Eataly’s Birreria: A Beer Geek’s Review

Ever since Eataly was announced back in 2009, I have been awaiting the arrival of Birreria, the rooftop brewpub atop the Italian megastore. New York City truly is the world’s greatest, but it is desperately lacking in the brewpub department. There is good local beer — Brooklyn always puts out a fine product and Sixpoint is in a well-deserved popularity explosion — but apart from a few restaurants with house brews, all brewpub-seekers have had in NYC are the thoroughly underwhelming Heartland Brewery locations.

But since we heard about Birreria, NYC’s beer geeks have dared to hope for a world-class brewpub in Gotham. Sure, with Mario Batali involved and the Flatiron location, we knew that the prices would be outlandish and the lines absurd. It would all be worth it, though, when we were sipping a one-of-a-kind brew, looking down at the peons ambling down 23rd street, master of all we surveyed, or at least drinking better beer than all we surveyed.

Birreria opened last weekend, and sure enough, the lines were Depression-soup-queue-esque. (I heard stories of three hour waits.) But last night, I braved the insanity to celebrate with a friend who just passed the halfway mark toward becoming the most badass Doctor alive. My first impressions of Birreria follow. Please excuse the picture quality. I couldn’t find my camera, so it was a cell phone photo kinda night.

To answer your most pressing question: yes, you’re going to have to wait. They control the crowd by only letting people upstairs when there’s actually room. You give your name and phone number, and they text you when your table is ready or bar space is open. This is a nice feature, since you can wander Eataly or head over to Madison Square Park and Shake Shack while you wait. They won’t let you upstairs until your entire party arrives, so tell your dawdling friend Will that you’re meeting 45 minutes earlier than you actually are.

Once we got upstairs, while waiting for our table to be ready, I explained to my companions that one of the principals of the Birreria collaboration is Dogfish Head honcho and would-be reality TV star Sam Calagione. If you’ve been following Birreria’s development closely, you’ll remember that at one time Vinnie Cilurzo, boss of California’s beloved Russian River Brewing Company, was attached as well. I wondered aloud why Vinnie had dropped out. The hostess overheard my query, and explained that, as far as she knew, it was difficult enough for Sam and the Italian brewers to get their heads together for the beer collaborations, and adding Vinnie all the way out in Cali to the mixture wasn’t practical. They tried to make it work, but Vinnie had to abandon it in the end. So she knew her beer, or at least the industry. This boded well.

The Atmosphere

We headed out to our table. The space is obviously busy, but the crowd control ensures that it doesn’t get nuts. There’s a long bar along one wall, and a couple dozen tables. There’s a retractable roof, just to add some much-needed Safeco Field ambiance. It really is quite beautiful. As you’re sipping your beer you can look out on the Empire State Building and the Flatiron Building. You can’t really look down over the roof, though…so much for belittling peons.

It’s good that Birreria is a lovely place to sit around, because we did a lot of sitting around once we got to our table. The table service really left something to be desired. We waited a long while for our waiter to appear, and then a really long while for our beer to come out. (Our cheese and meat plates actually came before the beer did.) All told, it was about 20 minutes from butt-in-chair to beer-in-hand, which is not so good. Our server wasn’t exactly an expert but he knew enough about the food and beer to speak about it intelligently. I didn’t try the bar service but it looked like there were enough bartenders to handle the crowd.

The crowd at 9 PM on a Monday was very much the older yuppie set. Seemed to be mostly people in their 30s in suits. I suspect that this early in the venue’s life it’s still very much a “see and be seen” crowd but that could just be me being judgmental.

The Beer

What of the main event? The beers named after Italian babes that O’Leary was going on about aren’t ready yet. In the meantime, on the menu were three beers bearing the Eataly moniker — two pale ales and a brown ale. As best as I can tell, these beers are Dogfish Head brews given a new twist for the restaurant. I ordered the “Eataly Indian Brown Ale,” described as a brown ale brewed with maple syrup. Dogfish’s IBA is one of my all-time favorites, so I was looking forward greatly to this beer. The beer was fantastic, though I don’t think it was different enough from Dogfish’s regular Indian Brown to justify the $10 price for the pint. Also, they didn’t pour the full pint, which sucks. I had a couple of sips of Sarah’s beer, a pale ale brewed with thyme. It was a bit too herbal for my tastes, though clearly expertly crafted.

