Thanksgiving is next week, and I’m heading home to Rhode Island to spend time with family and feast on a big midday meal that’ll have me asleep on my mom’s couch before the first NFL game of the day is done. But days before that meal, I’ll be hunting down the beers I want to pair with dinner. Generally, my plan of action is: wild card beer before the meal (whatever local gem I come across on my visit to Rhode Island), Belgian-style with the appetizers (Allagash White comes to mind), malt-forward with the meal (packaged brown ales are a hard find these days, but I’ll be on the lookout), and dessert beer with dessert (Pumking with pumpkin pie has been a longtime pairing for me). What’s your ideal Thanksgiving dinner beer pairing? Give me and your fellow readers some inspiration in the comments!
I’m also in charge of brining the turkey, and since I grew up in Rhode Island, you know I’ll be doing a beer brine with Narragansett Lager. The best part about being on beer-brine duty? A little beer for the turkey, a little for me! (This recipe from Sean Paxton is the one I had my family use when I got them into beer-brining the bird.)
An editor’s note: I got a little ahead of myself last week, so apologies if you got the idea that Bronx Brewery’s new location in Hudson Yards opened on Friday — it opens this Friday. Read all about it if you missed last week’s newsletter.
Black Friday is Bourbon County Release Day
While Black Friday is usually saved for shopping for unnecessary electronics purchases and insane gadget deals, what about frivolous beer purchases? Black Friday is the annual release of Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout, the often sought-after imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels from the Chicago-based, AB-owned brewery. This year is the 30th anniversary of the release, and as usual, the brewery is sending out bottles of some variants of the beer for Black Friday as well. The 2022 lineup includes Bourbon County Coffee Stout, back for the first time since 2017; Bourbon County Biscotti Stout, with anise, marzipan, cocoa, and buttered toffee; Bourbon County Sir Isaac’s Stout, with Black Mission Figs; Bourbon County Proprietor’s Stout, this year with banana, coconut, lime, and pineapple; Bourbon County Two-Year Barleywine Reserve, aged in three vintages of bourbon barrels; and Bourbon County 30th Anniversary Reserve Stout, aged on a blend of small batch bourbon barrels from Jim Beam.
Two venues in the city have traditionally carried BCBS on Black Friday, and it’ll be no different this year: Carmine Street Beers in the West Village and Top Hops on the Lower East Side. Carmine Street Beers is doing an online pre-sale that starts tomorrow at noon, so that you can order ahead for pickup on Black Friday (or any day through December 4th). The shop will also have several BCBS variants on draft when they open at noon next Friday, including the original, Coffee Stout, Biscotti Stout, and Sir Isaac’s Stout.
Top Hops has an online pre-sale on the 2022 lineup as well as a selection of their vintage bottles that kicks off at noon today, with your choice of pickup at their Essex Market or Pearl Street locations. Both locations will have BCBS on draft on Black Friday, and they’re also hosting a ticketed guided tasting of variants of BCBS at noon on Black Friday at Urbanspace 100 Pearl. An $85 ticket gets you six four-ounce pours of current and past releases and some beer snacks. There are only 20 seats available for the event.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,834
Total breweries visited in 2022: 305
Total breweries visited in New Jersey: 48
Total breweries visited that have closed: 270
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #51, Port 44 Brewpub, Newark, New Jersey (Visited 21-Sep-2010)
Last week’s newsletter featured a brewpub that closed last year. This week’s features a brewpub that closed ten years ago. I was digging through my archives of my website this week and came across my writeup of the opening of this short-lived brewpub in downtown Newark, New Jersey. At the time, the Devils and New Jersey Nets were about to kick off their seasons at the nearby Prudential Center, and there was a lot of hope riding on this spot being a great pre- and post-game destination for beer drinkers. The brewer, Chris Sheehan, had just left Chelsea Brewing in Manhattan where he had won multiple Great American Beer Festival medals. In his new role, he not only constructed the brewhouse, but was continuing to plot his own course with beers like Devil’s Red, Siren Wheat, and the Black Market Stout, plus the Catskill Hop Harvest Ale, a fresh-hop beer made with hops from the brewer’s own family hop farm upstate.
The experiment of a brewpub in Newark did not pay off — Port 44 closed two years later in September of 2012. Sheehan went on to several other brewing gigs, including one as Gun Hill’s first brewer, and he’s now at nearby Ghost Hawk in Clifton. And while Newark went another nine years without a brewery opening, Newark Local Beer has been open since late 2021 on Broad Street, giving craft beer brewed in Brick City another go.
Beer Geography Fact of the Week
Since I’m headed to Oklahoma City this weekend, I started to wonder: does every U.S. state capital city have a brewery? The answer is no. Forty-nine of the fifty do, and the one that doesn’t will probably surprise you: Montpelier, Vermont. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the smallest capital city in population (pop. 8,074) is now the only one without a brewery, but in a state famous for breweries, it’s still kind of jarring. One of Montpelier’s claims to fame is that they’re the only state capital city without a McDonald’s, but little did I realize that the lack of a brewery would make them unique as well. This is not to say Montpelier isn’t worthy of your time if you’re in search of good beer — Three Penny Taproom is a renown beer bar that’s very much worth a visit.
This is a relatively new development, as Jackson, Mississippi — the capital of the state that ranks dead last in breweries, breweries per capita, and total beer produced — just picked up a new brewery earlier this year, after their previous one and only brewery closed in 2019.
Long Read of the Week
In VinePair, Em Sauter expresses her feelings about beer styles in a way that perfectly encapsulates my view on them. Do they matter? Yeah, sometimes. But to the average drinker, it might not be so important as beer styles evolve to a dizzying degree.
One Last Thing
I stopped doing the whole “Beer of the Week” thing here earlier this year, thinking that some weeks, there weren’t always beers worth writing about (and some weeks, I might only drink beers I’ve had before and even written about). But one thing really tickled my fancy this week: Industrial Arts’ new non-alcoholic offering: Safety Glasses IPA. Easily one of the best NA beers I’ve had in a long time — it’s got a great assertive hop character and drinks clean without being cloyingly sweet (one of my biggest beefs with NA beer). Give it a chance if you’re into that kind of thing.
Cheers,
Chris
Chris, I’m curious what you’re drinking for the U.S. World Cup games too! Beer selection is an important aspect of my World Cup preparation and I’m struggling because my favorite winter daytime beers are English ales (Fuller’s, Samuel Smith’s) but the U.S. is playing against England and Wales so I feel I must go in a different direction!
People should know that while yes, you can get BCBS at Top Hops. It is also some of the most absurd pricing you'll find anywhere