Harpoon Night at Pony Bar

Lobster and I will be headed up to Pony Bar tonight at 6 for the Harpoon Event.

NYC Craft Beer Week Wrap-Up

Lobster and I made it out to some more events during Craft Beer Week.

TUESDAY NIGHT - WEST VILLAGE

Venue: Blind Tiger Ale House

Featured Brewery: The Bruery (though per passport Sixpoint)

Beer Sampled: Hottenroth Berliner Weisse

Alien - cloudy, pale, tart, delicious, sour apple-y, a very good sour, but not as good as Ommegang Zuur (Alien's favorite)

Lobster - smells like hamster pee, sour, nice, like beer-ade

Beer Sampled: Autumn Maple (cask)

Alien - red in color, honey and maple, delicious
Lobster - didn't like it
Beer Sampled: 7 Grain Saison
Alien - very good, smells more like a beer than tastes like it

Lobster - abnormally drinkable, much better cold (previously drank it at the Cask Festival)

Beer Sampled: Barrel Aged Coton

Alien - tastes like liquor, Southern Comfort-ish, very dark in color

Lobster - yuck, like hard alcohol or after dinner drink, smells like caramel, molasses

Beer Sampled: Brett Blond

Alien - little darker than 7 Grain Saison, a little red-ish, tastes Belgian

Lobster - like black tea



A Selection of Bruery Beers.



Venue: The Half Pint

Featured Brewery: Flying Dog
Beer Sampled: Doggie Style Pale Ale
Alien - amber color, smells like beer, nothing distinct
Lobster - well balanced, dry mouthfeel, not too hoppy or bitter

Venue: Amity Hall
Featured Brewery: Speakeasy
Beer Sampled: Big Daddy IPA
No notes due to buddies showing up and distracting us.

NYC Craft Beer Week Passport Midweek Report

Here we are right smack in the middle of Craft Beer Week here in New York City and Lobster and I have found ourselves torn. We are thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but are finding it a little harder than expected to keep up the pace. Since sampling the 53 beers at the Get Real Cask Festival on Sunday, we really haven't stopped. I've spent each weekday designing an itinerary for that evening. Once 6pm rolls around we're out the door and our night's beer adventure.

Lobster and I made the mistake of purchasing our passports when they first went on sale. You wouldn't think anything was wrong with this, but after also purchasing tickets to the Get Real Event we were told we would be given passports there. It's a fantastic problem to have, but now we both have 2 passports for Craft Beer Week. As this week is now more than half over, here is our review so far.

MONDAY NIGHT - EAST VILLAGE

Venue: Swift Hibernian Lounge
Featured Brewery: Pretty Things Ale Project
Beer Sampled: American Darling
Alien - Apple cider-y, not compex, slightly fresh
Lobster - Strong first taste of honey, drinkable, earthy
Light in color and clear. Aroma was apple/pear.

Venue: Jimmy's No. 43
Featured Brewery: The Bruery
Beer Sampled: Blind Bat Old Walt Whit (The Bruery was all kicked)
Alien - yellow in color, small amount of foam, aroma of nail polish, overwhelmingly sour, like chemicals, entirely unpleasant and undrinkable, vinger-ish
Beer Sampled: Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat
Lobster - light in color, cloudy, tastes a little wheat-y but with a bubblegum.banana aftertaste

Get Real Cask Festival - New York City

Over the weekend Lobster and I attended the Get Real Cask Festival in New York City. We attended the early session on Sunday, and apparently because a lobster vendor didn't show up, everyone with a ticket to that session was allowed to also sample the VIP beers. This was great news for us, as we weren't even expecting a lobster vendor to be there in the first place. More importantly though, we hadn't realized that our ticket would not give us access to all the beers. We were under the understanding that the VIP ticket just allowed you to enter the session an hour early. More than disappointed, I would have been really furious that I paid $65.00 for a ticket and wasn't allowed to try everything, especially because there wasn't a clear list before-hand of the VIP only beers. Many of the beers I was most excited to try were in fact the VIP beers, and I would have been irate at not being able to sample them. (I know I could have bought a VIP ticket, but the only advantage a VIP appeared to have was just an extra tasting hour - but perhaps I just misunderstood.)

Onto the beer. Lobster and I had done some research beforehand and knew which beers we wanted to try out early. These included The Bruery's beers, Ommegang Zuur, Cigar City I.P.A., the Nebraska beers, and Pretty Things' beers.