Apart from the $10 Eataly pints, there are a handful of tap selections from the usual American craft beer suspects and some Italian ones as well. The prices on those are normal for a trendy NYC spot ($7-ish).

Overall

Birreria definitely has a few issues to hammer out. The service needs to get better, in terms of speed and serving the correct amount of beer. The crowd and prices are more than some people will want to deal with, though you can’t really take off points for that since it’s to be expected. I hope for more creativity with the beer itself. But the visions of a world-class brewpub in NYC are tantalizingly close to being realized. As long as you’re prepared, you’ll have a great time.

Sixpoint Likes it in the Can

Brooklyn’s own Sixpoint Craft Ales, makers of some of the finest beers in the State of New York, has officially announced some exciting news that craft beer fanatics heard about a few weeks ago. From their email announcement:

For the first 6 years of our history and up until this morning, our beer was available exclusively on draft.  Our goal was to establish the solid foundation of making the freshest, most lively and delicious craft beer you could get on tap.  However, unless you filled up a growler, or took home an extremely rare hand-bottled sample or one-off, the only way you were going to be able to sample our beer was on tap at a bar or restaurant.  Today marks a new day.

I can has?

This morning, the first shipments of tallboy cans of Sixpoint beer are heading on trucks to stores in New York and Massachusetts. By Memorial Day weekend, you should be able to find cans of four of Sixpoint’s concoctions. Bengali Tiger is a fantastic IPA that’s been an NYC favorite of beer geeks and novices alike. The Crisp is their entry into the small but growing field of craft lagers. Sweet Action is an ideal easy drinking gateway craft ale. And Righteous Rye, a hoppy rye beer, is my single favorite New York-brewed year round beer (i.e. not a special or seasonal release).

I’m also thrilled that Sixpoint is packaging in cans instead of bottles. I’ve always been a big craft can supporter, and Sixpoint’s announcement enumerates the reasons: cans completely block light, you can pack them tighter and lower shipping costs, they’re easier to recycle, etc.

So if you’re going to enjoy the great outdoors this Memorial Day weekend, bring along some tallboys of Bengali Tiger. Even if you’re sitting on your couch watching the Law & Order: SVU marathon, Sixpoint is a good call.

Beer-cation Tips

I’ve just returned from a week long vacation visiting pals in Madison, Wisconsin. (Mostly the same cast of characters from my trip to GABF in September.) Madison is like a lovely beer wonderland. It was a great trip. Wisconsin is known as a great craft beer state, but no matter where you’re going, you can have a beery good time. Here’s some general advice on beercations.

They ought to be proud

Find the local craft breweries: This should seem like a no-brainer, but it bears emphasis. Look up which craft breweries are based in your destination state. Beer Advocate’s Beerfly is a great tool for this, since you can easily search by state. Most states (those worth visiting at least) have a few craft breweries whose wares you can’t get elsewhere. Wisconsin alone has New Glarus, Central Waters, Ale Asylum, Capital Brewery, O’so, Furthermore and Lake Louie — and those are just the ones that are extremely common on tap in Madison. If there’s a brewery close by, make sure to visit it. Brewery tours are generally a dime a dozen — it’s not that exciting to look at fermenting tanks and inactive bottling lines. There are exceptions, though. New Glarus was gorgeous, both inside (huge space, cool lab where you can peek in on dudes in lab coats) and out (parked on a scenic hillside in a faux Swiss hamlet.) More importantly, most breweries have a tasting room, and many have “research and development” beers on tap. These are beers brewed in tiny batches to test on beer geeks that will likely never leave brewery grounds. New Glarus only had one, but when I visited Oskar Blues outside Boulder in September they had a dozen, and Cigar City in Tampa is famous for having tons.

One day...

