Where Do We Go From Here?
Other Half's new taproom opens, thinking about drinking a year ago, and I get Ratio'ed
Last week, I received my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. And while it’s going to be months before there’s any semblance of normalcy again, my mind has been racing with beer travel plans after nearly a year of being mostly off the road. I’ve been to over two thousand breweries, but I’ve been thinking about the most egregious gaps I have on that list in the U.S. and running through ideas for trips post-pandemic.
There’s no easy way to gauge how breweries rank on as “destination-worthy,” but here are some of the most glaring omissions from my brewery map:
Bell’s Brewery, Comstock, Michigan: What could be more perfect than a fresh Two-Hearted from brewery that’s now in its fifth decade making beer? On the other hand, I’ve heard from past visitors that the experience there lacks the magic the beer has.
The Alchemist, Stowe, Vermont: I haven’t been to The Alchemist since they were flooded out of their Main Street location in Waterbury after Hurricane Irene in 2011, though there’s not much you can do there but stock up on cans.
New Glarus Brewing, New Glarus, Wisconsin: If you’ve never been to Wisconsin, you might not know much about America’s fifteenth largest brewery. It’s practically synonymous with Wisconsin, and I’ve been told it’s quite a picturesque spot for outdoor drinking.
Firestone Walker Brewing Company, Paso Robles, California: I’ve always wanted to drink a DBA at the source, but I’ve been saving a visit here for their Invitational Beer Festival, which has already been canceled for 2021.
Of course, there are at least another six thousand U.S. breweries I haven’t visited, and every trip seems to shed light on places that I’ve never heard of that could give these four a run for their money based on either the beer or the experience. I’m always open to reader suggestions, too, as some of the best breweries I’ve visited have come from word-of-mouth. It’s just as enjoyable to stumble across the next Alchemist as it might be to visit these places.
Other Half Domino Park opens its doors
Other Half Brewing has officially opened its new brewery at Domino Park in Williamsburg, with a soft opening that started Wednesday at River Street and North 1st near the East River waterfront. Indoor and outdoor seating are both available, with beers both on tap to stay and in cans to go. Lunch Truck was batch number one at the Williamsburg brewery, a hoppy Red Ale with Nugget, Chinook, and Centennial hops that’s available on tap right now. They’ll be open 3-8pm on Thursday and Friday, with weekend hours to be announced shortly — check their Instagram page for the latest updates.
The new-to-NYC breweries you might have missed
We’re all not getting out nearly as much as we used to, and many of us may have fallen back on old favorites when we’re out at the beer shop or ordering online for delivery. As a result, there could be a few breweries that started distributing in New York City during the pandemic that you might not be aware of. There’s been a flood of new beers in town from breweries that weren’t distributing here before. Some already had plans to expand to New York, while others were a product of the pandemic — without a steady taproom business, many breweries opted to package beer up and send it out to markets like ours. Here’s a rundown of a few you might have missed:
Drake’s Brewing Company
San Leandro, CA
When I’ve been asked about my favorite breweries in California, Drake’s has come up for years, but most East Coasters aren’t familiar with this stalwart that’s been churning out beer in the Bay Area since 1989. They launched in NYC just weeks into lockdown, so you might have overlooked them. But don’t sleep on their Best Coast IPA or Denogginizer, which to me are near-perfect examples of West Coast-style IPAs and Double IPAs.
Middle Brow Beer Co.
Chicago, IL
This decade-old outfit, which opened its first brewpub in 2019 in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, is focusing on European-style beers. It’s a neighborhood and community-minded brewery, giving back money to charitable causes while making beautiful, clean beers like My Window to Yours, a Galaxy-hopped wild ale brewed with Carolina Gold rice.
Drekker Brewing Co.
Fargo, ND
The first brewery from the Dakotas to distribute in New York City is probably the biggest hypebeast of this corner of the Upper Midwest. When I visited Fargo, I headed to Drekker straight from the airport on the advice of some friendly North Dakotans on the plane, and I was very impressed. This was before they started churning out hazy IPAs and fruited sours on the regular, which is what you’ll find on NYC shelves now. For my taste, the Ectogasm IPA was just as enjoyable at home last week as I recall from my visit to their taproom in 2017.
Foam Brewers
Burlington, VT
You still can’t visit Vermont without at least a seven-day quarantine, so picking up some cans from this acclaimed brewery on Burlington’s Waterfront might be the next best thing. Foam made occasional appearances at special events in NYC pre-pandemic, but started dropping cans regularly over the summer. I keep forgetting they’re here now, as I did a double take when I saw The Fruit That Ate Itself on the shelf this weekend and was handsomely rewarded with a classically hazy New England IPA. And if Foam alone isn’t enough to satisfy your Vermont fix, Ten Bends and Green Empire beers have also been spotted around the city lately.