Beer Review: Kona Brewing Co.'s Wailua Wheat Ale brewed with Passion Fruit

Kona Brewing Company of Hawaii was founded in 1994 by a father and his son. Kona's initial beers were Pacific Golden Ale (now called Big wave Golden Ale) and Fire Rock Pale Ale in 1995. Just a few years later in 1998, Kona opened their first brewpub in Kailua-Kona, HI. In the past twelve years Kona has introduced over ten additional beers and opened two more brewpubs, including one in the Honolulu airport. Kona also produces its beer in the contiguous United States through the Craft Brewers Alliance in both Portland, OR and Portsmouth, NH. (Actually, Kona has just been purchased for 14 million by Craft.)

For this taste test I tried a bottle of the Wailua Wheat Ale Brewed with Passion Fruit. This limited release beer is available from March to September, and is an award winning brew, last taking a prize at the Portland Spring Beer & Wine Festival in Portland, OR in 2009 in the wheat beer category. Kona suggests that this beer be enjoyed after a day at the beach and paired with foods like grilled fish, roasted chicken, or vanilla ice cream.

Details:
12 oz bottle
5.4% abv
Bottled: 6/26/10

Our results:

Alien: Golden in color. Only slightly hoppy. Even though there it contains passion fruit* it is not overwhelmingly fruity. The fruit taste appears almost as a pleasant aftertaste. It is thicker than expected, almost gel-like.

*Alien recently ate lunch at Chef Rick Bayless' restaurant Frontera Grill in Chicago. Alien ordered a "Sparking Passion" drink for lunch which consisted of Harpoon's UFO (also a wheat beer), tangy jamaica, fresh lime, and passion fruit and enjoyed that combination of wheat beer/passion fruit much more.  Here's the recipe.

Beer Review: Kronenbourg 1664

Last night I had dinner at Les Halles on Park Ave. As the Les Halles restaurants are said to be the home base of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain I was hoping for good things from both the food and the beer. Sadly, I was disappointed at both ends. Since this isn't a food blog I'll just say my NY sirloin was about 30% fat that I couldn't even eat and the remaining steak was nothing better than what I would pick up from Stop and Shop. Onto the beer...

I was very disappointed with the selection. On tap there was Kronenbourg 1664, Brooklyn Pennant Ale, and Stella Artois. Most of their bottles were typical restaurant offerings - Corona, Amstel, Sam Adams, and Rolling Rock. Who serves Rolling Rock anymore? There were a few different bottles of Chimay, but I wasn't in the mood for that.

I ordered a Kronenbourg and when the waiter brought it he informed me that it was from a new keg. I found that nugget of information very interesting because the beer tasted flat. My dinner partner (not Lobster) liked the beer, but he rarely drinks so his opinion pretty much gets disregarded. The beer was very bland and tasted like beer-flavored water. Whether or not it was a bad keg, I will not be drinking Kronenbourg again. Even carbonation could not have saved that drink.

Beerographies

When Lobster and I do something, we like to DO IT. While this blog is pretty much just our own rudimentary commentary we'd like to actually appear to know what we're talking about. In an effort to to do that I picked up some beer-related books for us.

A couple of Sundays ago Lobster and I took a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery. While the tour was the absolute worst brewery tour we've been on, I did find one thing interesting - the origin of the brewery. Our tour guide, a late 20s-ish guy with a moustache who appeared to be at the minimum riding a buzz and at the maximum full-on drunk, gave the sorriest explanation of a brewing process we've heard. In fact, he was so horrible (forgetting facts, stumbling over words) that we walked out halfway through. But before he bored us with the process he mentioned how the brewery started - one of the founders was stationed in the Middle East as a correspondent for The AP and brewing his own beer, and I found that fascinating (Lobster did not.). Since we received a muddled explanation of that story I decided to order the brewery's book, Beer School, by founders Steve Hindy and Tom Potter.

As we've said before, Lobster and I are going to start brewing our own beer soon. Before we bought a kit or any supplies we wanted to gain some basic knowledge of the process. After some lengthy research I settled on How to Brew by John J. Palmer after reading strong reviews of it on the Beer Advocate Forum. After leafing through it this afternoon it appears this book was a strong choice for our first foray into homebrewing.

I bought a third book because it was a bargain price, Ambitious Brew; The Story of American Beer by Maureen Ogle because I enjoy reading historical pieces about products that I like. It's not a top priority for me right now, but I'll get around to it eventually.