Find the local watering holes: Most major cities have at least one brewpub, where a few varieties of beer are made on site. (New York City, for what it’s worth, only has the very underwhelming Heartland Brewery locations.) To be honest, a lot of brewpubs are kind of mediocre. You’re happy to support the local guys and drink their beer, but it’s nothing you’d go out of your way to procure. There are exceptions, of course. In fact, some brewpubs have the accolades to go toe-to-toe with the best regional craft brewers. Minneapolis’ Town Hall Brewpub’s IPA, Masala Mama, is consistently rated among the best in the world. Watch City Brewing in Waltham, Mass. impressed me greatly when they brought their wares to a beer festival in Boston. Madison’s own Great Dane Brewpub had some terrific seasonal beers.

You should also find out where the city’s best non-brewpub beer bars are. This leads us to the next tip…

Find regional craft breweries unavailable at home: This might take a little bit of research, but it will pay off big time. By now you know that some of the best mid-sized craft brewers don’t distribute in New York, just like many of those available in NYC don’t distribute in, say, California. You should find out which highly-regarded breweries you should expect to see that aren’t local to your destination. There are many ways to do this research. I might try looking at the Beer Advocate top 100 list (my guide to this list notes beers that aren’t available in New York), or finding some other “top breweries” list. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some acclaimed regional breweries you can’t find in New York: Bells, Three Floyds, Great Lakes, Boulevard, Russian River, Pizza Port/Lost Abbey, Alaskan Brewing, Deschutes, Odell, and Terrapin. All of these are available in fair portions of the country, so asking around for them is a good starting point.

Employ your drinking survival skills: This too should be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised. I posted a survival guide to beer festivals a while back, and those tips are critical for any period of heavy beer drinking. In short: carb load (don’t worry, you’re on vacation), get plenty of sleep, and drink water like it’s going out of style. All this will help your beer-cation be enjoyable instead of look like a series of outtakes from Midnight Express.

Beer Review: Thomas Hooker Liberator Doppelbock

Thomas Hooker founded Connecticut after a nasty breakup with Massachusetts. A few centuries later, Connecticut still has an inferiority complex that manifests itself in beer. While Mass is one of the most underrated craft beer producing states (underrated mainly because most of their good stuff doesn’t leave the state), Connecticut has yet to see much of a craft beer boom.

I’m hoping this paucity of craft beer in Connecticut changes. As you know if you know me in real life, I will be moving to Connecticut in the fall to pursue a Ph.D. in political science. Time to get acquainted with Connecticut’s brew options. Thomas Hooker Ales and Lagers are the only CT brewery (as far as I know) that distributes in NYC. I’ve had a few of their beers before — some decent hits (I liked their Hop Meadow IPA) and some appalling misses (I’m probably not the target audience, but they have a Watermelon Ale that tastes like pruno).

However, this otherwise middling brewery makes one beer, out each spring, that not only stands head and shoulders above the rest of their lineup but belongs in the conversation of best German-style beers brewed in the whole country. Meet the Liberator Doppelbock. If you need a refreshed, bock beer is a sweet, dark, malty German lager. Doppelbock is a strong bock — sweeter, maltier, higher in ABV. Rich enough that fasting monks used it for sustenance.

Liberator pours a very dark ruby color with a pretty substantial off-white head. It looks almost like Coca-Cola. The aroma is killer. Like any good doppelbock, it’s sweet and complex. I’m picking up toffee, toasted grain (think cheerios), chocolate, and a little bit of dark fruit and licorice.

The taste, like the smell, is powerful and complex. It’s the same components as the aroma, but it’s sweeter. The toasted grain is a little stronger, which adds a bit of bitterness. There’s no hop bitterness to speak of. A little alcohol burn is present, which I prefer in these sorts of beers but it’s not everybody’s favorite. As the beer warms a bit, the dark fruit flavors come out more. Oh, and this beer is incredibly sticky on the way down. It’s got the stickiness of a beer twice its ABV (8%).

As far as after-dinner sipping beers go, it’s hard to do better. At least I’ll have something to drink at Yale.

