Barrier And Bluepoint At Brewer's Choice

WFMU's Beer Hear! Blue Point and Barrier podcast

The Brewer's Choice event of Craft Beer Week was a boon for Beer Hear -- with all the breweries and their brewers on hand, we could have done a year's worth of shows! One of the breweries we spoke to was BLUE POINT of Patchouge, Long Island, NY.

Steve of Blueweiser... I mean BLUE POINT!

Blue Point was founded in 1998. At the time it was the only microbrewery on Long Island. Their original 25-barrel brewhouse produced the well known Toasted Lager (their #1 seller) and Hoptical Illusion (#2 seller) with a collection of equipment bought from a variety of other breweries, including a gorgeous direct-fire brick-encased kettle.

She's a brick (brau) haus.

They've since upgraded to a modern, more efficient custom-made system, on which they brewed the beers featured at the Brewers' Choice: a Sour Cherry Imperial Stout (10%abv) and a White IPA (6%abv) made with wheat malt, considered by some to be a Wit/American IPA hybrid.


Steve, a sales manager overseeing sales in five states, said that their beer is available from Florida to New England, in Pennsylvania and, just recently, as far west as Michigan. I think that it's somewhat available "from Montauk to Manhattan" as well!

 
Another Long Island craft brewery on hand was Barrier Brewing, of Oceanside, NY. Barrier is a fairly young enterprise, having been founded in 2009. Craig said that while there are about 9 breweries on Long Island, Barrier is the only one in Nassau County. (In consideration of that, I wonder if they'll brew a Dutch beer...)

BR, Craig of Barrier, Bob, and Bob's new haircut.

Both Craig and founder Evan worked at Sixpoint Brewing before Barrier, where they gained valuable brewing knowledge and experience. Prior to that, it was homebrewing, as is so often the case with craft brewers.

One of the beers that they featured at the Brewers' Choice was a delicious German style Rauchbier/Smoke Beer (5.4%abv) that they call Frau Blücher. 65% of the malt bill for the brew is imported German Rauchmalt (from Bamberg, we presume).

What better to go with LI oysters than LI beer?

He said that the brewery currently brews 27 different beers! We'd imagine that at least one of them would go well with some L.I. oysters -- though perhaps Naked Cowboy, Peconic Bay or Tomahawk oysters, more so than Blue Points!