New York – Page 18 – A Good Beer Blog

Meta-Beer-Blogging…Or Watching Troy Watch Phin And Paul

BeerBistro! after all the people go to bed.I had a great time Friday night. It was fun to meet the Southern Tier guys as well as the very dapper Liliana and Vlado, those great folk behind hosts Roland + Russell (who, by the way, I am starting to think were either two dusty Victorian-era sherry broker gents were secretly offed by L/V on their way up the drinks trade…or are the names of their dogs) but the real fun was being unexpectedly surprised. Greg Clow was kind enough to tell me that by times I am too cranky and – you know what – he’s right. I claim to have an excuse, however, as by times I feel like one of those 19th century astronomers trying to figure out the layout of the canals on Mars. I sort of live in a bubble placed some distance from our beery subject matter. I don’t get to these beer dinners, I don’t have access to a swath of great pubs, can’t just pop out to anywhere for a Rochefort of any degree, my nearest craft brewers are two hours drive away and until Friday I had only met one other person into beer writing face to face. I organize family trips around beer hunting and get sleepy around ten pm, too, so closing down BeerBistro was not what I had expected.

As a result, I build up some presumptions. One was that the beer dinner idea was going to be a bit stiff. You have to understand that I am a BBQ in the back yard in frayed hiking shorts kind of guy. When I walked into the Academy of Spherical Arts in jeans and a ball cap – albeit a lovely Adirondack Brewpub one – and saw folk in Toronto casual (aka eastern Ontario dress-up) I was worried. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The table guests from Southern Tier, The Toronto Star, the LCBO beer and marketing groups and R+R made for great company. And the food and beer matching thing was not as lame uninteresting as I feared. I don’t think I will get too much into obsessing over pairings – as I prefer beer as ingredient than a match – but it was really interesting to see how the chocolate dessert reacted with a raspberry wheat altered the beer drastically, removing the grassiness, highlighting the fruit and making for a palate cleanser. The third course, a variation of what I know as Cambodian “Western Style” yam and chicken curry (my education gleaned from Kingston’s excellent Cambodian joints) was also just dandy with the heat of the ST IPA.

The wall o’whisky and whisky’s friends at The Academy

In the end, the food and beer was just a side show to the gathering over beer. It was really about meeting Troy finally and speaking a bit about his plans for his beer writing whether at his blog or TAPS, the recently revived Canadian beer magazine – that’s him taking a photo of Phin DeMink and Paul Cain; putting a face to the name of Cass, the founder of Bar Towel as well as contributors like Harry; speaking with Sheryl Kirby, partner of Greg over at Taste T.O; talking to Josh in the end for hours about the economic tensions that are affecting where craft brewing is going; reusing my old jokes like the time the grade one teacher asked what Daddy did and was told “my Daddy takes pictures of beer!”

The next day I stopped by Church-Key again, making the 50 km detour to Campbellford to pick up some fine local ales. The day was sunny and warm and, because it was Saturday, there were more cars in the parking lot than I had seen before. People were sitting on the porch drinking samples just enjoying John’s beer. The shop was busy. I grabbed a six each of Northumberland Ale and West Coast IPA and drove on home.

By The Beer Cooler of Wegmans I Laid Myself Down And Cried

A fantastically bad shot of the actual Wegmans from GooglePlex

Not really but there was a moment of near tears – of joy and frustration, that is. What else, after a sensible visit to Fort Stanwix, could make me feel this way other than a beer cooler room in a not particularly recently modernized, middle sized grocery store in Liverpool NY just two hours from my house? Aside from all the macro-brew they offer at honest prices – there, filling half the cooler, was Ommegang, Southern Tier, Victory, Dogfish Head, Middle Ages, Ithaca and a whack of other mid-Atlantic brews in sixes and mixed twelves. There were also way more of our own Unibroue of Quebec than I can get here next door in Ontario as well as imports like Samuel Smith and Duvel. There were even special releases like the Southern Tier’s Un*Earthly which I had back at the hotel watching the UNC game against Louisville – $5.99 for a bomber! All within fifty feet of the cat food in one direction and the fancy cheeses in the other – not to mention a similarly robust selection compared to my visit to a swankier Wegmans in Ithaca last month. Here is their entire beer listing at the Wegmans HQ’s website. A solid grocery including fine craft ales in their everyday line-up at reasonable prices. What else could make a Canadian weep at the sight?

