Summer Roadtrip Inspiration
Mapping every NY brewery and remembering The Ginger Man and Mission Dolores
Welcome to July! Hope your plans for the holiday weekend enjoy beer. I will be spending a portion of the weekend a couple thousand miles outside the city, quenching my thirst at a couple of my favorite breweries in a state I haven’t visited in five years. I’m not a fan of made-up holidays, but the Brewers Association says that Saturday is National Independent Beer Run Day, where they encourage you to make a beer run to an independent brewery before the holiday. Since I take things literally, I intend to lace up my sneakers and run to an independent brewery this weekend. It’ll only be a two-mile run, because at altitude, I don’t want to wreck myself with running. The beer can do that.
Anyway, this week, I slacked off a bit when it comes to words — blame it on the heat and the fact that I was preoccupied with updating the map below, which I hope you can use as a reference tool to find a brewery nearby for your own beer run on Saturday.
Every Brewery in New York State, Mapped
It’s back! After some frantic updating on account of a slew of new breweries since 2019, the Brew York New York State Brewery Map is updated for 2021.
Let this be your summer beer road trip inspiration. It’s clear from the map that there are big clusters on Long Island (Suffolk County, in fact, boasts the most breweries of any county in the state), in the Hudson Valley, and around the Finger Lakes.
Last summer, when Covid numbers were at their lowest in mid-July, I headed up to the Finger Lakes and spent a good chunk of time along Seneca Lake, within walking distance of Two Goats Brewing (which has an incredible view from its deck) and Grist Iron Brewing Co. (which had great live music and on-site rooms for overnight stays). A short drive away was Seneca Lake Brewing Company (which has a gorgeous English pub vibe and cask ales), Lucky Hare Brewing Company (which had lots of outdoor drinking space), and Pantomime Mixtures (which, despite lacking a taproom, is a must-stop if you enjoy wild-fermented beers).
I also spent a couple days in Canandaigua, a city of ten thousand people that punches above its weight when it comes to breweries, with six in town (I enjoyed Young Lion, and since I visited, Frequentem has opened to high praise from friends I trust) and a certain New York City-born brewery just ten minutes down the road.
But don’t let me sway you in any one direction. Pick a spot on the map and explore. With well north of four hundred breweries in the state, you’re never very far from one, even in the furthest reaches of the state.
Speaking of the furthest reaches, here’s exactly how far and wide New York’s beer scene stretches:
New York’s Northernmost Brewery: Maple Brewing in Hogansburg
New York’s Southernmost Brewery: Coney Island Brewing Company in Brooklyn
New York’s Westernmost Brewery: 7 Sins Brewery at Sensory Winery in Ripley
New York’s Easternmost Brewery: Montauk Brewing in Montauk
A toast to beer bars we’ve lost during Covid, Part 2
For the next few weeks, this space will be dedicated to the many stalwart beer bars that closed during the pandemic. Many closed before I started this newsletter, and I was waiting for an opportunity to acknowledge these closures when I felt like they had slowed to a trickle, rather than the onslaught that came last summer. Here are some more words from both me and other readers of this newsletter on a few beloved beer places that have shuttered since last March.
It closed with a whimper, not a bang, but the writing was on the wall that The Ginger Man would permanently close last October when they sold off their cellar at nearby bar Under the Volcano. The bar, part of a string of locations in Texas and Connecticut, was one of the old guard of New York City beer spots. This January would’ve marked the bar’s 25th anniversary, but it sadly fell short. The bar’s 60 taps boasted what was arguably the best beer selection in the city throughout its history, but especially in its early days. “They always had a half dozen or more Belgium or American-Belgium [beers] on draft,” recalls reader Bill J., “also, two casks and a wonderful interior.”
The interior was much more polished than other beer bars in town for most its time, which attracted a very different crowd — the after-work scene was often standing room only, full of suits from nearby offices that would squeeze in cocktails before catching a train to the suburbs from Grand Central or Penn Station — it was roughly equidistant from both transit hubs.
On one memorable Monday night in September 2014, I attended an epic tap takeover from The Bruery at The Ginger Man, when the after-work and beer-geek crowds weirdly overlapped. In the back room, Patrick Rue led a beer and cheese pairing that included the sought-after Black Tuesday, a 19% ABV Imperial Stout. Out front, the average ABV of the beers on tap was north of 10% and by 10pm, the crowd was very much feeling that. I saw more people passed out at The Ginger Man that night than I have seen passed out in any bar before or since. It certainly didn’t help that there were some very comfortable couches there.
