The Drinktator is the People, Redux

SLA abruptly ends delivery privileges, some beer travel advice, and a toast to beer bars we lost during Covid

Not to start on a downer, but Denver’s Falling Rock Tap House announced last week that it will close this weekend — a gut-punch for me and many beer fans in Denver and far beyond. The bar, which opened in 1997, has been a mainstay of the beer scene in the Mile High City, serving some of the best beers in the world and playing host to some of the legends of craft beer during the week of Great American Beer Festival every year. Denver has become largely devoid of a beer bar scene since its brewery scene exploded — and it’s quite possible that the demise of Falling Rock was at the hands of the very industry it helped promote with its stellar tap list. Brewery taprooms are becoming natural gathering places for beer-drinkers, and have evolved into community spaces as well — something that traditional beer bars are often not. But these bars are still charming places on their own and deserve a fair shake. So please, go ahead, patronize your local brewery — but on the way, saddle up to your local beer bar and grab a drink. You might not know what you’re missing.

In a bit, we’ll remind you of some of those local beer bars in New York that we lost during Covid. But first, it’s another frustrating day in the ongoing saga of ever-changing Covid-related rules for the alcohol industry.

With a day’s notice, New York ends to-go alcohol and delivery

The State Liquor Authority posted this graphic to their social media yesterday, announcing the abrupt end of to-go and delivery privileges for liquor licensees.

The State Liquor Authority abruptly ended pandemic-era rules that granted to-go privileges to restaurants and bars and delivery privileges to bars, restaurants, and manufacturers, effective tomorrow, after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an end to the State of Emergency that began last March. The announcement was made with less than 36 hours’ notice, and was an abrupt about-face for an agency that had previously announced the rules would be extended through at least July 5th.

The rules helped keep many businesses afloat during the pandemic, particularly bars that relied primarily on alcohol sales in pre-pandemic times. Those bars were able to sell items like pre-mixed cocktails and even draft beer to-go — items that liquor stores, who allegedly blocked efforts in the state legislature to make these rules permanent, mostly do not offer. Several breweries in New York City were able to keep employees on staff and even hire new ones as a result of direct-to-consumer deliveries. While some breweries have since ceased deliveries, some in the city have continued to promote them, including Torch & Crown in Manhattan, Threes in Brooklyn, and Fifth Hammer in Queens. The rules also allowed breweries across the state to ship their products via FedEx or UPS direct to consumers — that process ends at the end of the day today as well.

This split-second decision is reminiscent of other arbitrary and sudden rule changes made by the SLA during the pandemic, like last July when licensees were given eleven hours’ notice about new food rules or the rollercoaster ride of December 17th and 18th, when new SLA guidelines for New York City were so poorly-written that the city’s lawyers interpreted them as banning the use of restrooms in bars, restaurants, and taprooms. Those rules were promptly rewritten after backlash from the industry and politicians. This is yet another example of the rug being pulled out from under small businesses at a time when they continue to need support to recover from the pandemic.

It should be noted that one of the SLA’s primary functions is to “[support] economic growth, job development and the state’s alcoholic beverage production industries and its tourism and recreation industry.” It is not clear how abruptly banning the delivery and shipping from manufacturers that resulted in job growth supports this function.

Your summer beer travel questions, answered

Halfway Crooks in Atlanta, Georgia, where I hope reader Allen will visit this summer

A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to pose some questions about your beer travel plans this summer. Often times, I end up being a recommendation engine for my traveling friends when they want to explore a city’s beer scene. Now, I’m offering that service up to my readers, and I’ll answer those questions here.

I'm headed south in July for a week-long trip with my partner for our anniversary. We're heading to Atlanta, GA, Memphis, TN, and Laurel, MS. Any suggestions/recommendations are welcome! — Allen

Allen, if there’s one brewery you must visit in your Southern travels, it’s Halfway Crooks in Atlanta. My biggest regret of a day of brewery-hopping in Atlanta in late 2019 was not spending more time there. One hour could have easily stretched to four hours there. How many breweries in ATL — let alone the country — have hosted someone from the Czech Embassy for a celebration of Czech-style beer? Halfway Crooks celebrates pan-European-style beers and has a fun aesthetic that’s just as unique as the beer approach. The food’s pretty darn good, too.

Strangely, I’ve yet to visit Memphis (I’m planning a visit there before the end of this year — it’s one of the largest US cities I haven’t seen), but if you’re in Laurel, do make the 30-mile drive down to Hattiesburg to visit Southern Prohibition Brewing. They’re hands-down the best brewery in the state of Mississippi, and while they’ve come to embrace being the Magnolia State’s hype-beast brewery for IPAs and Fruited Sours and Pastry Stouts, they usually have a couple crushable lagers for those hot, sweaty July days in the Deep South.

I'll be doing a two-week trip to California in September. Starting in LA, I'll be passing through Santa Barbara, Monterrey, SF, and finishing in Sonoma. Do you have a map anywhere of all your brewery visits? Or even better, a list of your favorite California breweries? — Mike

Ask and you shall receive, Mike! Here’s the map of every brewery I’ve visited, which I update fairly regularly. Though I haven’t visited all of these personally, if I could recommend some breweries along the way, in order from south to north, I’d say Highland Park in LA, Figueroa Mountain in Santa Barbara, SLO Brew in San Luis Obispo, Firestone Walker in Paso Robles, Sante Adairius in Capitola, Barebottle and Cellarmaker in San Francisco, and Henhouse and Russian River in Sonoma County. Have fun — this is a bucket-list road trip!

