Thursday, July 12, 2007

Drinking every beer at the brewery


Yeah, so last week I headed down to Lancaster with Christine for a Built to Spill concert (they rocked). Naturally, we had dinner at the Lancaster Brewing Company. I made my normal drink order at a new-to-me brewpub, the sampler platter. Typically, this consists five, six, maybe seven samples. But Lancaster apparently takes their sampling seriously, giving me ten 5-oz. samples, one of each beer on tap. A little math puts that at four beers with dinner and a heck of a concert to follow.

As for the brewpub itself, it was a cool atmosphere. Well, as cool as, a historic tobacco warehouse (I think that's what I heard) can be. The food was good but not great and the food had too few affordable options. My burger was tasty, but Christine's Chicken caesar salad was over $10 and the lettuce came in one huge chunk. If you're in Lancaster it's worth a visit, but definitely not road-trip worthy considering the bevy of breweries in eastern PA.

Here my favorites:

Amish Four Grain Pale Ale
- A malt-focused pale ale that tastes like a biscuit cookie with fruity hops.

Hefeweizen - I'm a sucker for a classic, tasty and smooth German wheat beer.

Milk Stout - Not really milky or anything, but a nice, rich stout with dominating black malts.

Photo by American Tom

Saturday, July 7, 2007

NYC Beer Hunting


It wasn't really a safari or anything, but I had an eye out for new and rare beers. I hit gold at the Blind Tiger in West Village. I had previously tried maybe six out of their 30 tap offerings. For reference, this is a nice change form when I'd go to Kelly Cole's in Syracuse and have trouble finding something new (and good) on their 70 taps.

I had the Captain Lawrence Liquid Gold, and damn, the name didn't lie. It was a near perfect American adaptation (more hops) of a Belgian pale ale. Yummy. Other noteable beer of late were '06 vintages of the 18% abv World Wide Stout and 11% Immort Ale from Dogfish Head. The WWS was just big and boozy for the most part, but the Immort Ale, a barleywine, knocked my socks of with it's big oak, vanilla, and licorice flavors than blended over the sweet caramel malts.