The Great American Ale Trail (Revised Edition)
Page 35
Farm-to-table cooking meets local Hudson Valley brewing in the name of art, no stone unturned. “It’s know your farmer, know your brewer,” says former beer director Michael Greenberg. That collaborative relationship extends to diners who come in on a Sunday, as I did, with an interest in beer. Beer is often used in the kitchen as well, from soups and broths to desserts.
Local New York area brewers shine here, obviously, especially Kelso of Brooklyn (also called Greenpoint Beerworks), constantly at work on a number of experiments for the restaurant including brews infused with farm-grown lavender, lemon verbena, farm-fresh honey, housemade apple-mint tea, chocolate mint, fall harvest honey, and roasted beet puree.
There’s no way to predict what you’ll eat in the elegantly appointed, fifty-five-seat former dairy barn other than by glancing as you walk in at the posted list of what’s seasonal, which is going to be a long one, even in early December. One merely indicates any allergies or other restrictions and the rest is up to Barber and his band of thirty or so talented chefs, who interpret vegetables, especially, with a creativity bordering on the gonzo, to do the rest. On the day I visited with a cousin we gazed out the windows at verdant farmland and meandered through at least twelve courses paired carefully with a half-dozen beers, mainly from the immediate area.
Some of the edible and imbibed highlights:
•Tender micro vegetables (including beets, radishes, and carrots) garnished with ficoides glaciale (an ornamental edible from the southern hemisphere), and flakes of smoked Tuscan kale
•Cloudy-blonde, 8% ABV saison beer from Brouwerij Hof Ten Dormaal, in Tildonk, Belgium, with wheaty notes of apricot, lemon, and black pepper
•“Vegetable sheets” of liquefied and dried wheat, parsnip, and beet edible stained glass hung from little mini wooden clothesline clips
•Kelso Pilsner of Brooklyn, New York, (infused with lemon verbena and Blue Hill Farm’s honey)
•A tiny “burger” of pureed, citrusy beets on a sweet mini brioche with sesame seeds
•A round of tastes of Kelso’s cocoa-powdery Chocolate Lager, spicy Christmas Ale
•Defiant Brewing Co., in Pearl River, New York, and Keegan’s superbly light and smooth Mother’s Milk Stout
•Delicate brook trout with a spicy fall vegetable and Maine crab sauce
•Homemade ricotta from Dan Barber’s farm in the Berkshires
•A deliciously herbal 7.4% ABV Saison Deluxe from Southampton Brewery
•Tender pasture-raised venison tenderloin with Brussels sprouts and pistachios
•Bread pudding in a mini cast-iron skillet with housemade vanilla ice cream
Pearl River
DEFIANT BREWING CO.
6 Dexter Plaza • Pearl River, NY 10965 (845) 920-8602 • defiantbrewing.com • Established: 2006
SCENE & STORY
In a narrow old artillery factory built “before electricity” and currently lined with gleaming copper tanks, Bronx native and head brewer Neill Acer holds court over one of the most distinctive and worthwhile little brewpubs in America. The crowd, a mix of office professionals, firemen, police, and other locals, is loyal and friendly, drawn by the good beers and house-smoked barbecue, which alone is worth a drive from New York. Served heaped on platters, this is some of the best pulled pork, brisket, and dry-rubbed ribs (served with pickles and mac ’n’ cheese) you will find in the Northeast.
Perched on a stool behind the bar, Acer stokes a vibe of easygoing misbehavior among patrons. “We work pretty late and we like to brew in front of people. There is a convenience level to being a microbrewer . . . just be in a little room with your favorite people and music playing in the background.” It’s clear he dearly loves his chosen path. “When I discovered how to make beer, it was like someone taught me how to make fire,” he laughs.
PHILOSOPHY
Thanks to rigorous training at the Siebel Institute and stints setting up several different brewpubs, Acer has a capable hand with a huge swath of beer styles, from pre-Prohibition-style lagers to 15% ABV Imperial Stouts. And while he can rather effortlessly brew across entire stylistic valleys, he hasn’t lost sight of his mission. “There is a level of David and Goliath to doing what we do as brewers,” says Acer of the Defiant name. “You are really fighting for huge powers. Right here in the Northeast, this is the jewel in the crown; this is the Manhattan triangle. It is the largest beer market in the world.”