Tracking reopenings
A few bars and breweries in New York City went into winter hibernation, and with most of the snow hopefully behind us, they’re starting to reopen. Here are some worth a mention this week:
Folksbier in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn reopened their taproom for indoor drinking on Monday, accepting reservations for 90-minute slots
Fourth Avenue Pub in Boreum Hill, Brooklyn reopened on Monday and is back open seven days a week
George Keeley on the Upper West Side reopened on Wednesday after their winter hibernation
Both locations of Randolph Beer in Dumbo and Williamsburg reopen indoor dining Thursday and are accepting reservations
John Doe in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood will reopen this weekend for the first time since December
Cardiff Giant in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn reopens Thursday at 3pm after a seven-week winter closure
Remembering your last pre-pandemic beer memory
Next week marks one year since the first Covid-related restrictions went into place in New York City. You may recall (or might not, as this may feel more like a decade ago), last March 13th at 5pm, a fifty percent capacity restriction was placed on bars and restaurants in New York. After that weekend had passed, they closed for good until outdoor dining and drinking was permitted more than three months later. In that time, nearly twenty thousand lives were lost in the city, and countless others changed forever. Covid-19 continues to infect thousands each day in the city, and most of us still haven’t ventured to a bar or restaurant for a beer indoors since.
I’d like to hear your memories of those first weeks of March when we lived life differently than we probably ever will again. Do you have a specific memory of going out one last time, knowing it would likely be the last? Please share a comment and I’ll publish some responses next week.
For me, Saturday, March 14th is that last day out that lingers in my mind. It was a warmish early Spring day — sunny and in the 50s, so I pushed on to do something I do on the first warm Saturday every year: make the one-hour walk from my apartment to Finback Brewery in Glendale, Queens. I arrived to find a pretty full taproom, but was relieved to find a bottle of hand sanitizer greeting me in the entry way and bartenders wearing gloves and frantically washing glassware — a sign that the brewery wasn’t ignoring the looming pandemic. I was concerned that I was being irresponsible and would be judged by friends for being out drinking beer until I ran into a steady string of friends who were doing the same thing I was: fearing a shutdown and trying to support our favorite businesses. Simple precautions were not yet second-nature to us as lockdown loomed. One friend went in for a hug and I stepped back and offered an elbow bump. Another offered a cheers and I strategically clinked with the bottom of my glass. But apart from these small things, a lot of that day felt normal in a way that I long for now. If the weather is nice next Saturday, 52 weeks to the day, I may try to recreate that visit to Finback in a very different manner and mindset, with the world completely changed.
Brewery Tracker
Total brewery count: 2,102
New breweries in 2021: 28
Breweries with “Brewing Co.” or “Brewing Company” in their name: 851
Breweries with “Beer Works” or “Beerworks” in their name: 15
Brewery Visit of the Week
Brewery #333, Ratio Beerworks, Denver, Colorado (Visited 20-Mar-2015)
A couple weeks ago, Joel Geier, a fellow beer traveler from Wisconsin who also documents his brewery visits, posed this question on Twitter: what's the most breweries you've ever visited in one day? For me, that answer is twelve, on March 20th, 2015. A friend of mine who lives in Denver decided we’d plot out a ridiculous day hitting a bunch of very good Denver-area breweries that I hadn’t visited before. The day began at Joyride Brewing in Edgewater, Colorado at 11:30am and ended at Ratio Beerworks in the River North section of Denver about twelve hours later. The brewery was just one month young at the time, but the beer was far more mature. I was impressed with their restraint on my first visit — not every beer was 8% ABV and not every beer was an IPA (in fact, there wasn’t a single IPA on the menu at the time). That was a godsend at the end of a twelve-brewery day. We opted for a brilliant French Saison (Dear You) and an exceptional Scotch Ale (Hold Steady), both of which they still make today.
The bartender was surprised we had visited eleven other breweries that day. “You’re certainly not acting like it,” we were told, but she should’ve seen me at the last brewery before a nice thirty-minute sobering up walk. I remain deeply ashamed of my drunken state at Mockery Brewing to this day, and it’s a reminder that’s kept me from getting past ten breweries in a day since. Anyway, I enjoyed Ratio so much that first time, that I came back the same weekend for a second visit.
That was the start of my long love affair with Ratio Beerworks. The beers, the space, the location… they all hooked me in. It’s a bright, airy taproom with enough variety in their beer list to keep me coming back for something new and different. Their patio is south-facing, so it gets some substantial afternoon sun. It became my default hangout whenever I was in Denver: where I’d work remotely, where I’d meet friends, where I’d bask in the sunshine. I speak of all these things in past-tense only because 2020 was the first year since they opened that I didn’t visit Ratio and I miss them dearly. When all this is over and I’m back in Denver for the first time post-pandemic, I will post up at Ratio for the day. Mark my word.