In other CNY news, Party Source is closed on Sunday. Drag. Drove right by on Saturday supper time, saying that I would be back tomorrow. Plenty of time I thought. Nope. But I was able to stop in at Galeville Grocery this morning and pick of a mixed selection of new to me beers. They have a new but limited selection of single 12 oz bottles for $1.59. Found another Kellerbier, Moosebacher, imported by Best Brands International of Georgia so prudently that it only cost $3.69. Note: BBI earns its use of the plural “beers” through also carrying one brand from Brazil.

Stouts: Choklat, Imperial Stout, Southern Tier, New York

Chok-o-la-da. That is how we say it in our house because we met in Poland back in 1991. Gdansk was a hot bed of decent chocolate that was sold for pennies a bar around the Baltic shore towns like the one where we lived. Other than that, I am fairly indifferent to the stuff.

On the nose, is/are there Goldings? Definitely a big cream yeastiness and, yes, dark chocolate. Not cocoa and not milk chocolate. You might even say it’s 75% dark chocolate but that would be pushing my luck. In the mouth, well, it is thick. No other word for it. There is bitter from hop in there, too, replicating good dark chocolate. Yet there is also texture of malt graininess as well as the richness of chocolate malt and a bit of licorice in the finish. Not like chocolate syrup with alcohol added. Quite a thing. Quite an amazing 11% thing.

Once again, Southern Tier is batting 1.000 as far as I am concerned. Huge BAer support.

Three Days And Three Side Orders Of Onion Rings

I got to tick two new to me diners off the list during this weekend’s central New York, The Glenwood Pines Restaurant in Ulysses down near Ithaca as well as the Crystal Restaurant in downtown Watertown. I think the first place dates in part from the late ’40s while the second is an all-1920’s kinda spot. I never did take a photo of the quite admirable onion rings at Shorty’s, also in Watertown, though. On Friday night, on the way south, we walked into selection of NY state fish fry specials. I had a slab of haddock on a bun the size of your forearm. I wonder where they got the fish? Maybe Norway.

Saturday at noon, the double Pinewood special, as illustrated, set me back $8.95 and I had onion rings and battered corn nuggets, too. I had no idea what a battered corn nugget was but that was even more reason to try. Turned out to be a little lump of creamed corn in a sweet dough. Dandy stuff. I was seriously doubtful of my capacity to suck back the burger but it was delightful with a Genny Cream as the kids played the bowling game. A good place for having a beer as kids run around and the food was particularly good diner grub. Again, very reliable onion ring action.

The Crystal Restaurant was a different kind of experience but certainly still a good joint. As I mentioned, it is pushing 90 years and the interior is all original wood panel and tin ceiling with a deep patina of most of those 90 years worth of smoking. Warning: the angle of the backs in the wooden booths is particularly Presbyterian. Best diner coffee ever anywhere ever. Great smoky bacon and my hot pork sandwich was as creamy bland as the dish demands. The only way you can get me to eat canned peas is on a hot chicken or pork sandwich. A solid finale to a weekend of onion rings, too. The place is also a little quirky, enhanced to a certain degree by the young soldier, an assistant chaplain no less, who was talking on his cell phone in too loud a voice about how he was going to marry someone just to get an increase in his army pay. He seemed to have it all figured out even though the girl, astonishingly, seemed (according to the tale to which all were subject) to actually get wed to the heel.