Style Guide: Wheat Beers

I’m trying to will summer into existence by looking at some of the best summer sippin’ beers. Nothing beats sitting lakeside and enjoying a great wheat beer. There are two main styles here, the German weissbier and the Belgian witbier. I’ll guide you through both, and a few more variations. All wheat beers, as the name suggests, are made with malted wheat replacing some percentage of the malted barley. Whatever style you order, though, make sure to ask the barkeep to hold the orange or lemon slice.

Weissbier

German wheat beers, the most common of which is the hefeweizen, are ales brewed under Reinheitsgebot law. “Weizen” means wheat, and “hefe” means with yeast. In other words, these beers are unfiltered. Many styles filter out the yeast after fermentation to produce a clear beer. Hefeweizens, however, leave the yeast in. The result is a cloudy brew with a lot of yeast character. For this style, the yeast comes across as an unmistakable mixture of banana and cloves, with some other fruits and spices mixed in.

Hefeweizens also tend to create tremendous head when poured. I’ll have a post about why head is good (lol) another day, but for now know that it powers up aromatics and helps filter certain off-flavors. The weizen glass is tall, slender and tapered — designed to boost, maintain and show off the puffy head.

Germany has several other styles of wheat ale. There’s a good chance you’ve seen a dunkelweizen (“dunkel” to its friends). That’s basically a dark hefeweizen. Dunkels tend to be sweeter, richer and have more banana characteristic than their cousins. There’s also the weizenbock, which is essentially a double-strength dunkel. These beers are ferociously complex — Schneider Adventinus is easily one of the top ten beers on Earth for my money.

A unique and obscure style called Berliner Weiss is starting to appear in American fermenting tanks. It’s brewed like a hefeweizen, but with the addition of lactic bacteria. The result tastes almost like a hefeweizen mixed with lemonade. I’ve only found a couple of examples of the style (had one at Iron Hill brewpub in Pennsylvania once, and another by New Glarus in Wisconsin), but we might be looking at the ideal summer beer. I sincerely hope more American brewers give it a shot.

Witbier

Let’s hop over to Belgium for a spell. German wheat beers are brewed under Reinheistgebot rules, meaning only water, malted barley/wheat, yeast and hops can enter. Belgian witbiers, by contrast, almost always have additives that you might not associate with beer. While German beers have a spicy aroma from the yeast, Belgian witbiers actually contain spice (though the yeast certainly contributes as well). Coriander, cloves and orange peel are customary, but you can also find witbiers with chamomile, grains of paradise, allspice, and crazy stuff you’ve probably never heard of.

Belgian witbiers, like the German variety, are unfiltered. They too are cloudy and have gigantic heads. The difference is in the sweetness and the spices. In your pre-craft days you’ve probably had Blue Moon and/or Hoegarden, which are mediocre examples of the style (though, granted, better than most other offerings you might find at your local dive.)

New York Ale Project’s Favorite German Weissbier: Weihenstephaner Hesseweissbier by the world’s oldest brewery (they claim a founding date of 1040) is a world class beer that should be a part of any beer geek’s heavy rotation. But to me, it’s edged out ever so slightly by Aventinus by Schneider. We’ve got a bit of banana, though nowhere near as overpowering as you often have in the style. That yeast is really popping, with a bunch of funk and spice. The sweet malt certainly dominates, but there’s a bitterness in there too that reminds me of wine. This is one of those beers that I give to my wine drinking friends as counterpoint. (In fact, I did serve it up at a beer tasting for Tapped Craft Beer Events. I’ll do it again, too. Just try to stop me.)

New York Ale Project’s Favorite Belgian Witbier

I’m not as big a fan of the Belgian-style wheat beers as I am the German ones, but there are some standouts. The winner has to be Allagash White. It’s sweet, spicy, and a little more restrained than many other Belgian beers. Smooth as silk. It’s definitely a craft beer summer classic.

Nice Homebrewing Deal

Any of you who get (and pay attention to) Groupon emails got a nice offer this morning. Midwest Supplies, a popular and well-respected homebrew and winemaking store, is offering a decent beginner’s homebrew kit for a cool $65. As spring begins to rear its head, now is a great time to get started brewing your own beer. It’s so much easier than you think.