Another big loss for New York’s beer scene was Mission Dolores, which announced its closure after more than ten years back in February. I wrote about this Park Slope standby in one of my first newsletters after the announcement:
Mission Dolores was a major supporter of the beer scene, hosting many brewery launches and beer releases over its history. It’s where I drank my first post-Sandy Barrier beers. It was a stop on what I [vaguely] remember as an epic Park Slope bar crawl with the staff of Green Flash on a sunny April afternoon a few years ago. It’s where I drank Other Half’s first-ever beer, an IPA collab with Peekskill called Nuggy Num Num. It played host to countless get-togethers, birthday parties, and dates.
Much like The Ginger Man, while beer fans knew it as a destination, its appeal went far beyond beer: pinball fans, dog owners, families, writers, and anyone just looking to have a drink in the sunshine all sought out Mission D. The neighborhood lost a true gem as much as the city’s beer scene did.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,255
New breweries in 2021: 181
Breweries visited in Massachusetts: 49
Breweries visited with “Lager” in their name: 5
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #1032, Jack’s Abby Craft Lagers, Framingham, Massachusetts (Visited 26-Dec-2017)
At the beginning of 2017, I took my dad to his first beer festival: the Rhode Island Brewfest. He was never much of a craft beer drinker, but I was determined to help him find a beer there that he would like. When we passed the Jack’s Abby booth, I stopped in my tracks.
“Dad,” I told him, “you have to try the House Lager here. I think you’ll like it.”
Forty-five minutes later, he was still standing at the booth, drinking House Lager and yukking it up with the sales rep pouring the beer. When I came home for Thanksgiving that year, dad’s beer fridge was well-stocked with cans of House Lager. And when I was home for Christmas and suggested we visit Jack’s Abby together, he didn’t even hesitate.
It wasn’t the first brewery we visited together, but it was the one that gave him by far the most satisfaction as a reformed fizzy yellow beer drinker (a decade before, he had graduated from Coors Light to Sam Adams Light). Sure, his first order was a House Lager, but he even dabbled in the Modern Hell Kellerbier and a couple variations of the Framinghammer Baltic Porter that he said were “not bad,” which was his ultimate compliment for most full-flavored craft beers.
When my dad passed in early 2020, after the funeral, we toasted to his life with cans of House Lager, and every time I drink a Jack’s Abby beer, I think of him.
Sports Nerdity of the Week
That Rhode Island Brewfest was held in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, which was home to Minor League Baseball’s Pawtucket Red Sox until 2020, when the Triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox moved north to Worcester, Massachusetts. That unceremoniously left McCoy Stadium without a baseball team this season — a season that would have marked the 40th anniversary of the longest game in baseball history. That game at McCoy between the Pawsox and Rochester Red Wings lasted 33 innings and ended in a 3-2 victory for Pawtucket. The game, which started late on April 18th, 1981 due to a lighting issue, was suspended after 32 innings and 8 hours of gameplay that lasted until 4 a.m. on April 19th. The game resumed on June 23rd when the Red Wings returned to Pawtucket, and it took a mere 18 minutes for the 33rd inning to end on a Pawsox walk-off hit by career minor leaguer Dave Koza.
My favorite little bit of trivia: two future Baseball Hall-of-Famers played in that game, and both started at third base. Wade Boggs went 4-for-12 and drove in a run for the Pawsox, and Cal Ripken, Jr. went 2-for-13 for Rochester. Ripken would be called up to the Orioles for the first time just six weeks after the game ended, while Boggs would finish the 1981 season in Pawtucket before starting for Boston on Opening Day in 1982.
Beer of the Week
Para Siempre
Endless Life Brewing (Brooklyn, NY)
Mexican-Style Lager
4.5% ABV
On a day when you could practically cut the humidity with a knife, I decided to bike over to Endless Life’s taproom on Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn. I arrived a sweaty mess, and an easy-drinking lager was exactly what I was looking for. This snappy, crispy boi had some gentle grassy hop character and some mild corn notes. This was true to style, refreshing, and went down almost too easily after a five-mile Citi Bike ride.
Long Read of the Week
We mentioned the end of delivery and to-go drinks in New York last week in the newsletter, and Kate Bernot has a follow-up in Good Beer Hunting (which so kindly links to this newsletter), including quotes from Megan Rickerson of the wonderful Someday Bar on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, who has been vocal on the bungling of Covid-era regulations by state agencies.
One more thing
Here’s a fun thing: a word cloud of the most common words used in the names of the 2,255 breweries that I’ve visited.
Cheers,
Chris
I'll miss the Ginger Man and Mission Dolores was my go to bar for many years. Sorry for the loss of your dad.