Last Wednesday, sitting around a conference room table, going over a friend’s qualifiers presentation:

J: “Hey. Want to get beer tonight?”
Me: “Ok.”

And simple as that, 6pm, we’re strolling out of the UES to the painful transnat corpdom that is Midtown, heading towards the Ginger Man, a Manhattan beer powerhouse with 66 beers on tap and 120+ bottles,
and one of 12 listed bars in NY with Dogfish 60 on tap.

It’s a Wednesday, Midtown’s a wasteland, and it was 6pm. We didn’t expect there to be much of a crowd, but by the time we got there, it was completely packed! This is a huge bar with plenty of seating area, but alas, all seats (and standing room) was taken up by suits loosening their ties. After standing around awkwardly for a bit, waiting for the last member of our party to arrive, we finally procured a table, got our beers, got halfway through the first round, and then realized… the bar was practically empty. Somewhere in that one hour differential, the B&T crowd had finished pounding in that one last drink before catching the PATH back home.

This bar’s location was really a shame, considering the wonderful bounty of beer they had available.

I tried (ever my own or someone else’s glass… no I didn’t drink 4 beers there):

Stoudt’s Blonde Double MaiBock
y’know, i just wasn’t feeling this beer at all. i really wanted to, since double bocks sound like candy on a stick, but while this had alot of different flavours going for it, they didn’t… mix together at all. just ended up being a bit weird and incongruous

Franziskaner Hefe Weisse
typical hefeweizen with a bit more spice/kick than usual. pretty decent, but not too special for a hefe

Victory Storm King Stout
yummy, good stout.
didn’t stand out from other stouts, but had the same texture & nice malty taste of caramel & choco (not sweet). delicioso!

Dogfish Head 60 Minute
Wow. So unlike the Dogfish Head 120 minute, this actually still tastes recognizably like an IPA. However, its also the best IPA i’ve ever had. just the right balance of hops, acidity, flavour… i wouldn’t, however, compare this to the 120, just b/c the 120 really belongs in a dessert beer category, instead of the normal IPA.

One of the best things, however, about 36th st though, is its proximity to K-town. We jetted over there, grabbed some korean bbq & Hite korean beer (which is pretty amazingly mediocre, but hey, every country has their own macrolager), and it was an excellent night.

I’d definitely head over to the ginger man again sometime, just not between 5 to 7:30pm on a workday.

The Ginger Man
11 E. 36th St., New York, NY 10016
nr. Fifth Ave.
212-532-3740

Rejoice, ye humble supplicants kneeling at the foot of the Beer Gods; our prayers have been answered!

Take MenuPages, add beer, you get BeerMenus.com, or a rather comprehensive listing of bars & restaurants and their respective beer menus, currently only available in New York (but of course). A quick browse through the site yielded many fruits; I finally know where I can find that delicious amazing nectar known as Dogfish 120 (and for only $7/bottle? I feel like that’s got to be some kind of typo… maybe a little bit of investigative journalism is at hand? Oh the depths I’d go to for the Truth and a bottle of Dogfish), and there’s apparently a free beer & … oysters? tasting on May 6th at Blind Tiger Ale House. Well sir, you’ve sold me twice - beer & oysters rank right up there with oxygen in my book.
On a more disappointing note, the uptown offerings seems to be fairly meager. A walk through my neighborhood shows 8 restaurants/bars. That’s at least 30x that existing up here. Conspicuously missing is the UES beer mecca of David Copperfield’s (if 30 taps & 100+ bottles doesn’t count, then nothing does).

Still, a solid/clean site that just launched 2 days ago — looking forward to seeing this site become a real go-to spot for beer in the city. In retrospect, it’s quite amazing that this particular Web 2.0 niche took so long before being filled…!

I cannot stand alcopops. I can’t stand the marketing to women (or conversely, the lack of marketing to women for beer, scotches, gins, etc). T00 many college-aged women just give up on beer (well, yes, nobody likes beer initially) and stick to the Smirnoff ices, the wine coolers, the Bacardi breezes and god knows what other . Take high fructose corn syrup, add artificial flavouring and food colouring.

Regardless of the sociological & health-related reasons, this little tidbit provides all rationale needed for disliking Smirnoff Ice & it’s kin…

How many calories are there in a bottle of SMIRNOFF ICE®?
SMIRNOFF ICE® has 228 calories per 12-ounce bottle, that’s about 70 more than a super-premium/imported beer but don’t worry, that difference in calories is about the same as one hot wing, five little pretzel twists OR 3 tortilla chips…with nothing on ‘em.