KEY BEER
Acer’s best beers are also his biggest, so look for the 9% ABV Belgian Tripel, various stouts, and his pièce de résistance, Death, a coal black monster with the complexity of an old vine Bordeaux and heft of a dump truck. Despite its huge profile, it’s got an incredibly smooth, decadent palate of chocolate, dark fruits, and vanilla notes.
Cooperstown
BREWERY OMMEGANG
656 County Hwy 33 • Cooperstown, NY 13326 • (607) 544-1800 • ommegang.com • Established: 1997
SCENE & STORY
The roots of Ommegang are tightly intertwined with the history of Belgian beer appreciation in this country. American Don Feinberg headed to Europe after Yale to do his MBA in 1978, ended up in Brussels, and fell in love with Belgian beer. He was also in love with Wendy Littlefield, his college sweetheart; the two of them eloped to Brussels and ended up spending three years there. To make a long story short, when they returned, they started organizing to bring in some cases of Duvel Golden Ale as an import project, and one of the United States’ most prestigious beer import companies was born, Vanberg & Dewulf, later responsible for introducing American beer lovers to Affligem, Rodenbach, and Brasserie Dupont’s Saison lineup, among many others.
In 1997, the couple collaborated with Affligem, Scaldis, and Moortgat (brewers of Duvel) to launch Ommegang, dedicated to classic Belgian styles of brewing. The brewery itself is incredibly beautiful: an homage to eighteenth-century Wallonian farmstead architecture, the creamy white structures were built on a former hops farm on the banks of the Susquehanna River. With a portfolio of superb, award-winning beers and tours every day, Ommegang has become a true beer lover’s destination.
PHILOSOPHY
Ommegang is dedicated to making Belgian beers with superb balance and appropriately decorous packaging. The company stands out in a sea of imitators with its consistent image and beer formulation.
KEY BEER
There are five year-round beers and five seasonals and the occasional one-off or experimental brew, always a hot commodity, like a series of beers pegged to the HBO show Game of Thrones. Hennepin, a 7.7% ABV unfiltered golden farmhouse style (saison), is perhaps the most emblematic of Ommegang’s year-round brews. It’s a delightful melody of grainy toast flavors, mild banana, lemony tartness, and spicy notes of clove and pepper, and a great introductory beer to noncraft beer drinkers. Lately the brewery has been releasing more daring beers with spices and added barrel aging, such as the excellent Zuur, a 6% ABV Flanders oud bruin, or old-style brown ale.
BEST of the REST: GREATER NEW YORK STATE
SOUTHERN TIER BREWING CO.
2072 Stoneman Cir. • Lakewood, NY 14750 • (716) 763-5479 • southerntierbrewing.com
The makers of the excellent, 9.5% ABV Unearthly IPA (a Double or Imperial IPA) offer popular weekend afternoon tours Saturdays at 3 and 5 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. (eight dollars; first come, first served, so arrive early). Tours start and end in the brewery’s attached pub, the Empty Pint, which offers fourteen mostly Southern Tier taps and pulled pork sandwiches, a heated patio, and a nice little list of Belgian ales, among other imports.
PENNSYLVANIA
THERE IS NO MORE HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT BEER SCENE IN AMERICA THAN IN AND around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, going all the way back to founder and brewer William Penn himself (who tied up his boat on arrival next to a pub, the Blue Anchor) and the Founding Fathers, many of whom were avid brewers and regulars in the area taverns and public houses, those “nurseries of liberty.” By the early twentieth century, Pennsylvania was home
to a world-famous beer brewing industry and America’s oldest brewery, Yuengling (founded 1829), still in operation. Thanks to the work of a new wave of enterprising small breweries and hardworking tavern, bar, and brewpub owners, it’s an absolutely superb place to explore beer, just as it was in America’s earliest days.
And there’s something else about Philly. The conversations, the approach to bar keeping—it’s a no-nonsense town. You ought to discover and drink craft beer and craft-beer cuisine without worrying about it all too much. And getting to know it will take repeated visits, because you will meet more than one tour guide who’d like to show you his or her favorite watering hole, and before you know it, you’ve discovered ten new, perfect places you never knew existed. That’s Philly beer.
