Good Beer Seal 2013

  Good Beer Seal -- full podcast (segments are offered below)

The Good Beer Seal was started in 2009, one year after the founding of NY Craft Beer Week. It's comprised of a committee of local craft beer professionals, including bar owners, brewery reps, and writers, who meet each year to nominate and vote on adding bars to the now 52 craft beer outlets in the metro NYC area that sport the Good Beer Seal in their windows.

Josh Bernstein, Jimmy, Cory of Proletariat, B.R., Jen of The Queens Kickshaw.

The idea behind it is to support the bars that are supporting the craft beer scene, and to give people looking for a good beer bar an easy way to identify them. In the words of Jimmy Carbone, the founder of the Seal, "If you see the Good Beer Seal in the window, you're gunna find good beer inside."

Jimmy, the proprietor of Jimmy's No. 43 bistro located at 43 E. 7th St. in the East Village, is one of the busiest people in the NYC craft beer scene, organizing countless events, like last week's NY State Craft Beer fest in Williamsburg, and hosting a weekly live podcast on beer called Beer Sessions Radio each Tuesday at 5pm.

 Here are this year's Good Beer Seal inductees:

• The Owl Farm 297 9th Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
• Proletariat 102 St. Marks Place, East Village
• The Pony Bar UES 1444 First Avenue – at 75th Street
• Alewife 5-14 51st Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
• The Queens Kickshaw 40-17 Broadway, Astoria, Queens
  
• Black Sheep Ale House 78 2nd Street, Mineola, NY –  Long Island
• Tap and Barrel 558 Smithtown Bypass, Smithtown, NY –  Long Island
• T.J. Finley’s 42 E. Main Street, Bay Shore, NY – Long Island
• Barcade Jersey City 163 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, NJ
• Pint 34 Wayne Street, Jersey City, NJ 
• Cannibal 113 E. 29th St., Manhattan

You can find a list and map of all the Good Beer bars here.

Bob and Jimmy.

This year the Good Beer induction party took place at Edible Manhattan's incredible food and beer pairing event, Good Beer, which is also in its fifth year. Two enormous rooms were filled with gourmet offerings from reputed establishments including Gramercy Tavern, The Vanderbilt, Lukes Lobster, Fort Defiance and many more. The delectable dishes were paired with choice offerings from a slew of fantastic breweries. Brooklyn Brewery poured their Scorcher #366 and Greenmarket Wheat saison. Kelso had a deliciously sour barrel aged ale. Dogfish Head poured Nobel Rot and Theobroma. Beers flowed from Allagash, Smuttynose, Sixpoint, Greenport Harbor, Blue Point and many, many others. For the new Good Beer Sealers, it made for quite an induction party!

 The podcast is broken down by segments below, if you're looking for one particular part.

Jimmy Carbone and Josh Bernstein announcing the new inductees

Michael of Pint Bar of Jersey City

Cory of Proletariat

Kirk of 4th Avenue Pub

Ben of the Queens Kickshaw

Jimmy Carbone explains The Good Beer Seal


  Good Beer Seal podcast

Good thing beer has no trans-fat, or this wouldn't have happened.

Jimmy Sinatra.

The crowd during the ceremony.

Niko, Kirk, Josh, Jimmy, Cory, Jen, Christian, Ben, Michael, Mary.

Niko, Kirk, Josh, Jimmy, Cory, Jen, Christian, Ben, Michael.

Ken from Killmeyers, Josh, Jimmy, Cory, B.R., Chris O'Leary.

Bob, Jimmy and Ben of The Queens Kickshaw.

Ken, Josh, Jimmy, Mary, B.R. and Anthony of Swifts.

I gotch ya proclamation right here!

Kirk of 4th Avenue Pub.

Brooklyn Brewery: I Wanna Rye It

Brooklyn Brewery's I Wanna Rye It! podcast
How the hops were selected for I Wanna Rye It! podcast

On July 26, 2013 the Brooklyn Brewery released the seventh beer in the Worshipful Company of Brewers series, an Amber Rye Ale designed and brewed by Brooklyn's Production Manager Jimmy Valm.

I Wanna Rye It!

The 7.4% ABV ale pours out clear as glass and has an enticing deep mahogany/garnet hue beneath its ample frothy head. The aroma is subtle, with a touch of spiciness under the dry malty nose. Brewer Jimmy said that he wanted his beer to be more focused on the rye rather than the hops, and he clearly achieved his goal with all of the rye character that this ale exhibits. The hearty body is rich and chewy. As far as taste goes, the dry, peppery rye malt flavor dominates, along with a mild roasty note, but is balanced out by a healthy dose hop bitterness, courtesy of Chinook hops.

Born in Brooklyn but having grown up in Seattle, Jimmy had been pining for a return to Kings County for a long while. But before he'd return he would earn a brewing degree at the reputed International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He then worked at Heineken's U.K. operation, brewing Fosters on an industrial scale before learning of an opening at the Brooklyn Brewery and applying for the job. After working at Brooklyn for less than a year he got his chance to design and brew his own creation as part of the on-going Worshipful Company of Brewers program. The program gives Brewmaster Garrett Oliver's staff an opportunity to make one batch of a beer of their own design for limited release at the brewery's tasting room.

Jimmy chose the challenging rye beer style, and made a little history with Brooklyn Brewery's first rye malt ale. Hear about the details in the two-part podcast about I Wanna Rye It!

The Brewmaster.

Jimmy Valm.

Jimmy's parents and wife.