Here’s what’s included in the kit:

• A 6.5 gallon fermenting bucket with lid. This airtight plastic bucket is where your wort (pre-beer) hangs out and ferments for a couple of weeks after the boil.
• A 6.5 gallon bottling bucket with a spigot. Once it’s bottling time, you siphon the fermented wort into this bucket, mix with sugar, and fill your bottles using the spigot.
• An airlock. Well, since I mentioned the fermenting bucket is airtight, you need one of these. CO2, the biproduct of fermenation, escapes through here, but oxygen can’t get in.
• A hydrometer. You might have made one of these in middle school Chem. It measures the relative density of liquids, which lets you figure out how much alcohol is in your brew.
• A thermometer. As you’re doing the boil, you’ll need to know the temperature at various benchmarks.
• A racking tube and siphon tubing. When you transfer the fermented wort into the bottling bucket at bottling time, you don’t want to disturb the yeast sediment, so siphoning instead of dumping is the way to go.
• A bottle capper and bottlecaps. This handheld clamp thingie caps your bottles so your beer doesn’t spill out. Pretty important.
• 8 oz of no-rinse cleaner and a bottle brush. As anybody who’s brewed will tell you, whether a rookie homebrewer or the head of a major craft brewery, the vast majority of brewing is being an extremely thorough janitor. So many microscopic nasties can ruin your beer, so you need supplies to go Saddam on their asses.
• An ingredient kit for either an Irish Stout, an Irish Red Ale or an Autumn Amber Ale. Making up your own recipes is most of the fun of brewing, but I definitely recommend using a pre-assembled ingredient kit for your first attempt. It will help you get the feel and the routine down, which is a big part of homebrewing.
• An instructional DVD. Given the abundance of great online resources and actual books, watching a DVD to learn to brew seems like more trouble than it’s worth. But that depends on your learning style.
• A $25 gift certificate to buy your next ingredient kit. Cool!

All in all, it’s a great deal for a beginner’s package. You’ll still need a large pot. The ingredient kits make a 5 gallon batch. If you don’t have a big enough pot, you can do a partial boil and add the balance of the volume in water at the end. You still need a 3.5 gallon or so pot to make that worth it, though.

Go get started!

The Pullout Epidemic

Editor’s Note: Thankfully, this piece has nothing to do with a proliferation of the “My couch pulls out…BUT I DON’T!” t-shirt spotted at last year’s Great American Beer Festival.

Now that Goose Island’s purchase by AB-InBev is all over even the mainstream news, most people know that craft beer is experiencing a major growth spurt. Like awkward 12-year-old you, the craft beer world’s excitement about the growth is being tempered by growing pains. Over the past several years, many craft breweries have expanded capacity in order to supply markets further and further away from home. Now, for many brewers, demand is greatly outpacing supply. Several breweries have sounded a retreat from faraway lands in order to better shore up the home front.

In the past few weeks we’ve seen Allagash pull out of two states (after having pulled out of several more over the past year or two), Great Divide pulling from seven states entirely and five more except for major metro areas, Avery pulling out of three states, and Dogfish Head leaving four states. We haven’t had breweries leaving the NYC market, but our friends (?) in Connecticut have been hit hard.

Dogfish Head’s pullout probably received the most attention, since they’re such a high-profile craft brewery. Last month they announced that they’re pulling out of Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin, as well ceasing their small amount of international distribution. Sam Calagione, best known as one half of the Pain Relievaz and also occasional brewer, summed up the reasoning:

In order to get our supply closer to your demand, we’d need to get a big, big pile of money and grow, grow, grow. We are not excited by that. We get excited by having fun, brewing a bunch of great beers and growing at a slower, steadier pace.

In the blog commentary on these pullouts, many people are arguing that these breweries are “victims of their own success,” but I’m not sure that’s the best way to look at it. As the craft beer industry has exploded, many have assumed that unfettered growth is the best business model. Sell beer, buy more equipment, make more beer, sell more beer further away, &c. Sam explains why that model may not be best, especially for an industry like craft beer that depends heavily on innovation and experimentation.

Cigar City Brewing in Tampa is one brewery that seems to be taking Sam’s preferred approach. Earlier this year, rumors flew that CCB was going to pull out of NYC and Philadelphia due to lack of supply. These rumors turned out to be unfounded, but neither has CCB undergone the expansion one would expect from such a hyped brewery. Instead of reaching further markets, Cigar City is shoring up supply in its already-existing territory. Furthermore, they’re using a bunch of their energy and resources developing experimental beers in tiny batches that will never leave Florida.

Having to weather brewery withdrawals also gives us all the opportunity to do something we should be doing more of: drinking locally. Sometimes nothing beats an Avery Majarajah or a Dogfish Head Indian Brown, but if you’re reading this site, odds are that there are dozens of fantastic craft beers made within an easy drive of your front door. If your favorite regional brewery leaves your home state, maybe you should take the opportunity to get better acquainted with your local brewmaster.

Blame it on the Goose (Island)

The story taking the craft beer world by storm this week is the sale of Chicago’s Goose Island to Anheuser-Busch InBev. Most of you probably know the details, since it’s even getting play in the mainstream media, but here’s a quick summary if you don’t:

Goose Island began as a brewpub in Chicago in 1988, and since then has become a staple on the burgeoning American craft beer scene. (Though it’s not quite as big as many discussing the story seem to think — Goose Island produces 127,000 barrels annually; about 1/18th the output of Samuel Adams, or about on par with Stone Brewing Co. or Bell’s Brewery.) The brewery has a standard line of unexciting but solid beers including Honkers Ale, 312 Urban Wheat, and their IPA — all good gateway craft beers for your friends, by the way. In the past few years, they’ve been producing a series of excellent Belgian-style ales and, of course, their Bourbon County Stout, quite possibly my favorite beverage on Earth.

In 2006, Goose Island joined up with the Craft Brewers Alliance, an Oregon-based consortium that distributes Red Hook, Widmer and Kona beers as well. This Alliance, however, was partially owned by Anheuser Busch and was privy to the giant’s distribution channels. Now, Anheuser-Busch InBev (that merger, recall, went down in 2008) has purchased Goose Island outright for $39 million.

Okay, now that you’re caught up, it’s time to talk about what this all means. I’m not all that interested in another discussion about what does or does not constitute “craft beer,” which is the topic that’s engulfed the craft beer world these past few days. I’m more interested in trying to figure out the practical implications of all this.

First of all, this deal is another addition to what was already a watershed year for the craft beer industry. In 2010, craft beer sales rose 11 percent while overall beer sales declines. As demand balloons, many of the large but not gigantic (“upper middle class,” maybe) craft brewers have had difficulty keeping up. As a result, we’ve seen Dogfish Head, Avery, Boulevard, and most recently Great Divide pull out of certain states in the past couple of months, in order to solidify their supply closer to home.

As craft continues to grow, it is unquestionable that AB-InBev and Miller-Coors will continue to buy popular craft breweries. Craft beer is clearly where the action is, and American Ale and Shock Top are (anecdotally, I don’t have any numbers here) fooling fewer and fewer people. Lots of people are saying that they’ll never drink a Goose Island product again. Again, discussing craft vs. not isn’t the point of this article, but I expect the people making these promises are going to have to repeat them several times over the next few years.

In terms of the mechanics of the takeover and new production, here’s what we know. Contrary to rumors spread right after the deal was announced, Goose Island production will not be moving to St. Louis. It will stay in Chicago, and in fact AB-InBev is immediately pouring in money to upgrade the facility. Longtime brewmaster Greg Hall will be stepping down and is replaced by Brett Porter, who was brewmaster at Deschutes for several years. (Incidentally, some people have reported that Goose Island will be making a brett porter, i.e. a porter brewed with brettanomyces, but I can’t find any confirmation either way and I’m wondering if somebody got some wires crossed. It would be cute, though.)

Unfortunately, that’s about all we know at this point. The most pressing question is, “What will happen to Goose Island’s quality?” and none of us know for sure.