Today, there are some ninety breweries in the state, with about twenty in the Philly vicinity, and countless places to enjoy their creations. There are more than 600 beer-friendly bars, including some of the very best in the country, in Philly alone. And then there’s that famous Philly “attytood,” the bluster and tough talk about the neighborhoods before they cleaned up, giving it soul, authenticity, and depth. In a way—and no disrespect to the excellent breweries—Pennsylvania feels like it is even more of a craft-beer drinking state than it is a brewing state, and beer travelers will undoubtedly face many tough choices on a swing through.
Another reason Philly is such a great beer-drinking town is the trifecta of Monk’s Café co-owner and Belgian beer guru Tom Peters, the Philadelphia Daily News columnist Don Russell, and the late Bruce Nichols of Museum Catering Company. Nichols first brought the late writer Michael Jackson to Philadelphia in 1991 for a tutored beer-tasting dinner at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, a smash success followed in years hence by some dozen others, during which time he joined forces with Peters and Russell to create Philly Beer Week, an annual ten-day June bacchanal drawing thousands of visitors to over a thousand events throughout the city and the first such event in the nation, which has spawned scores of similar fetes. The only limit is time. Maybe we should call it the City of Brewery Love?
ITINERARIES
1-DAY The Foodery, Standard Tap, Monk’s Café, Local 44, Memphis Taproom (Philadelphia)
3-DAY One-day itinerary plus Victory Brewing Company, Yard’s, Teresa’s, 700 Club, Jose Pistola’s, Bridgid’s (Philadelphia)
7-DAY Three-day itinerary plus Capone’s (Norristown), the Farmhouse (Emmaus), Grey Lodge Public House, McGillin’s Olde Ale House, Yuengling Brewery
Philadelphia
THE STANDARD TAP
901 N. 2nd St. • Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 238-0630 • standardtap.com • Established: 1999
SCENE & STORY
In a charming three-and-a-half-story structure dating back to at least 1810, the Standard Tap’s headquarters has been a bar many times over, as well as a pharmacy and drugstore. It’s also been an apartment, at least on the third floor, when former Samuel Adams brewer Will Reed lived there while working with his partner Paul Kimport to help revitalize Philly’s stricken Northern Liberties neighborhood. They’d thought about brewing beer there, too, but the spaces were a bit confining, so they decided to open a beer bar instead. The building had the right bones, and was also just a half block from the site where a brewer named John Wagner became the first American to successfully produce lagers. Reed and Kimport have built a distinctive two-story pub with an ambitious menu (duck confit, anyone?) and solid reputation for taking care of their beer and their customers.
PHILOSOPHY
Good beer and food for locals, by locals. Reed and Kimport felt the area breweries weren’t being well represented, and that the city needed to get behind its own residents working hard to remake the area’s historic brewing scene. So the beers are exclusively from eighteen local and state breweries and always on draft or cask.
“We looked at places like Portland and Seattle, and we wanted people to be really proud of where their beer came from,” Reed recalls. “So we’re just going to do all local beer and we’re going to do all draft beer. I love the Belgian stuff and everything, but I don’t want to be a Belgian or a British pub. I don’t want to be an Irish pub. I want to be a Philadelphia pub.”
KEY BEER
There are twenty taps, two cask engines, and a single bottle: Lord Chesterfield, an antique recipe still brewed by Yuengling. Avoid it unless you’re just one of those irredeemably curious cats. Troëg’s is a favorite tap handle; look for the piney, 6% ABV Simcoe dry-hopped Hop Back Amber on cask. It’s soft, dry, quenching, faintly sweet, and bitter all at once, just as a good cask-conditioned beer should be.
The Foodery
837 N. 2nd St. • Philadelphia, PA 19123 (215) 238-6077 • fooderybeer.com • Established: 2006
With more than 800 labels of beer available and a vaunted deli, the Foodery also has an especially good selection of large format bottles from U.S. and Belgian craft brewers. The Northern Liberties location is across the street from Standard Tap, so there’s no reason not to take a spin through. There are picnic tables inside and the owners sponsor frequent tasting events.