  [I Wanna Rye It! podcast]




  [Hop Selection For I Wanna Rye It! podcast]

Yeastie Boys At The Festival

Yeastie Boys Sam at The Festival podcast

Friends since high school, New Zealanders Sam Possenniskie and Stu McKinlay discovered craft beer in college and began experimenting with homebrewing. They got rave reviews from their friends and acquaintances who tried their Pot Kettle Black American style porter. Some years down the road, after they had established careers -- Sam in banking and Stu in internet technologies -- they decided that they had the skills, recipes and, most important, the passion for making great beer. So why not share that with the world? Thusly, Yeastie Boys was born.

 After only one year in business, their Pot Kettle Black porter won top awards for that category at the New Zealand Brewers Guild 2009 awards! They continue to impress, as last year they scored three important brewing trophies: Champion Beer at The Asia Beer Awards (for Pot Kettle Black), People's Choice at The Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular (for Gunnamatta), and Morton Coutts Trophy for Innovation at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards (for Rex Attitude).

Yeastie Boys are a tenant brewer, like Pretty Things, Grimm Artisanal, Mikkeller, and many others who don't own a brewing facility, but basically rent out a brewery from batch to batch. The Boys brew at Invercargill Brewery in Invercargill, NZ, which is at the very bottom of the South Island, about 500 miles from Wellington on the North Island, which is where the Yeasites are based.

Golden Age of Bloodshed, made with beets.

Pot Kettle Black, their flagship beer, biggest seller and most awarded brew, is augmented by a roster of great variety, including their Digital IPA, specifically geared for the U.S. market, and the Gunnamatta, an IPA-base beer in which four types of New Zealand hops are complimented by a huge addition of Earl Grey Blue Flower leaf tea! They've made beer with beets -- Golden Age of Bloodshed -- and a 100% peat smoked malt beer called Rex Attitude, which, in terms of smokiness, makes Schlenkerla taste like water! In other words, they're not afraid to make some extremely unusual, challenging brews!

About 500 miles from YB HQ to the brewery.

  [link to podcast page]

(L-R) Sam and Stu. (Photo courtesy of Crafty Pint)

Andechs In New York

Interview with Alexander, the brewer of Andechs podcast

In late June we met with Alexander Reiss, the Brewmaster of Andechs Klosterbrauerei (Monastery Brewery) and Lars Dahlhaus of St. Killian, the importer of the beer. Alexander was in town to participate in two Andechs launch parties, one at Zum Schneider in the East Village, and the other at Z.S. Montauk. Sylvester, the proprietor of Zum Schneider, who grew up near Andechs in southern Bavaria south of Munich, has been trying to get the beer imported to New York for over ten years -- and it's finally happening! For now it's being offered on draught exclusively at both Zum Schneiders. In a few months time it'll begin to appear in New York shops and bars in bottles.

Alexander, Lars and Bob.

Andechs is the German equivalent of Chimay, Orval, et al -- a functioning commercial brewery owned and managed by a monastic order of Benedictine monks. Alexander, the Betriebsleiter/brewer, is a layman, but the monks control the brewery and make all the decisions, as they have since its founding in 1455. That's the earliest record of the brewery, though it's well established that brewing there took place as early as the 12th century.

Weißbier Hell, Doppelbock Dunkel, Vollbier Hell, Weißbier Dunkel.

The current modern brewery has a brewhouse of approximately 200 bbl, with annual capacity of 150,000hl (127,000 bbl). Alexander explained that they could probably increase capacity to more than double that, but only at the expense of their traditional, time consuming, quality producing brewing techniques. And it's quite clear -- that's not going to happen!

Andechs uses Hallertau hops for all their beers, for both aroma and bittering. Hallertau is a nobel hop used primarily as a flavor and aroma hop. It has less alpha acids than most commonly used bittering hops, and thus is more expensive to use for bittering (less alpha acids means more hops needed to achieve bitterness). But the Brewmaster explained that it's one of the things that sets Andechs apart from other breweries -- that and their use of the time-, heat- and labor-intensive traditional technique of decoction mashing. While they are distributed throughout the whole of Deutschland, 20% of their sales are from exporting. Brewer Alexander, a 23-year brewing veteran, has been with Andechs for 8 years, and he learned the trade at the famed Weihenstephan Staatsbrauerei, one of the oldest, most established, most respected brewing institutes in the world.

The monastery on the "holy hill".

We sampled four of the Andechs beers which are soon to be imported to the U.S. for the first time ever, while sitting beneath the shady trees in the backyard of Spuyten Duyvil in Williamsburg.

Pouring Doppelbock Dunkel.

The Doppelbock Dunkel is a strong, dark, sweet, rich malty lager, historically brewed to help the fasting monks get through lent. It's mashed utilizing triple-decoction, while the other clean, traditional, rustic beers of Andechs are single-decoction mashed. 

Doppelbock Dunkel.

Weißbier Hell.

Their unfiltered Weißbier Hell is a classic Bavarian wheatbeer, with almost no banana esters, but a healthy dose of pleasant clove aroma, and a yeasty tang.

Pouring the Weißbier Hell.

The Weißbier Dunkel uses 30% dark malts in addition to wheat malt and some cara (crystal) malt. The dark malts really dominate the aroma and flavor of this very sturdy yet complex beer.

Pouring Weißbier Dunkel.

And lastly, the Vollbier Hell -- one of the most thirst quenching, elegant, beautiful beers on earth. It's got that classic Bavarian lager bready malt aroma, clean malt flavor, and a perfect medium body which satisfies without leaving a heavy feeling.

Vollbier Hell.

For now they're only bringing in Andechs draft exclusively for the Zum Schneider restaurants, but later this summer they'll be importing bottles of the four above described Andechs beers, in the same 500ml bottles that they use for the German market. Finally, you won't have to travel abroad to enjoy this extremely sought after, highly regarded, traditional yet unique German classic!

The Braumeister.

  [link to podcast page]

Andechs Vollbier Hell vom Faß at Zum Schneider.

Full line of bottles.