What: Beer Class
Where: Greenpoint
Why: Because the verbs matter more than the adjectives in the craft beer movement.
I was going to give a talk on Oct. 13 at the Black Rabbit Bar in Greenpoint, owned by the delightful Kent and Anne Lanier, as part of what we were billing as “Beer Class.” Read More
What: Homebrewing
Where: Williamsburg
Why: Because the retail options for buying equipment and ingredients in New York City have multiplied from basically nothing to several in just the last few years, and an entire subculture has sprung up.
On Saturday, Oct. 2, I hoofed it from the Metropolitan stop on the G train (why did Read More
What: Pumpkin Ale
Where: Brooklyn
Why: Because it was the first weekend of fall, and someone tweeted something.
At 5:43 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 14, a New Yorker tweeted the following: “Anyone have a favorite pumpkin beer OR a favorite place in Brooklyn for drinking pumpkin beers?”
Two minutes later, the redoubtable CrankyKaplan Read More
What: The Great American Beer Festival
Where: Denver, Colo.
Why: Because the Mile High City celebrates its craft beer culture in a way New York is just coming around to
The City of Denver, along with the trade group the Brewers Association, hosted a jolly bus tour of Denver’s more Read More
Welcome to The Hophead, a weekly toast to the intoxicating culture of beer in New York.
Perhaps more than any individual, Alex Hall is responsible for popularizing cask ale in New York City. Cask ale is what the Brits call—quite literally and appropriately—real ale. No pasteurization. No artificial carbonation. Just unadulterated beer post-fermentation, free of preservatives.
Cask Read More
It’s easy to envy Pat Fondiller, the beermeister of Park Slope institution The Gate. He gets paid to have conversations like this one on a recent late weeknight in the bar’s back corner. He was talking with Gate founder and owner Bobby Gagnon. The topic was which beer the bar would not carry. One Read More
Erica Shea was on the Chinatown bus from Boston to New York after Thanksgiving in 2008, reading Burkhard Bilger’s profile of Sam Calagione, the wort-crusted owner of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, in The New Yorker’s food issue. She texted her boyfriend, Stephen Valand, who was visiting relatives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn: “We have to Read More