Smirnoff US Website

What? Who on earth would find that reasoning logical?

Let’s do some bullshit mathematics, why don’t we? First, face value: 228 calories per 12 oz bottle? I’m a smaller than average person — my estimated daily calorie intake is in the 1700-1800 region. 7 bottles of Smirnoff Ice is my entire daily calorie allowance (plus my death by diabetes). Now let’s consider I drank my daily calorie allowance in Guinness instead (150cals/12oz and a 20934802934x better tasting drink)… that becomes 11 bottles, which means I could drink my normal limit of 6-7 beers, and still have room for lunch. Those additional 70 calories per 12 oz-bottle? That is 44% more calories per bottle. Drinking 3 beers is practically the same thing as drinking 2 Smirnoff ices — make it become a habit, sprinkle in a dose of 20-somethin’-year-old binge drinking, and you’ve got a recipe for absolute disaster.

Please, for the love of everything decent in the world, don’t drink alcopops. If you’re just in it to get drunk and you don’t like the taste of beer & wine, then just take shots and cradle a glass of water in between them, and keep on trying beers/wines/cocktail concoctions you enjoy and won’t cause massive obesity with the liver cirrhosis.

Last night I got my hands on a glass of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA at a fine local establishment. Let me summarize: it’s 20% alcohol, 30% hops, and 50% awesome.

Now, the internets claim that this stuff tastes wildly different out of a bottle and a tap; I’m skeptical, but I’ll mention that I got it on tap. I paid $10 for a 10 oz glass, which seems pretty extreme (and, well, it is), but the good news is that it’s so much more alcoholic than regular beer that it’s actually a relatively good deal. Not that I recommend this stuff to anyone who just wants to get smashed - this stuff is seriously dangerous, and it would be a waste of some fine craftsmanship.

I try not to spend too much time talking about things like the “bouquet”, so I’ll simply instruct you to smell this beer. I think the word “apricot” would be appropriate, at least if “apricot” is ever an appropriate choice of words.

“But,” you ask, “what kind of IPA smells like fruit?” It’s a fair question and brings me to sort of the major point about this whole ruckus: this stuff transcends regular beer categorization. I mean, it may have been made like an IPA, but calling this an IPA is like calling Porto a fortified wine — there’s important information that’s not getting conveyed. There is a hell of a lot of hops in this, I guess, but I wouldn’t call its flavor bitter in the traditional sense. It’s… I dunno. Sweet, strong (that 20% business is no joke), rather less head than you’d find in a Belgian ale (though since I didn’t pour it, I don’t know if that’s by the brewer’s design or the bartender’s.

In fact, I think the analogy to port wine might be a good one: Dogfish 120 may be the first beer I’ve ever encountered that I would ever consider calling a “dessert beer.” This stuff isn’t cheap, but I would definitely put it in the category of things you have to do at least once in your life. You may or may not like it, but I guarantee that it will change the way you think about beer.

If I’m inside, seated, and paying more than $3 for a beer, you had better not serve it to me in a plastic cup. You’re running a restaurant, not a frat party or a music festival. Have some self respect.

Since this is a blog about liquids (as opposed to a blog about expensive food or incredibly crappy service) I’ll call that a good enough reason for me to never go back to Tommy Doyle’s at Kendall Square ever again. Ever. And you shouldn’t either.

[Seriously, boys and girls: if you’re at Kendall Square (which you shouldn’t be without a good reason, by the way — that place is a wasteland), just go to Emma’s if you’re patient or the CBC if you’re not. Emma’s has excellent food and a good selection of beer and wine from two continents, and the CBC is a craft brewery.]

Like Harvard Square, Inman Square is a cool neighborhood. Unlike Harvard Square, Inman is actually cool in the college-town sense; it’s got a bunch of awesome little cafés, pubs, and shops. (It’s also a bit of a trek from the T, but that’s just Cambridge for you.)

I’ve been a few times to this really cool little pub at Inman called The Druid that has excellent music and some pretty solid selections. On Wednesday night some classmates concocted the brilliant idea of going thut we all needed to unwind.

But then it turned out that The Druid has trivia on Wednesday, and it was way too full. So we went down the street to Bukowski’s Tavern.

I’d never been to Bukowski’s before. The place is going for a bit of a “neighborhood” vibe — food seems to be an important part of the experience, and they serve it until 1 even on weeknights, and it’s good big windows for those of you who want to be reminded that there’s such a place as “outside” when you’re hanging out. It’s got a big open space (for better or worse).

