Showing posts with label captain lawrence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label captain lawrence. Show all posts

Sunday, May 12, 2013

More Beer In Battery Park

For the last few years we've looked forward to the opening of the Victory Beer Garden in Battery Park as a sure sign of the approach of warm weather. I was happy to find it open already on a warm Friday afternoon (May 10, 2013), and serving up Victory's German Helles, Headwater Pale Ale, Hop Devil, and Summer Love.
Victory malty Helles.
This year I had to enjoy the first visit to the beer garden solo, as B.R. was busy giving an address to the 11th annual Canadian Brewing Awards in Victoria, B.C.
After some relaxing book reading with my Helles, I decided to stroll through the park a bit and enjoy the perfect spring weather. To my great surprise, I stumbled upon Table Green in the middle of Battery Park -- another open air beer garden!


It's reported that the company, which also operates in the Chelsea Market, opened next to Castle Clinton in July of 2012, but we totally missed it. They have three local beers on draught -- currently it's Captain Lawrence Kölsch, Empire I.P.A., and Coney Island Mermaid Pilsner. They also have local wine on tap, and offer a menu of light food.
Wine taps left, beer taps right.
While the Victory beer garden is tucked away in a nook by the Staten Island Ferry station, almost out of sight, nestled by tall thick green hedges, the Table Green garden is wide open and offers a view of N.Y. Harbor, with the Statue of Liberty visible in the distance. Though Tavern Green might be catering more to tourists waiting for their boat to Ellis Island or the statue, with beers priced at $3 more than at Victory's spot, it's definitely a sign of progress to have more places in the park to relax with a brew on a beautiful warm spring evening!
Table Green.

Statue of Liberty to the right, gargantuan cruise ship to the left.




Monday, October 22, 2012

Pumpkin Podcast 1


[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 10/22/2012

The leaves are changing color, the air is getting brisker and we're starting to get hit with Christmas ads. That must mean that it's almost Halloween! It's the time of year for that popular seasonal drink, the pumpkin beer.

Pumpkins were used to make beer by early Americans in lieu of malted barley, which wasn't as easy to get as the bountiful native orange fruit. And while most people connect the flavors of cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg as pumpkin flavor, the actual flesh of the fruit doesn't impart any of those flavors. When using pumpkin meat in a mash, it's safe to say that most of the actual flavor and aroma of the fruit will be lost in the mashing and boiling of the wort.

It's pumpkin pie flavors that usually dominate the seasonal pumpkin beers, and some are subtle, some are heavily over spiced, and some get it just right.
We'll taste and review seven different pumpkin beers -- all ales -- in a two-segment Pumpkin Podcast. For the first installment, we taste Captain Lawrence Pumpkin Ale (5.5% abv), Blue Point Pumpkin Ale (6% abv) and Carton Brewing's Pumpkin Cream Ale (9% abv).

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Beer Bloggers Event Southstreet Seaport

Photo courtesy of Juren David.
July, being "Good Beer Month", has seen a great number of different craft beer events take place throughout New York. On Wednesday July 25, a number of beer bloggers, podcasters, writers and film makers assembled on the 5th floor gallery of the South Street Seaport Museum to show their stuff.
Beer Hear mugshot.
 Jimmy Carbone of Jimmy's No. 43 and Beer Sessions Radio™the organizing force behind the event, and his bistro had a table offering pork sandwiches, buttery button biscuits and rich, dense chocolate fudge. Also on hand to feed and water the attendees was Sigmunds Pretzel Shop and Long Trail Brewing.
After party at Jimmy's No. 43.
At our table we conducted two beer tasting challenges for participants. One was "Can You Guess Which Kölsch Is From Köln?" in which challengers were given two unmarked cups of Kölsch-style beer, one containing Gaffel (from Germany) and the other with Captain Lawrence. Out of about 10 challengers, all but one got it right! Some people were pretty certain about their choice, but many others were clearly not so sure.
Jim's new friend.
The other challenge was pretty straight forward. For those willing to play, a cup of beer was poured from a hidden stash under the table and the challenger was asked to either guess the beer style or the main flavor-defining ingredient of the beer. Styles included Rauchbier, Berliner Weisse, Pilsner, Saison, Hefeweizen, Chocolate Stout, British Bitter, and others. Many folks who had never tasted a smoked beer were shocked and mind-blown by the Spezial Rauchbier when tasting it blindly. But, by far, the one beer that stumped everyone was the Bourganel Nougat Beer!
It was the biggest taste tease we could come up with, and, in fact, was the inspiration for the entire idea of a blind taste challenge! But people were further pleasantly tongue-baffled when their Nougat beer was augmented with a splash of Young's Double Chocolate Stout! People seemed to really enjoy the beer tasting games, and Jimmy insisted that we reprise the concept and expand on it during Craft Beer Week!

Friday, November 18, 2011

Craft Beer At Nassau Coliseum

The Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum is the 2nd oldest venue in use by any NHL team (the oldest one, MSG, just got an $850M renovation), and is notoriously one of the most depressing venues for so many reasons, not least of which for the team that plays there and the often ghost-town attendance.

BUT, with Rick DiPietro winning games, young talent like Tavares lighting it up, and those raucous games when the Habs fans seem to take over and electrify the entire building, it's not all bad! And one of the most surprising, impressive and delightful new wrinkles that we discovered on our third-ever jitney to Uniondale was the beer!

Maybe replace Goose Island with Southampton? Or Greenport? Or Barrier?
Our bus, sponsored by the Canadian Association of New York City, arrived a bit late, and as we hurried along to find our seats at the end of the 1st period of a Habs visitation to the Island, B.R., always scanning the beer environment, caught sight of a good sign -- "They've got Bluepoint here!"
The odds were (literally) 50/50 that the guy behind us taking our picture was in Habs regalia.
Now, Bluepoint is good. Very good. But for a major sport arena/stadium/coliseum, Bluepoint is like finding water in the desert. We didn't care which Bluepoint that they were serving -- that's what we'd be drinking, in lieu of Bud, Bud Lite, cold-filtered ice-brewed triple-hopped cold-activated lime-flavored whatever, etc.

But when I got to the one stand selling beer that was drinkable, I was confronted with a rare experience at a major sports venue -- a real choice of real beer. Would it be pints of Bluepoint Toasted Lager, Bluepoint Hoptical Illusion, Goose Island IPA, Brooklyn Weisse, Magic Hat #9, or Lighthouse Ale? For some reason George Killians Red was there, too (not an option). But the real beer-option bomb... Captain Lawrence Smoked Porter!
A tap that we've rarely seen in most fancy NYC beer bars, right at home in the Coliseum.
What?! Seriously? A smoked porter at an NHL game? How is that possible? That's nothing short of a miracle. That's a beer that I'm excited about seeing when I'm at Barcade, Blind Tiger, DBA or, really, anywhere. But at an Islanders game?
At MSG these seats 7 rows off the glass would be $500 each. But go 20 miles east, and they're only $60 -- with round-trip transportation! Thank you supply-and-demand!
So, all in all, we split two Capt. Lawrence Smoked Porters, a Bluepoint Toasted Lager and a Brooklyn Weisse. (And a Sixpoint Bengal Tiger on the way there, thank you Cory!) And all of the beers were fresh and in very good shape. Let's hope we get choices like that more often when we go to the big show. Yo, MSG, how about some Kelso Kreik!