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

A fruit revelation

I can remember trying a Dogfish Head beer called Festina Peche a year or so ago, and really not understanding why a brewery would put out such a thing. It was thin in body, high in carbonation, and was the opposite of whatever I knew "real beer" to be at the time. Fast forward to September of 2008 (last night to be specific) and here I am opening a similar beer just to get it out of fridge. I refer to the Founders Rubaeus, a beer made with 5 (5!) separate additions of fresh raspberries during fermentation. It also happens that I am reading the Lambic section in "THE BREWMASTER'S TABLE:DISCOVERING THE PLEASURES OF REAL BEER WITH REAL FOOD" by Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery.
By coincidence, my super-hot girlfriend places a chunk of Trader Joe's chocolate next to me while I'm in the middle of sentence that reads something to the effect of "there is no better combination in this world than a raspberry lambic beer and chocolate." So there it was, and that is what I did... and the second this beer (not a Lambic, but similar) washed away that chocolate... I realized A.) why we have taste buds, and B.) exactly why this beer was created. End of story. Any fruit beer like this, raspberry, peach or otherwise, will AMAZE you when you try it with a hunk of chocolate.

Sixpoint Beer Pairings at The Habitat

So glad to finally see The Habitat have a beer event! And what a great one to kick it off. The way this one worked, as you can see above, is that it was $20 for four 8oz. Sixpoint pours paired with four different small servings of food.

First up was Sweet Re-Action paired with Salted Plantain Chips. Wow, delicious stuff. Apparently this Re-Action is the original recipe before they first brewed Sweet Action. The plantains' saltiness lent the perfect partner to the sweet yet mildly hoppy Re-Action.

Next was the Belgian Rye-PA with Chorizo Sausage. This was originally supposed to be the Belgian IPA but the Sixpoint guys accidentally brought the wrong one. Not a problem though, it was still quite good. My only problem here was that the sausage was so spicy that it somewhat overpowered the taste of the beer. And the spiciness lingered a bit into the next pairing.

Then there was the Brownstone Ale with the Ropa Vieja Empanada. The empanada is tasty and makes for an interesting pairing with the brownstone. You can really taste the brown and maybe chocolate malt there. Mild yet detectable hops.

Finally it was the Carob Porter (also known as Black Market Porter) with a small chocolate cherry truffle. The Porter had notes of coffee and chocolate, perfectly complimented by the rich chocolate truffle.

12 Months. 12 Homebrews.

It's now been one year since we ten dudes started our homebrewing adventure. last night, we sampled one of every beer we've made to really get a sense of what we'd accomplished. It was surprising to realize that we have actually been brewing at a beer a month pace for 12 months. And even though not every brew turned out the way we wanted them to, it was still pretty awesome to see all of these laid out at once.

We all agreed that our very first beer, one brewed using a kit from Homebrew Heaven, was one of the best. Unfortunately, our purchase of a 55lb bag of Dry Malt Extract confined our latter brews to very similar tastes and textures. This of course leaves us with much room for improvement. Soon, we begin our attempts to brew with all grains rather than dry malt, and that should give us the ability to change up the flavors and styles more accurately.

And of course, Lucky Number 13 is already almost ready to go: