Craft Beer in Brooklyn - NY Times

Great article about Sixpoint Craft Ales, as well as the rise of beer in the fantastic boro of BROOKLYN! Makes me feel even worse we haven't done a tour there...

Going to California...

er, actually, we already went and came back. BUT while we were there we had the opportunity to taste some brews that aren't normally available here in the tri-state area. We flew to L.A. and drove with our friend Josh to San Francisco. Once there, we had 2 main beer destinations in mind (aside from all the other non-beer-related awesomeness that is San Fran), Toronado and City Beer Store.



Toronado was a relatively long walk from our hotel, but it was well worth our venture. It's got a great atmosphere as well as delicious beer at very fair prices. We could hardly believe our eyes when we saw that all four Russian River brews were either $4 or $4.50! I guess NYC has tainted us a little bit in that respect.



The next day before we had to leave SF we stopped at City Beer Store. Lots of good stuff here. Picked up as many Russian River beers as we could for our camping trip. Unfortunately didn't have the time to try their taps. Here's what we came away with:

Russian River Damnation
Russian River Temptation
Russian River Redemption
Russian River Pliny the Elder
Port Brewing Hop-15

and a few other random singles including a watermelon beer. Needless to say, it'd be nice to have Russian River and Port distribution back here on the east coast. Also worth noting was the Blue Palms Brew House in Hollywood. Good beers at decent prices, right on Hollywood Blvd.!

Visual interlude

Photo taken September of 2007, during our first batch of beer ever. This pot of liquid ended up as Ten Dudes Cherry Poppin' Stout.

Dogfish Head Sah'tea

Lets have a go at a proper review for this one!

Enjoyed 2 pints of this at the brewpub alongside some of the best calamari you'll find anywhere. I had zero expectations on this one, since I had never heard of it, never seen it, and knew nothing. One never knows what to expect from Sam and the boys.

Poured a cloudy yellow with an orange tinge, thin white lacing remains intact.

Aroma bright banana and lemon; sour... obviously a wheat yeast doing the work on this one.

Taste.. thick rolling mouth-feel meets perfect carbonation to form an almost neutral feel. Becomes more and more quaffable with every sip. Flavor hits with a barnyardy orange with an amazing clean finish of lemon and gentle spice. DFH says we've got india black tea in here.. and indeed the finish reminds me of a sip of clean hard water black tea. Hops barely show in the background but provide a most perfect balance. Amazing!

Drinkability will rival anything you can think of, and sitting there with their buttermilk calamari made for a near euphoric experience.

PLEASE somebody tell them to put this in a champagne bottle and let us all have some more of what might be the most well-balanced thing to ever flow from our friends at Dogfish Head!

Serving type: on-tap


For the record, the DFH website has this to say:
A modern update on a 9th century Finnish proto-beer.
Brewed with rye, we caramelize the wort with white hot river rocks, then ferment it with a German Weizen yeast. In addition to juniper berries foraged directly from the Finnish country-side we added a sort of tea made with corriander, caramamom, lemon grass, Indian Black Tea, and ramps leaves. The spicing is subtle and balanced and Sahtea is a highly-quaffable, truly-unique brew with a full-mouth feel.

6% abv