beer, new york

GQ wants you to try some beers. Fifty beers, to be precise. Here’s the link (warning, an annoying ad that pops up every fifth beer or so).We like GQ, but are a little skeptical of the utlity of such a lengthy list. The beers are presented with little context , and fifty beers seems too many to wrap one’s head around. That said, there are many worthy selections, including a couple of local favorites: Sixpoint Sweet Action–inarguably, the best beer to sip while playing bocce on a Saturday afternoon–and Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout.

Lets all take a moment to pray for our brothers and sisters at the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark. In what can only be described as a gross miscarriage of justice, the brewer has enacted new rules that limit on-the-job drinking of free Carlsberg beer. No longer will Carlsberg drivers enjoy their “very old right” to have up to three beers a day outside of lunch.

We sympathize. Our bosses at the home for orphan children with fragile bones (where we work when not beer blogging) recently limited our beer intake to a half-case a day after a game of “juggle the newborn” got out of hand. There’s no justice.

-BNY

As I rode to work this morning through a cloud of dogwood blossoms on Brooklyn’s 5th Avenue, my thoughts turned to A-HOLE THIS IS A BIKE LANE. Sorry, my thoughts turned to spring, and the arrival of HEY JERK I’M TRYING TO RIDE HERE. Ahem. To the arrival of seasonal ales. I did a little research, and lo, a food writer at the Washington Post beat me to the punch, focusing on cherry-flavored offerings brewed locally in the District of Columbia, as well as a few bottled beers. It was the latter that caught my attention, particularly the Sam Adams American Kriek, available in 750-milliliter bottles.

The kriek is flavored with sour Balaton cherries, aged in oak barrels and blended with what Koch calls “Cosmic Mother Funk”: ale spontaneously fermented with whatever organisms grow in the rafters of his Boston brewery, which dates back some 150 years. “We’ve gotten organisms from when Lincoln was president,” Koch says with a chuckle.

This is further evidence that brewing is infinitely more interesting than making wine. Can you imagine a a major California vineyard fermenting a few buckets of old grapes that someone left behind the warehouse and hoping for the best?

-Ben

On Thursday, the BNY editorial team headed to the Cherry Tree, on 4th Avenue and Bergen in Brooklyn, to watch the marquee match-up of the night: high-flying Kentucky versus high-I.Q. Cornell. This was my first trip to the Tree (we chose it over a more familiar haunt, Pacific Standard, across the street, because it was less crowded and was playing the audio for the game). The bonus was the unexpectedly huge beer selection. I counted 21 beers on tap, including delicious Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, which I’d only had previously in a bottle. Other beer notes:

-I’m a huge Captain Lawrence fan, but I find their most ubiquitous product, Liquid Gold, simply undrinkable. It tastes to me like a cross between a Blue Moon and a Miller High Lift that has been filtered through the anus of a skunk. I thought I ‘d give it another shot last night–big mistake. It took a  Sixpoint Sweet Action to restore my equilibrium.

-Twenty-one beers, but no Brooklyn Brewery products. Ross and I were comparing notes and realized we almost never see beers from the borough’s biggest brewer in Brooklyn bars. (Say that 20 times). Brooklyn Lager on tap is better than most earthly pleasures, but exceedingly rare. We speculated that Brooklyn focuses most of its attention on its more lucrative bottling business. Thoughts?

-Twenty-one beers, small bar. I worry about old beer in these situations. Really. It keeps me awake at night.

On to the game, and the subject of today’s post. It was amazing. Not Kentucky vs. Cornell, which  was a stinker dominated by the ridiculously talented Cats, but the hype-free second game, between Kansas St. and Xavier. It was a double-overtime, shots falling from everwhere, instant classic. Even more than the game, though, watching solidified my feeling that Gus Johnson is the best (or, at least, most emotive) announcer in any sport. Gus calls a game like he’s broadcasting from a crowded sports bar. When the action heats up, he doesn’t even bother with analysis–he just lets it out, bellowing, whooping, making weird elephant sex noises. So watch this clip twice–once for the amazing game, once for the amazing Gus. (Check out the 1:50 mark: HE’S IN SHAPE).

-Ben

When I was 17, I was drinking $3 wine out of plastic cups behind the stands at high school football games. When Ken Grossman was 17, he was already brewing his own beer. Guess which one of us became the most influential American brewer of his generation?

This is just one of the nuggets gleaned from an interview with Grossman by Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione from the March/April issue of The New Brewer. (As we told you a few weeks ago, Grossman’s brewery, Sierra Nevada, is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary this year). A few years later, Grossman was scrounging equipment to build his own brewing operation. Here, Grossman talks about how the search, and about how he put his junior college education to good use, convincing his teachers to help him fabricate his equipment.

I did pretty much all the equipment. I would track down equipment on solo road trips, visiting communities up and down California and into Oregon. I would find a small dairy community and go to the surrey store, which was the supply company for milking equipment and tanks, and say, “Do you know of any dairies that have gone out of business?” I spent many, many days scouring for pumps and tanks and I’d find some defunct dairy barn full of old milking machines and stainless pipe pumps and I’d go in there with a hacksaw and wrenches and unbolt everything and figure out how to get the tank and equipment loaded in my truck. Besides the dairy pilgrimages, a guy named George Pizone ran this multi-acre scrap yard down in Keys, Calif. that focused on food processing equipment. He was near the Gallo winery and some other big food plants, so he had lots of stainless steel valves and fittings and tri-clamps and plug valves and conveyor chain and all sorts of stuff. I would go down there on a regular basis and that’s where I got my mash tun and kettle. The kettle was a steam-jacketed vessel probably built in the late 40s or early 50s and the steam jacket had rusted out but was cork insulated. I took it out to the junior college and began working on it. Since I was planning on opening the brewery, I realized I needed all these other skills that I didn’t have plus I didn’t have stainless steel welding equipment, fork lifts or drill presses. I had a great group of teachers at the junior college who didn’t mind that I would go out there and fabricate my brewing equipment.

Talk about making the most of your education. Look for anniversary editions of Sierra Nevada brews in stores in the next few weeks.

-Ben

The Philadelphia Daily News is reporting that state police, acting, we assume, at the orders of their teetotaling alien overlords, recently conducted simultaneous raids on three popular Philadelphia bars known for their wide beer selections, confiscating hundreds of bottles of expensive ales and lagers, now in State Police custody at an “undisclosed” location.

Based on a complaint from someone the State Police refuse to identify, three teams of officers converged last Thursday on the three bars, run by Leigh Maida and her husband, Brendan Hartranft. Checking their inventories against the state’s official list of more than 2,800 brands, the cops seized four kegs and 317 bottles, totaling 60.9 gallons of beer, according to police calculations.

Police claimed that no one had registered the names of the seized beers with the state Liquor Control Board, a process which requires a $75 registration fee.  However, according to one bar owner, more than half of the seized beer was properly registered, but the cops couldn’t find the registrations in their database. Among the seized beer: Belgian Duvel, which is sold in more than 200 restaurants and bars in the state.