Headed to San Diego in August with a group of 10 guys. Saw you were just there, what breweries would you recommend? — Steve

Hi Steve. I’d recommend calling ahead to any brewery you’re headed to with 10 guys, for one thing. Sounds like a fun time, so I’d recommend a fun atmosphere. Head north up to Stone or Alesmith, both big and boisterous places where they can usually accommodate a big group (Stone also has a big beer garden at Liberty Station, which is closer to downtown San Diego). If you’re looking for something more low-key, I enjoyed the beers at North Park immensely on my trip earlier this month.

A toast to beer bars we’ve lost during Covid

The facade of The Well after its closure was announced last June

With last week’s news about Milk & Hops Ramen Bar’s closure, I figured there was no time like the present to talk about the many other stalwart beer bars 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. So, occasionally this summer, I’ll offer some words on a few beloved beer places that have shuttered since last March.

The Well in Williamsburg was one of the first to close late last Spring, and it was a doozy. The venue played host to tons of memorable beer events, like the NYC Brewers Guild’s annual Blocktoberfest, the Five Boro Craft Beer Fest, annual panel discussions during NYC Beer Week, Beers with(out) Beards, Where The Wild Beers Are, and countless brewery launch parties. When there weren’t events, there was always space inside or out to enjoy a beer from their dizzying tap list, where the liquid tasted bafflingly fresh all the time, even when it felt like you were the only customer they’d had in a week. It wasn’t a shocking closure in a pandemic where events were off the table, but it was still a tough one for beer geeks to take.

Alewife in Long Island City was less of a closure and more of a move to bigger and better things in the evolution of the business from beer bar to brewery, but I’ll still miss bottle shares with friends upstairs, tap takeovers at the cramped little bar, and the shitshow of Zwanze Day celebrations there. Here’s to bigger and better things in Sunnyside.

And speaking of Sunnyside, that’s where Gerry Leary is opening a bottle shop soon. That name is most closely associated with One Mile House, a bar he owned for most of its existence on the Lower East Side that closed last July. If you were a beer geek and had tickets to a show at Bowery Ballroom, you probably spent a good chunk of time here. Heck, if you were thirsty and performing at Bowery Ballroom, you might have shown up here, as happened on more than one memorable occasion. I held Brew York’s Fifth Anniversary party here in 2014 for good reason: it was a venue truly deserving of the occasion.

Side note: if there’s a bar you truly loved that closed during the pandemic and want to offer your words in its memory here, simply reply to this email and let me know.

Brewery Tracker

Total brewery count: 2,255
New breweries in 2021: 181
Breweries visited in Louisiana: 4

Brewery Visit of the Week

Brewery #574, Urban South Brewery, New Orleans, Louisiana (Visited 5-Jun-2016)

In doing some trip-planning for the second half of 2021, I realized that I’ve been to all 50 states since the start of 2016, and Louisiana is the one I’ve visited least-recently. So forgive me if this brewery experience is out-of-date, but Urban South is one of the breweries I’m told about most frequently when friends return from New Orleans, and I visited it in its infancy.

It was a sweltering hot June day when I dragged my friend’s bachelor party to a brewery on a warehouse-laden stretch of Tchoupitoulas Street. It seemed like a good idea at the time: cool off with a beer to escape the oppressive humidity. But Urban South shared a feature (or bug) with many other breweries in big industrial space: no air conditioning. The tasting room was sparsely-patronized when we showed up, but some locals seemed to be enjoying themselves regardless of the hot air barely cooled by the ceiling fans. “You just accept that you’re going to sweat all day, and that everyone else is, too,” one of them explained to us of surviving a New Orleans summer.

New Orleans’ beer scene was at the time in its infancy for a city of its size, boasting around a half-dozen breweries (today, the count is fifteen — low for a touristy city of its size, but let’s be honest — people aren’t downing craft beers on Bourbon Street). Urban South was its newest when we visited, having been open less than three months. Its founder was inspired the same way American craft brewers have been for decades: by touring renown European breweries in places like Belgium and England and Germany. To start, they offered just two core beers: a Belgian-style Wit called Charming Wit, and an American IPA called Holy Roller. For a young brewery, its vision, branding, and beers was mature well beyond its years. Since 2016, they’ve matured further and expanded to a second location down Interstate 10 in Houston.

I’m excited to see how Urban South has grown when I return, but I’m even more intrigued by where New Orleans’ beer scene has gone since then. I look forward to drinking beer under a hot tin roof just steps from the Mississippi again. But perhaps not in the dead of summer next time around.

Beer of the Week

United By Beer 2021
Five Boroughs Brewing Co. (Brooklyn, NY)
Witbier
4.7% ABV

A traditional Witbier is a hard find these days, and I’m exceptionally happy when I find one. I’m even happier when that beer is dedicated to a good cause. So this year’s version of Five Boroughs’ United By Beer, brewed for Pride Month with proceeds going to The Center, was a happy find on a sunny Friday afternoon last week that involved sitting at the bar at several brewery taprooms where that wasn’t possible a month ago. You could call this beer “old school,” but I’d like to think the school of making Witbiers with delightful coriander and orange peel notes never went out of session.

Long Read of the Week

This piece by Lily Waite in Pellicle chronicles the history of beer and the LGBTQ+ movement from pinkwashing to corporate sponsorship exclusivity of Pride. Lily also discusses how alcohol was linked to the Stonewall Uprising. On a related note, on Tuesday, the Stonewall Inn announced they would not serve Anheuser-Busch products at the bar during Pride this weekend because of their donations to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians.

One more thing

Here’s the label for Greenpoint Beer & Ale Co.’s White Boy Summer DIPA that I stumbled across over the weekend. I always give you one more thing, and this, uh, sure is a thing.

Cheers,
Chris