NEW YORK CITY
TEN YEARS AGO, NEW YORK CITY WAS A CRAFT BEER BACKWATER. THERE WERE A HANDFUL of bars with ambitious lists, sure, and some true diamonds in the rough (like the original Blind Tiger Alehouse, a gloriously mildewed, Lilliputian tavern in the West Village). But it wasn’t enough. A handful of craft breweries had struggled to their feet, some dying soon after, and there was a general sense around the millennium that New York might shrug off the craft beer renaissance and remain the alpha city that it is: expensive and above the fray. It was a place for cocktails, pricey wines, and power lunches, not rare farmhouse ales. New York City habitually ignores trends that do not spring from its culturally superior loins, and the crunchier-than-thou methodology of microbrew culture always seemed out of place.
But good local beer belongs here. New York City has beer in its very foundations: No fewer than three breweries called New Amsterdam home in 1612; in 1913, a man named Jake Ruppert built a $30 million dollar brewery and got himself a baseball team, the Yankees (and Babe Ruth); Brooklyn produced one-fifth of the nation’s beer by 1960, according to a recent New York Times story. But alas, by 1976, the number of local breweries had dropped to zero, and no one really cared about beer anymore. The best beers in town were standard-issue, mass-produced imports like Bass, Heineken, and Beck’s.
All that’s changed. It was only a matter of time perhaps, but the Slow Food–obsessed, pickle-your-own-cucumber inclinations (of Brooklynites, in particular) have ignited a new local beer scene. Dozens of reputable small breweries now call the city home, which means beer lovers get to drink far fresher beer, especially unfiltered, unpasteurized beers made in traditional styles, the kind in-the-know beer lovers seek out.
Naturally, the best action for beer travelers is found in the pubs, but for the beer traveler looking to splurge, several of the city’s best restaurants have ambitiously scaled up their beer lists recently, too. Where beer was once an afterthought, it’s now got its own menus—even beer sommeliers. Now truer than ever: New York, the city where you can get absolutely anything.
ITINERARIES
1-DAY The Blind Tiger; Other Half; Brooklyn Brewery, Spuyten Duyvil; Tørst
3-DAY One-day itinerary plus Carton; Blue Hill at Stone Barns; Defiant Brewing Co.; Captain Lawrence; Sixpoint
7-DAY Three-day itinerary plus Ommegang in Cooperstown
Manhattan
MCSORLEY’S OLD ALE HOUSE
15 E. 7th St. • New York, NY 10003 (212) 473-9148 • mcsorleysnewyork.com • Established: Around 1860
SCENE & STORY
Every New York beer tour should start (and maybe also end) here. Joseph Mitchell’s 1943 book McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon describes this timeless place: “Down the middle of the room is a row of battered tables. Their tops are always sticky with spilled ale. In the centre of the room stands the belly stove, which has an isinglass door and is exactly like the stoves in Elevated stations. All winter Kelly keeps it red hot. “Warmer you get, drunker you get,” he says. Some customers prefer mulled ale. They keep their mugs on the hob until the ale gets as hot as coffee. A sluggish cat named Minnie sleeps in a scuttle beside the stove.”
Nothing much has changed, and though tourists predictably flock inside, they do so with very good reason. Open since about 1860 and reportedly unchanged inside since 1910, it’s New York’s oldest continuously operating saloon, and with its sawdust floors and walls packed with ephemera, it’s a time machine. To walk in is to follow in the footsteps of Abe Lincoln, Woody Guthrie, and John Lennon, among others. At McSorley’s, frankly, it’s not about the beer; it’s about the place. It’s about time spent with good friends, deep (or not so deep) conversations, and conjuring the easy elegance of a simpler time in the city.
PHILOSOPHY
“Be Good or Be Gone” and “We Were Here Before You Were Born” are the two house mottos. Women were not allowed in until 1970, and it can still be a bit of a boy’s club (as in modern-day Jersey boys), but on a good quiet afternoon it feels just as it should.
KEY BEER
McSorley’s beer, first brewed by a long lost brewing company called Fidelio and later Schmidt, comes in two varieties, both quite light. Hopheads need not apply. Order one beer; two mugs are served. From time to time one hears of plans afoot to remake the recipe, for now it’s a pair of Stroh’s/Pabst creations, simply one “light” and one “dark” and nothing to write home about.
THE GINGER MAN
11 E. 36th St. • New York, NY 10016 212) 532-3740 • gingerman-ny.com • Established: 1996
SCENE & STORY
A New York standby and offshoot of the original Houston Ginger Man (though only this location is still owned by founder Bob Precious), the beer list is truly incredible here, with some seventy taps and scores of truly obscure beers and a solid menu of upscale pub favorites. The Ginger Man is large and well lit, with varnished wood booths, white tile wall details, framed beer posters, and, perhaps most importantly, the presence of Anne Becerra, one of the only bartending female Cicerones in the United States. Wise imbibers will avoid weekday happy hour, when the bar lines up three deep with Midtown and Murray Hill office workers clamoring for a brew. But watch the schedule for appearances by brewers and special tappings. On a recent night Jérôme Rebetez, the Swiss founder of cultishly watched Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes, popped in for a bottle release.
PHILOSOPHY
Big and brash yet benign. Around the bar are lovely chalk murals by Julie Gaither, another bartender, attesting that this is a beer bar with its heart in the right place.
KEY BEER
Fluffy White Rabbits from Pretty Things Beer & Ale Project, an 8.5% ABV tripel-style beer. It’s hay-hued with funky layers of tropical fruit and spices like thyme and lemon grass.
PONY BAR
637 10th Ave. • New York, NY 10036 (212) 586-2707 • hk.theponybar.com • Established: 2009
1444 1st Ave. at 75th St. • New York, NY 10036 • (212) 288-0090 • ues.theponybar.com • Established: 2012
SCENE & STORY
Hell’s Kitchen has long been a hellhole of underlit, overpriced sports bars with dirty lines and questionable food—not a craft brew in sight. So the arrival of the Pony Bar was a very welcome change for the countless New Yorkers who live and work nearby. Inspired by an old black-and-white photo of Neil Young, there are exposed brick walls, a handsome bar, and snatches of Americana (wooden oars, a canoe on the ceiling, old wooden beer barrels, parade bunting, and a forty-eight-star Old Glory). The five-dollar, fourteen-ounce pours are quite fair (five dollars for eight ounces on imperials and other big beers) and the vibe is friendly, if a little homogenous. All twenty tap beers are labeled with ABV and brewery; when a new keg comes on tap, the cellarman rings a bell and the patrons cheer “New beer!” In 2012 the Upper East Side location opened, and has been busy ever since, surviving an arson-fire in 2015.
PHILOSOPHY
All of Pony Bar’s craft beers are American and on draft (there are only two bottles, in fact—Budweiser and Bud Light, for the uninitiated). There are no dedicated tap lines; the selection continuously changes, with a preponderance of Northeast gems and a happy hour starting at 4:20 p.m. daily (subtle!). It’s a bar for both the curious and committed craft beer drinker eager to try every new thing; the owners even organize tours to local area breweries. Regulars who try at least 100 brews earn a cool, Pony Bar short-sleeve button-down; and there have been a good many who’ve put in that hard work so far.
KEY BEER
There’s a strong northeastern regional presence, so look for new releases from Kelso, Sixpoint, Brooklyn, Ithaca, and Captain Lawrence.
RESTO
111 E. 29th St. • New York, NY 10016 (212) 685-5585 • restonyc.com • Established: 2007
SCENE & STORY
The word resto is sometimes used as slang in France for a casual restaurant, but the sophisticated Belgian artistry here rises above the fray with sure-handed, nose-to-tail cooking served in a cozy refuge. Moules frite
s shine here, naturally: try the Dijon, housemade bacon, Parmesan, onion confit, and tarragon combo (the green curry, lemongrass, coconut milk, and kaffir lime combo is also excellent). What’s more, there’s a bit of bacchanalian sensibility when it comes to both beer and portions, which are available in ultralarge sizes. Fancy a delicious whole roast chicken for two ($60) and a three-liter Jeroboam of luscious St. Feuillen Tripel ($165)? You’ve come to the right place. The great thing is that you won’t feel like an idiot for ordering said jumbo spreads. It’s what people do at Resto, and it’s worth both the cost and effort. Dining at the bar is a great option if the tables kept open for walk-ins are already spoken for. Sunday dinners are institutional, and recently beer dinners have gotten more frequent. The slightly older crowd consists of well-dressed Manhattanites, but doesn’t feel annoyingly business-like. The Cannibal, owner Christian Pappanicholas’s beer and butcher shop next door, is also a must-see.