The pre-school girls of one family in their church clothes asked to help the waitress clear the table and they carried their own glasses and plates to the kitchen wearing big excited smiles, maybe like they did every weekend. Anyway, even though the place serves a solid all day breakfast and burgers and such, the bar was a stream of cocktails on a Sunday noon. Manhattans and whiskey on ice were the main drinks. Apparently the Crystal makes an old style hot egg nog or flip sort of thing at Christmas that the locals swear by. Here is an archived NCPR report on the place.

Porter Season: Raspberry Porter, Southern Tier, NY, USA

All things have to come to an end and the season of porter is no different. The deep freeze has come here at the east end of Lake Ontario and autumns turning leave and harvest are long gone. Tripels, Christmas ales, imperial stouts and barley wine will be everything until the snow banks begin to recede under the stronger sun ten weeks or so from now.

Southern Tier’s raspberry porter is one of the best fruited beers I’ve had. A strong true and jammy thick raspberry scent pops out from under the cap, the same taste melding with the cocoa roasty malts, soft water and cream yeast in the mouth. A cheesecake of a beer without being phony or overly sweet. The quality confirms again my ever growing suspicions about this brewer. Too many BAers fear small berries.

Somewhere East Of Heuvleton

And you think you had it bad.

When Is It Right Not To Blog About Your Beer?

I took no notes. I had the camera but I took no pictures. The photo is from two years ago.

Even though you can blog about pretty much anything if you have a deft eye for the moment, I felt only a little guilty but blogging can get in the way of enjoying and I had such a day of craft beer and Americana yesterday I just had to exclude you for the most part. I didn’t mean to exclude Travis, though. I feel quite badly that I did such a poor job of planning that I didn’t realize the Syracuse football game started at 4 pm instead of the expected noon. As a result, the demands of others and the Sox game rammed into the end of the football squeezing out the chance anticipated visit with Travis to Clark’s Ale House. I am a bad beer blogger but he wins a prize…which I now need to figure out what it could be…

But, as I said, there was much good ale nonetheless. To my mind, Syracuse and its outlying neighbouring counties are one of the hot spots of craft beer in the USA. We ate at the picnic tables outside the Dinosaur BBQ, above, on a warm October afternoon after a good shopping spree at the ever wonderful Galeville Grocery where I snabbed a few new beers to me from Sly Fox, Wagner Valley, Wachusett, Southern Tier (Oats!), Bear Republic (Rye!!) and Rogue (Juniper?!?) as well as the 2007 vintage of Big A IPA from Smuttynose, a past winner of beer of the year around here. As much smoky pork was being eaten, we had fresh well-cellared draft from Middle Ages, Southern Tier, Ithaca, Sacket’s Harbor plus the Dino’s own house beer, Ape Hanger. Best of the day, however, were the samples had at our stop at the refurbished (and very cheery) tasting counter at Middle Ages where we visited last year with Gary’s shoe cam. I tried their new 9% Imperial Porter and was so happy came away with a growler. Their new batch of Winter Wizard was also very nice on tap – a Burton perhaps?

By the way, Southern Tier’s raspberry porter is a cheesecake in a bottle…but in a good way. Notes may follow as part of Porter Season if anyone in this house lets me near another bottle.

Beer Shop: Beers of the World, Rochester, New York

One of the beery treats of the trip was my first stop at Beers of the World on the south side of Rochester. It is actually in the community of Henrietta the question of whose separate legal existence as a separate jurisdiction is beyond the scope of this blog’s mandate. Either way, the shop is handy to the highway, easy to find from there in an sort of small to medium firm industrial park and big box shop zone and also located in a mini-mall area with lots of parking.

Once in the shop I was surprised by its scale. This store is about volume as the photos show with full cases of beers in the lower shelves and plenty of bottles of each in the upper ones. It is well illuminated, well signed and well staffed. There is also a huge cooler that I really did not investigate. All in all a very easy shopping experience.