The best case scenario is that nothing will change quality-wise. The ownership transition will result in much improved distribution and financial resources, but Goose Island’s production team will be left alone. Advertising for Honkers and 312 Urban Wheat will lead to those beers selling briskly, and will provide a nice financial cushion for Mr. Porter and Co. to keep experimenting with and perfecting Belgian and barrel-aged styles.

The worst case scenario is that Ab-InBev decides that the Goose Island name is sufficient to lure enough people, and drastically reduces quality across the board to cut costs. “312 Urban Golden Wheat” becomes a big seller, and people love the 2012 edition of Bourbon County Stout that’s 5% ABV and aged for 10 days on bourbon-soaked beechwood chips. Meanwhile, Goose Island discontinues Matilda, Sofie et al., as test audiences declared them “too faggy.”

Where will Goose Island end up? Well, I did go to a liberal arts college, so I’d bet on somewhere between the two extremes. But there’s no way to know for sure yet. There’s not really anything in AB’s or InBev’s history to suggest that they’re going to leave Goose Island’s production alone. They have a proud history of mangling once-proud brewing operations in Europe (e.g. Leffe). On the other hand, Goose Island is a good deal different than anything they’ve bought before, and it’s still (for now) a drop in the bucket sales-wise. Maybe they’ll decide that while the vast majority of people drink their macro lagers, it might be a good idea to have an actual quality product in their lineup.

There’s plenty of good reading out there expressing both optimism and pessimism. Andy Crouch has an optimistic outlook on his site. The Beer and Whiskey Bros. have a more pessimistic look on theirs.

Get Real 2: Get Realer

This weekend sees edition two of Get Real NY, the fantastic cask ale, homebrew and food festival. The first round last fall was a blast, as you can see from my post from way back then. Round two looks to be even more fun. Like last time, the festival is two days, with two sessions each day. Saturday’s all sold out, but you can still buy tickets for either Sunday session — you’d better rush, though.

The main changes this year seem to be that the food selection is beefed up, there will be food and beer pairings, and there will be growlers for purchase (cask ale has a very short shelf life, so everything must go!) A rough draft of the beer list is up on the festival website (cask ale is much more fickle than its kegged cousins, so these are subject to some change.) The list is reprinted below, with the beers I’m most excited for in bold. Underneath the list I’ve said a little something about each bold beer. Also, do keep in mind that a handful of these beers (I’m not sure which ones yet) will be reserved for those with VIP tickets.

