m a man of my word. This orange-hued saison is still an absolute delight. It’s got a pear like quality and it’s sweet, with nary a hint of that carrot bitterness. The elderflower, which the beer is “dry-hopped” with, gives a citrusy aroma and flavor. It’s the sum of its parts and it also looks absolutely gorgeous. Pairs best with Neutral Milk Hotel.
Journalistic Misstep of the Week
Neutral Milk Hotel one of those bands I’ve come to appreciate in my later years, but I didn’t appreciate them at their peak popularity, that’s for sure. When I was editor of my high school newspaper, my music writer submitted his glowing review of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. “Who the hell is going to care about this,” I scoffed. I listened to the album and did not see the appeal at all, and begged him to review something a little more mainstream that might appeal to our target audience of teenagers. I eventually relented and the review ran, and it took almost fifteen years until I came to appreciate that album myself and now listen to it regularly (this probably makes me a walking stereotype). Sorry I doubted you, Brad. Brad also beat me handily in the race for Class Vice President the next year, in case you doubted that the guy who liked Neutral Milk Hotel in 11th grade was way cooler than me.
Long Read of the Week
From the “booze news you can use” category, John Carruthers has this piece in The Takeout that dispels the myth that warming cold beer and then re-chilling it will “skunk” it. It took years to get my dad to come around to this — he would always buy his beer warm in case he ran out of space in his beer fridge, out of fear that buying cold beer and keeping it outside the fridge would ruin it. So much wasted time, waiting for that beer to cool!
One More Thing
Your moment of zen — the sunset from the taproom at Bierstadt Lagerhaus in Denver last Thursday:
Cheers,
Chris
I drink less these days so I use UNTAPPD less in general but definitely gave up on using it in any beer festival situ or doing every beer I taste at a tasting room and just jot down what I remember or stood out.
Also - it’s summer! Get off the train and take a boat trip from NYC to Rockaway Brewing or down to Carton in atl highlands and enjoy some sun on the ride!
After more than 11 years on the app, I still love cataloging beer data on Untappd. Ratings are interesting, but I love looking back at venues around the world and seeing what I've had there along w the picture. If I'm on my own at a beer spot, I'll do the full Untappd geek-out. If in a social situation, will take 10-20 seconds at the beginning to snap a few pictures of the beer(s) and menu and put my phone away.