Looking at my sales slip, I was able to get somethings I had not seen before at prices I am quite satisfied with. I found the sorts of beer that I was looking for. For example, for 4.65 USD I picked up a 11.2 oz bottle of Vichtenaar, the second Flanders red ale made by Brouwerij Verhaeghe, the brewers of Duchesse De Bourgogne. I also picked up 26 oz bottles of Meantime‘s IPA and porter for 9.59 each. One neat find was a 1993 Thomas Hardy’s ale for 19.95 on sale. A bit of a roll of the dice but as I am collecting these for a partial vertical tasting one day, not bad. All good things that I was happy to find and I dropped 200 bucks honestly and easily.

Still, the stock was not everything I could have imagined in one regard – too few mid-West beers were on the shelves. Now, to be fair remember that this place is called Beers of the World and there were pale lagers from every nation imaginable in addition to a great selection of Belgians, Brits and US micros from both coasts. But being that close to the Ohio border – the beginning of that next region – I was surprised that breweries like Great Lakes, Bell’s and the others with ads in The Great Lakes Brewing News were not represented. To be very fair, based on one visit, I did find a New Holland and a couple of Jolly Pumpkins I wanted but I would have thought that there could be more. If I am wrong and the clerk and I both missed the aisle, I would be happy to be corrected.

But be clear: I will return and this was a happy shopping experience. One thing that I would look into in greater detail next time is the home brewing supplies and beeraphenalia like the aisle of glassware, stacks of bar coasters, the displays of Toby jugs and also the rows of tap handles.

A very complete shop.

Rohrbach Brewing Company, Rochester, New York

One of the other great things about a trip south, other than loading up the stash with brews that are forbidden to Canadians otherwise, is finding a great new brewpub. A few miles to the west of Rochester, on highway 33, we found one more at Rohrbach Brewing.

We sat outside and were treated to great service as well as great food and beer. The Rochester area seems pretty German if the number of cabbage fields we passed is anything to go by. Actually, it is fair to say that each corner town in the area we passed on our trip had a different history and immigrant population – Poles, Swedes, Germans. But Rohrbach is definitely a German spot given the brat’s and ‘wecks we had for lunch. Menu: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

With my ‘weck, I had their South Wedge Hefeweizen, a beer with a fine white foam over yellow straw clouded ale. A dry take on the style, it had cream of wheat and grassy hops with tropical fruit like kiwi and papaya. A fine counterpoint to the food which was among the best pub meals I have ever had. The bread was incredibly fresh and the German potato salad hot tangy and hammy – like church supper scallop potatoes with a big shot of vinegar.

On the way out, I mentioned the blog and owner John Urlaub popped out to say hello. We chatted about beer blogging and the history of his bar and the upcoming Flour City Brewers Fest that Rohrbach sponsors which is coming up on its twelfth edition. Also on the way out, I picked up a copy of The Great Lakes Brewing News and read in Steve Hodos column that Rohrbach is having a great year with plans to meet the greater demand for their great brews by consolidating all brewing operations at the highway 33 location.* I think I caught one of the planners in a planning session in the photo I took through from the bar out to the brew house.

Just as we were heading out, John handed me some stuff including one comp pass to the Four City Brewer’s Fest. I can’t go and, even if this means contest over lap, if anyone within shooting distance of Rochester wants it give me something about your favorite western NY beer experience and I will get the ticket out to you. Or just tell me you want it. Best response in the next 24 hours gets it. And first one I get may just be the best.

*See comments.

The Ontarios Against The Excelsiors Circa 1873

It was a fantastic time except I had to assist a crank (fan) after a keener and later mortified muffin (person of little experience and skill) let a bat fly into the stands. All is well and you can rest assured that the ER at the Samaritan Medical Center is dandy and the Sacketsonians are extremely kind…but, other than a wicked warm-up of many solid contacts, I missed playing our game but still caught a bit of the senior game between the Sackets Harbor Ontarios and the Rochester Excelsiors. High neato quotient nonetheless and greater plans are in the works.