Stone Brewing Sublimely Self Righteous w/ Amarillo Ale

Stone Brewing Smoked Porter w/ Vanilla

HeBrew Bittersweet Lennys RIPA

Coney Island Vertical Jewbelation

Two Brothers Cane & Ebel

Two Brothers  Resistance IPA

Two Brothers  Heavy Handed

Sierra Nevada  Harvest

Oskar Blues Mama Pils

Burton Bridge Festival

Weyerbacher  Double Simcoe IPA

Sixpoint Righteous Rye

Dieu de Ciel Peche Mortel

Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

Defiant  IPA

Williams Bros Joker

Williams Bros Midnight

Williams Bros  Scotch

Thornbridge   Merrie

Left Hand  Black Jack

Great Divide  Titan IPA

Green Flash Le Freak

Harvey’s Lewes Brown

Troegs Pale Ale

Defiant Lil Thumper

Firestone Walker  Union Jack

Firestone Walker Pale 31

Lagunitas  Brown Shugga

Great Divide  Oak Yeti

Lagunitas Censored

Green Flash  Hop Head

Green Flash IPA

Green Flash Double Stout

Defiant Long Shadow

Ballast Point Calico

Dieu de Ciel Corne Dia

Great Divide Hercules Double IPA

Victory Yakima Glory Ale

RCH Old Slug

Williams Bros Fraoch

Williams Bros  Session

Geary’s Hampshire

Sixpoint Diesel

Ridgeway Quercus

Great Divide Belgica

Blue Point  10th Anniversary

Fuller’s ESB

Fuller’s London Pride

Greenport Harbor Disorient

Lagunitas Imperial Stout

Blue Point Old Howl

Southern Tier  2X IPA

Blue Point  Pale Ale

Blue Point  Sour Cherry

Ballast Point  Sea Monster

Ballast Point  Tongue Buckler

Ballast Point  Victory at Sea

Ballast Point  Sextant

Lagunitas Pale

Lagunitas maxiPus

Lagunitas Hairy Eyeball

Thornbridge Hall Country House Brewery Jaipur Cask

Thornbridge Hall Country House Brewery Kipling Cask

Harviestoun Brewery Bitter & Twisted Cask

Harviestoun Brewery Shiehallion Cask

Ballast Point Big Eye

Ballast Point Sculpin

Double dry-hopped Wolaver’s IPA

Otter Creek Double dry-hopped Black IPA

Stone Brewing Smoked Porter w/ Vanilla: This beer was a real highlight of the 2010 edition for me, so I’m thrilled to see it return. The smoked malt and vanilla are such an enticing combination that I’m shocked more brewers haven’t tried it.

Two Brothers Cane & Ebel: A great example of a rye beer, one of my favorite (and most underrated) styles. Two Brothers doesn’t get as much hype as many other upper midwest breweries, but it consistently puts out quality.

Dieu de Ciel Peche Mortel: Peche Mortel, one of my favorite beers on the planet, is an imperial coffee stout from Montreal. Truth be told, I like it better in the bottle than on cask. But I’m excited for a go at the cask version nonetheless.

Great Divide  Oak Yeti: Another big imperial stout. This is a fantastic beer on tap and in the bottle, but I’m curious to see how the oak aging translates to the cask version.

Fuller’s ESB: An English classic served in the traditional English style (remember, cask is how the English take their beer). I’m sure it won’t be as good as it would be at a pub in Cambridge, but it’s the best we can do for now.

Ballast Point Sculpin: Always one of the highest-rated IPAs in the world. Hop flavor and aroma never gets fresher than on cask, so this should be a real treat.

The Can Revolution Marches On

Hey, I get to use this picture again!

A while back, I wrote a piece on the advantages of craft beer in cans. Canned beer still seems to have something of a stigma in the general population, but the issue is all but settled in the craft beer world. You will still find beer geeks who insist that beer from bottles actually does taste better, but most will admit that there is no appreciable difference in taste, and all but those who are likely paid off by the fearsome glass lobby readily admit the many advantages of cans. They are more eco-friendly, they cost less to ship, they are easier to carry, and they completely protect beer from light.

That piece I wrote in October profiled beers from Oskar Blues, 21st Amendment and Surly, all of which can virtually all of their beer. These breweries have always known the power of the can, but since then, several well-established craft breweries have announced that they will start canning some of their beer, too.

Two icons of the craft beer industry will begin releasing their flagship beers in cans for trail runs later this year. As was announced in January, Vermont’s own Magic Hat Brewing Company, craft beer gateway for thousands of New Englanders for the past couple of decades, is releasing its ever-popular Magic Hat #9 in cans later this year. In the unlikely event you’ve never tried it, it’s a light and sweet pale ale brewed with apricot extract. It’s a popular gateway craft beer, but most beer geeks leave it by the wayside once they’re ready to ditch their training wheels.

Can do

The other exciting can release is a gateway craft beer that most beer geeks (like me) keep around until the bitter end. That’s right — in late 2011, we will start to see Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in cans. Bill Manley from SN confirmed those rumors on the Beer Advocate forums last week. He says that the cans will only be a small part of the brewery’s output, so don’t expect those stumpy little bottles you love so much to disappear. But canning definitely seems like a logical step for the brewery that was named 2010’s Green Business of the Year by the EPA. Manley says they’ll start with the Pale Ale in the fall and probably start canning a few other brews shortly thereafter. I, for one, can’t wait.

Another established brewery that recently started canning is Colorado’s Avery Brewing Company. Their line of canned beers is slightly old news, since it debuted last fall. For now they’re only canning a handful of their beers — their simpler, more accessible offerings. But Avery has some real heavy hitters in their lineup. If their canned beer line is hugely successful, could it only be a matter of time until we see a canned barleywine? Or even something barrel-aged? As more and more established breweries hop on the can bandwagon, it will be interesting to see if they start canning their big beers.