[Aside: as I was writing this, news broke that Ratio is opening a second facility in Denver to expand production.]
Geo-Nerdity of the Week
In Denver, a lot of weird things go down on Colfax Avenue. It was, prior to the Interstate Highway system, the main east-west road through Denver. Legend has said it’s the “longest, wickedest street in America,” though I’ve just known it as the 30-mile route through some very unique parts of Denver. It was designated as U.S. Route 40 prior to the construction of Interstate 70, and as a result, it has some gorgeous art-deco landmarks along its route through Denver. Not among them is Cerebral Brewing, which is the other brewery in Denver in the running for my favorite apart from Ratio. The section of Colfax where Cerebral sells its beer is very much a changing neighborhood, and while I have taken several photos on my visits, Google Maps Street View’s November 2019 screenshot speaks well to an area in flux:
Beer of the Week
Coconut Brunch Crusher
Big aLICe Brewing (Long Island City, NY)
Fruited Sour with Tangerine, Pineapple, and Coconut
4.5% ABV
A couple years ago, I started going out of my way to avoid sour beers at a time when other people were finally starting to get into them — and so were the local breweries. My digestive tract didn’t really get along with sour beer anymore, but I started to dabble in them again at home during the pandemic, knowing that the bottle of Tums was steps away in my medicine cabinet if I needed it. That’s how I discovered for myself the absolutely delightful Big aLICe Brunch Crusher. It’s fruity, but not cloyingly sweet, and it’s tart without making your face pucker. And true to its name, I had my first can over breakfast tacos and Premier League soccer on a Sunday last fall. This coconut version adds a flavor enhancement to a beer that already tasted like a tropical vacation. It felt just right for drinking during the brief appearance of warm sunshine last Saturday afternoon, when I enjoyed it in the leafy Industry City courtyard adjacent to Big aLICe’s Barrel Room.
Long Read (or Listen) of the Week
Get to know another forthcoming brick-and-mortar brewery in New York City with this episode of Vinepair’s Next Round podcast with Gage Siegel and Simone Schroeder of Non Sequitur Beer Project. NSBP has been churning out been with partner breweries since their launch in 2019, but they’re hard at work on a space in Bushwick they’re aiming to open this Spring.
One more thing
A small favor to ask: do you know someone who’s into beer in New York who might find this newsletter useful? Sharing is caring, so please share this with a friend or friends by clicking on the button below.
Safe travels and good beer,
Chris O’Leary
Where Do We Go From Here?
March 5th is my wedding anniversary. On March 9, 2020, my wife and I took the train to the NY Aquarium and bummed around Coney Island for a while. Things were weird, but the weather was gorgeous and we were just trying to enjoy our day off.
We got back on the N, hopped off at Atlantic Avenue and went straight to St. Gambrinus. Being Queens residents, we don't get to Gambrinus much so it was a blessed treat. The back patio was open, and even though we didn't know at the time how important ventilation was to preventing Covid, we felt it was a good idea to be outside in the warm weather anyway. I had an IPA from Fox Farm Brewery and an altbier from Suarez Family Brewery. The gentleman who owns the place (whose name I sadly cannot remember now) gave us tasters of an imperial peanut butter stout from Nightmare Brewing Co. and a wild banana stout from Evil Twin. Needless to say, we were a little looped.
That was the last time life felt anywhere close to "normal".
Last March 4th, I cancelled a trip to Seattle as that city seemed to be the only place in USA getting hit with Covid. Instead I drove up to Vermont. As I was spending the days hitting breweries in and around Burlington and Stowe, skiing, and even going to live shows, kept getting the news from back home in PA that chaos seemed to be ensuing everywhere but Vermont. So knowing that I was facing my last day of normalcy in VT on the 11th, I drove out to Hill Farmstead. Great beer of course and a beautiful facility. It is a small hazard getting up there, and a few miles out, phone service went out followed by the lack of paved roads. Drove up a path of mud and ice spinning out, but made it. It was so calming standing out on outside deck looking down the snow filled mountain sipping on some great beer. I had no idea of what we were all about the face, but I vividly remember the peace I felt at that moment, and want it back! The next day I drove home with 2 coolers of newly purchased VT brews, plus another cooler of meats and veggies, and tp knowing that finding this stuff in philly would be impossible! I did not leave my house again for 6 weeks! Hoping to head back to Seattle this summer. Fingers crossed! Love the newsletter!