PHILOSOPHY
Elegance and earthiness in equal measure—big measures.
KEY BEER
There are seven good Belgian ales on tap starting with Bavik Pilsner on the lighter side and heading all the way up the scale of liver impact to Koningshoeven’s 10% ABV Quadruple, certainly a fine place to stop if you’ve had the five in between.
JIMMY’S NO. 43
43 E. 7th St. • New York, NY 10003 (212) 982-3006 • jimmysno43.com • Established: 2005
SCENE & STORY
Most nights when you amble down the stairs into this amiable rathskeller (a bar below street level) the compact, stocky New York craft beer maven Jimmy Carbone is perched on a stool to greet you, along with the aroma of some very good food cooking—stick-to-your-ribs fare like ribs and gnocchi and recently, even some interesting Filipino comfort food. Jimmy’s got a twinkle in his eye and a beer in hand, and he’s glad to see you. The bar has a small, cozy dining room area, a narrow bar, and more or less feels like it was transported, inch by inch, out of Germany. There’s something wonderfully enveloping about the bar, or maybe that’s just the way it feels when you huddle in cheek by jowl to sample beers and rap with Jimmy or and his crew. When an adjacent building collapsed in a fiery gas-leak explosion in 2015, Jimmy’s was nearly destroyed, and was forced to close for weeks on end. It was a very, very close call.
PHILOSOPHY
With twelve ever-changing taps of beer and some twenty-six in bottles, Carbone takes things coast-to-coast, and somehow he manages to score a lot of unique kegs other bars never seem to have.
KEY BEER
Jimmy loves his Belgian ales, from the mother country and our American counterparts, sometimes pitting them against one another in taste-offs. Brasserie De Ranke’s XX Bitter, a dry, bitter, and peppery Belgian pale ale inspired by Orval is sometimes on tap. It was brewed to be the hoppiest beer in Belgium and is not for the fainthearted, but rewards those who love earthy, intensely flavored brews.
281 Bleecker St. • Ny, NY 10014 • (212) 462-4682 • blindtigeralehouse.com • Established: 1995
Beer, the drink of the people! Few New Yorkers understand this better than the owners of the Blind Tiger, a legendary New York City tavern that was relocated not long ago to the West Village. Dave Brodrick, its co-owner, was forced to close shop in late 2006, weakened by a long-running licensing battle involving the State Liquor Commission and 66th District Councilwoman Deborah J. Glick. His secret weapon? An Internet petition, signed by hundreds of the bar’s most fervent fans.
For ten years, the Hudson Street incarnation of the Tiger (as it was often called) had offered a vast selection of artisan-made ales from European and American microbrewers (nary a drop of Bud, Miller, or Coors was served, ever). But the surroundings took some getting used to.
“The Blind Tiger Ale House is Dirty, Unhospitable [sic], Unpleasant, and served Terrible Beer,” protested Brian Ó Broin, an assistant professor of linguistics and medieval literature in New Jersey, on a website he created expressly for this complaint. “Ambience: 0 [not a single redeeming quality],” he railed.
To the uninitiated it seemed oppressively small and crabbed, especially on weekends, when regulars shied away. The list could seem by turns eccentric and expensive; there were rare bottles selling for twenty dollars, but if you somehow managed to get to the bar to order one, your feet were sticking to the floor. And a visit to its bathroom, a malevolent place at the bottom of a staircase (itself macabre) was not easily forgotten.
And so the Irishman wasn’t much taken in by its charms. Nor was the Tiger’s landlord, who hiked the rent in 2005, forcing the tavern to make way for Starbucks no. 374. Brodrick searched eight months for a new venue to house the Blind Tiger, settling on a former bar across from John’s Pizzeria, but just before the new location opened, Deborah Glick—councilwoman for the neighborhood—wrote a letter to the State Liquor Commission urging denial of the new Tiger’s liquor license on the basis that it would be “a large bar that primarily serves beer.” Say it isn’t so, Glick! Brodrick launched a charm offensive, opening the new Tiger sans beer—but armed with unusual cheeses, pressed sandwiches, baked goods, espresso drinks, even birch beer (nonalcoholic). No Coyote Ugly, this. Then he invited Glick to come see what the Tiger was all about. A little business trickled in, but no Glick. The stalemate wouldn’t break, and eventually, Brodrick shuttered the doors. Fifteen hard months of exile began; New York’s beer crowd glowered in their mugs somewhere else, and talked about the Tiger.
Like the Dove, the miniscule Hammersmith, London watering hole once favored by Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway, or McSorley’s Old Alehouse, the original Blind Tiger was dusty and cramped. It was, at its best, old-world squalor exalted. As the stalemate continued, Brodrick and Co. planned their new Tiger, nearly double the size of the original. It would be a beer boutique, a shrine to craft-brewed brews complete with wood-paneled walls and floors, custom bar, temperature-controlled cellar (for aging rare ales), and a selection every bit as byzantine as the menu at Murray’s Cheese Shop, just down the block. It wouldn’t be easy. But the tigers were restless.
Vive la résistance! Starting in September 2006, a Tiger militia—hailing from the New York area and a handful of foreign countries—began circulating an e-petition aimed at the State Liquor Authority. Thomas Paine, who, more than 230 years ago, cried out for fairness from the Crown on the taxation of beer—“the humblest drink of life”—might have been proud. “[The Blind Tiger] is far removed from those outlets who seek the sort of person that consumes cheap mass-produced drinks associated with binge drinking and uncouth behavior,” wrote Alex Hall, of Brooklyn—the document’s author and John Hancock. “Good beer is the new wine,” wrote David Gould, signer no. 997, adding, a bit unhelpfully, that “drinkers of yellow beer should be drawn and quartered,” a reference to both King George III’s preferred form of execution and the sort of mass-produced dross unfit for the Tigerian palate. Others struck a more conciliatory tone. The Tiger “will be a nice quiet place where you can bring your mother,” assured one. Carry on, men! “Peace and quiet are to be found in the Catskills, not on Bleecker Street! Prohibition is over!” howled one insurrectionary. Another cited Jane Jacobs’s 1961 manifesto, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, with its endorsement of civilized bars. “As a bouncer in good standing with local law enforcement,” wrote Raymond Lopez, signer no. 999, “I can attest to the well-behaved manners of this crowd.” One after another cast the closure in patriotic terms. “For a beer enthusiast, the closing of the old BT was as tragic as if they closed the Statue of Liberty,” one gloamed. Peter Flanagan—the 1,385th partisan to commit his name—rattled his musket to end the debate: “Enough already; the people have spoken.”
Indeed they had. The board eventually relented, and in March 2007, the Tiger reopened with a huge (but civilized!) party that hasn’t really stopped. Infinitely cleaner, but no less fun, it’s New York’s most fiercely defended beer territory.
Here, brewers are rock stars. The Tiger is especially strong in West Coast beers,
a good thing for East Coasters looking for beers with aggressive hop character. Cheese samples from Murray’s across the street are often on hand for the taking, too. It’s all quite civilized, really. Looking back on the battle, Brodrick was circumspect. “A well-dressed woman came in the other day and told me our bathrooms were the nicest she’d ever seen,” he said.
The Blind Tiger’s menu rotates weekly as brewmasters personally bring in their freshest releases. Simply scan the board, chat with the bartenders (or owners, who are normally on hand), and get busy sampling.
LA BIRRERIA AT EATALY NYC
200 5th Ave. (top floor) • New York, NY 10010 • Entrances on 5th Ave. and 23rd St. (212) 229-2560 • eatalyny.com • Established: 2011
SCENE & STORY
Set in an 8,000-square-foot aerie soaring above Manhattan with views of the Flatiron and Empire State Buildings, La Birreria serves up the ultimate in Italian-style cask-conditioned ales (brewed on premises) paired with food by Mario Batali. The dream team in charge includes American brewing standout Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and creative Italian craft beer stars Teo Musso of Birrificio Le Baladin and Leonardo Di Vincenzo of Birra del Borgo. Brewer Brooks Carretta is at the kettles. That’s a lot of hands in the brewhouse, but all very able ones indeed.
The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition) Page 32