KHYBER PASS
56 S. 2nd St. • Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 238-5888 • khyberpasspub.com • Established: late 1970s
SCENE & STORY
The Khyber Pass, which has been a drinking establishment since the 1850s, takes its name from a remarkable story about its Maryland-born owner, Serrill Headley. As the story goes, Headley, daughter of a University of Maryland football star, fled Pakistan and her marriage to a Pakistani diplomat over the Khyber Pass in the early 1970s, moved to Philadelphia, and bought the old bar in a rush of freedom.
In 1987 new owners took over the space, nestled in an unassuming corner of the historic but tourist-clogged zone of Old City, and continued its tradition of live music. Over the next twenty-two years and at least one more change of ownership it would become a venerated indie rock venue featuring the likes of Guided By Voices, Iggy Pop, the White Stripes, Liz Phair, and the Strokes, with locally legendary shows up until 2010. At the same time, the owners were slinging bottles of Chimay, and Philly’s young tastemakers were simultaneously sampling some of the best rock music of the era and some world-class beer to boot. Today the Khyber (as it’s known) has settled into a quieter groove as an appealingly ramshackle craft beer bar with excellent soul food and a good, deep list of beer served by super-knowledgeable bartenders. There’s a gorgeous old wood bar adorned with twinkling Christmas lights and a dining room where the bands once rocked, and a peaceful vibe throughout.
PHILOSOPHY
The Khyber treats its beer list like record collectors treat vinyl, prizing rarities. Look for unusual American Saisons from Pretty Things, St. Somewhere, and Stillwater. At the same time, it’s not too stuffy to stock BMC (Bud, Miller, or Coors), though one suspects such options are merely concession to the Jersey Shore–ish crowd that makes Old City (and this bar, sometimes) a no-go on weekends.
KEY BEER
There are twenty taps and two casks; this would be an excellent place to sip a fresh Stoudt’s Pils, or something along the lines of a Port Brewing Mongo, a recently on-tap IIPA (a.k.a. DIPA or Double IPA) named for a brewery cat who lived out all its nine lives, not unlike what the Khyber Pass bar seems to be doing.
GRACE TAVERN
2229 Grays Ferry Ave. • Philadelphia, PA 19146 • (215) 893-9580 • gracetavern.com • Established: 2004
SCENE & STORY
A beloved local institution, this railroad apartment–like space is just wide enough for some stools and a rail to line up some beers or throw some dice around and eat some spicy blackened Cajun green beans and remoulade, which is mandatory and only two dollars. It’s not a shrine to craft beer with an encyclopedic list, nor an annoying sports bar; it is a tavern for people to relax in, and its layout and architecture encourages conversation. A joint effort by Monk’s Café founder Tom Peters and local publican Fergus Carey, it’s got battered tin ceilings and a gorgeous buil
t-in 1955 refrigerator called a Bevador and an abiding sense of time well spent. Don’t miss it.
PHILOSOPHY
The Grace fosters a sense that a life well lived necessarily involves hours upon hours of sometimes aimless conversation over beers with friends in a local bar. At some point in your life, make this that bar.
KEY BEER
With about nine taps and forty-five well-chosen bottles, there’s an ideal blend of funky crafts and everyday sippers from Monk’s Flemish Sour to releases from Sly Fox, Nottinghead, Yard’s, and Miller Lite for good measure. Start it off with Troëg’s crisp and medium-bodied, straw gold 5.3% ABV Sunshine Pils and go from there.
EULOGY
136 Chestnut St. • Philadelphia, PA 19106 • (215) 413-1918 • eulogybar.com • Established: 2002
SCENE & STORY
Built in a narrow, old four-story townhouse with a Belgian-flag themed red, black, and yellow paint job, Eulogy has a decent house brew on tap (Busty Blonde, a Belgian pale ale beer brewed by La Binchoise), a decent tap row and 400-bottle list, reputable moules frites, burgers, and wings. Because of its location, Eulogy makes a good early afternoon stop after paying respects to the Liberty Bell, but according to the owner himself—an American and former resident of Belgium—it is to be avoided on weekend nights. The bartenders are knowledgeable, but if the place is packed three-deep you won’t get to ask any questions or sample the kegs one by one before you make the choice. On any weekend, this is a first beer of the day sort of bar.