Now, I’ll interrupt myself and give away the punch-line: the place has three stars on Yelp. I tend to hold out for more. For those of you too lazy to click the link (and I don’t blame you), I can summarize: some people don’t like the food, lots of people don’t like the waiters, it’s sometimes way too loud, and it’s always expensive.

So, okay. I was there on a Wednesday - it was neither loud nor crowded, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t when normal people are there. I didn’t have any food; some of the people I was with got some artichoke dip: one said it was good and one said it tasted like it was from Trader Joe’s (which I think means that it’s good but not worth $6.50). The waitstaff were waitstaff; I told them what I wanted and they brought it. When we first got there I ordered from the bar, which I would have preferred to keep doing (it makes the accounting a lot simpler when you’re in a group). Whatever.

While they have PBR on tap for $3, Bukowski’s does have some phenomenally expensive beer. I blew something like $25 on three excellent beers, a Dogfish Raison d’Etre, a truly wonderful Unibroue Trois Pistoles, and… hmm… I don’t remember what the third one was. At least I remember being satisfied at the time.

There are beers on the menu that are $45, which is pretty much permanently out of my range. Next time I’m there, I’ll probably shell out for the Chimay Bleue — I almost did last time, but I decided I was a little too drunk to appreciate a $15 bottle of beer.

Bukowski’s not the Sunset — it’s got less than half the beers, most of the stuff on tap is pretty standard, and for some reason I’m feeling like it’s more expensive (I’ve got a bad enough money sense even when I’m sober that I have no idea if that’s actually true). On the other hand, it is in Cambridge and its selection is, in its own right, nothing to sneeze at. I don’t know if I’ll be back on a Friday or a Saturday, but sooner or later I’ll be back. It will be expensive and glorious.

I can’t stand Gristedes. They’re overpriced, underwhelming, and manages to bring grocery shopping to a continual new low with every trip. But they are the closest grocery store to me, and my pets were hungry, so what else could I do? While browsing the frozen fruit section (because buying fresh melons every couple days for my millipedes is getting to be a bit of an annoyance), I noticed – Sierra Nevada’s spring seasonal beer!

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American news is generally a little too fair and balanced for my tastes, so I get a lot of my news from our friends across the pond. Because of that, I read an article a few days ago outlining the Tories’ plan to raise taxes on strong beer, cider, and malt beverages.

Now, let me open up with the obvious: I support taxing malternatives for the same reason I support taxing Abercrombie and Fitch: they’re just too highly correlated with sociopathic behavior (because this is a serious blog about serious topics, I’ll refrain from any terminology that ends in -baggery). And I am irreconcilably opposed to any legislation, in any country, that would increase the price of Belgian ale. So let’s call this proposal a step forward and a step backward.

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I may just have found my new favourite site.

Doesn’t it just annoy you sometimes when you discovered a wonderful new beer on tap in a bar somewhere, manage to remember the name and trace it to a brewery and maybe an online retailer or so… but then you realize you live in a state where BevMo doesn’t exist and now you’re going to have to call/visit all the local beer caves. Now imagine you live in NYC and there’s a million random grocery stores/delis/etc that randomly stock on craft beers.

Luckily, the Great Brewers’ Alliance, hooks us up with a searchable online database of the 10 nearest retailers, relative to your zip code, that bought a local alliance distributor in the past 90 days. For example, my local distribution turns out to be Union Beer Distributors in Brooklyn (which I have heard much tell of, but still haven’t made the trek out to Brooklyn to visit yet… heck, I haven’t even made it down to LES to see New Beer Distributors).

Check it out here: http://www.greatbrewers.com/union/index.php?option=com_retail&brewery=2

I now know that a grocery store just a couple blocks away from me carries Allagash White. Admittedly, it’ll probably be 200% markup or something, but at least I know I can get Allagash White whenever I feel compelled!

Despite Neil’s ardent protests to the contrary — I like Sam Adams. I enjoy it. It tastes delicious. I would order it at a bar. I would be happy if someone brought it to my place for a party (however, if you bring Heineken and you don’t drink all of it, I’ll have to start thinking of interesting steak marinades for it… and if you bring Bud Lite, that just means you hated me in the first place).

So, when Freshdirect offered a chance to sample 6 Sam Adams in one convenient 12pack for $16.99 of course I took it!

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