I recently made a short trip to New York City with my husband for sightseeing. Of course one of the most important sights is beer. This series of posts will focus on the different beers I was able to try while I was in the area. Part 1 will discuss a few of the single beers I ended up drinking at certain places. Part 2 will discuss a bar called The Stag’s Head where I spent a good amount of time. Part 3 will discuss Brooklyn Brewery, a huge draw because it has been around so long.
To start with I enjoyed some local beer while at the Embassy Suites near Newark Airport our first night. The hotel has a fantastic happy hour that we just barely missed with $2 pints. They have a few local beers on draft and others in bottles available. I got to try Cricket Hill Lager while I was there. It had a nice smooth hop flavor and was overall a solid lager. I didn’t find out until later that I could have gotten an IPA from the same brewery.
Tap list at Embassy Suites.
Later at Heartland Brewery in the Theater District of New York City, I ordered their IPA. It had a high amount of bitterness, possibly up to 70 IBU. A tropical fruit flavor came out pretty nice on the front. I was quite satisfied with this one though it did seem that the bitterness left it without much to taste. At the same brewery my husband ordered the oatmeal stout. He enjoyed the coffee and chocolate flavors and thought it was one of the better stouts he has had.
Heartland Brewing IPA
For a video review of these beers, check out this video I took while we were in Heartland Brewing.
After biking around Central Park New York City, we stopped by 3 Monkeys for a pint. They had a fairly large tap list with a number of different IPAs. I eventually settled on Single Cut Billy 18 IPA from Watt NY. It had a good pine hop flavor and tropical fruit with a mellow bitterness around 40 IBU. I enjoyed this one but it wasn’t anything particularly special.
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
The word stochasticity sounds like something my dad would make up. It turns out it actually has a scientific meaning, one that Stone decided to use to explain a new series of experimental beers. If I am understanding the explanation on Wikipedia, something that is stochastic is so random that you can only predict what is next using probability. Stone calls this series an “unpredictable series of beers, where exotic notions, ingredients, and ideas coalesce.”
To start this series of unpredictable beers we are given Grapefruit Slam. Hop heads should be well familiar with the grapefruit flavors that come from some of the most common hops used in San Diego IPAs. A number of delicious IPAs put grapefruit flavors at the forefront of the hop profile. To give a truly knock-down strong grapefruit flavor to this beer, Stone added grapefruit peel to the final beer. This gives it a flavor unlike anything you’ve had before.
Grapefruit Slam in front of an orange tree.
At 8.2%, this beer was already pretty bitter before any grapefruit was added. The addition of grapefruit gives it a powerful punch and a sneaky aftertaste that will excite most hop-heads. Though I don’t particularly care for fresh grapefruit, thankfully this doesn’t get as insane as some Japanese and Filipino beers that I reviewed earlier. It is still a San Diego Double IPA at heart and should satisfy Stone fans who stumble upon it when searching for the latest version of Enjoy By. I happened to buy a few bottles of this beer when I realized I couldn’t find any Enjoy By 4.20.14.
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
I’ve been saying for a while that we need a good Session IPA in six packs. Stone Go To IPA hits all the right notes and was released just as the Session IPA demand has gotten fairly large.
I’ve been hooked on Modern Times Fortunate Islands because it was available in four packs of 16oz cans. Then Lagunitas recently released their Session IPA.
Unlike a few other Session IPA beers, Stone Go to IPA is not a good introduction for the IPA hater. Through a technique they call hop-bursting, which sounds like double-dry-hopping on steroids, they cram as much hop flavor into the beer as they possibly can. In true Stone fashion, this is not a beer for everyone. It is more heavy on the citrus hops than the Lagunitas variety, which makes it more my style. Still there is something refreshing about the Fortunate Islands because it only uses a few varieties of hops.
I haven’t yet compared it side by side with the Fortunate Islands but I can see myself returning to this much more than the ordinary Stone IPA or Pale Ale, both of which I consider to be a bit too malty for my tastes. If you haven’t yet gotten over the insanely strong double IPAs you will consider this a sissy 4.5% that should be reserved for the weak. It will be here when you get that craving for IPA at 1PM on a Sunday and don’t want to be weighed down by a 7% IPA.
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
If Japanese craft beer is young, Philippines craft beer is still an infant. At most I could find there are maybe two or three craft breweries in existence in The Philippines. Where Japan has a number of bars in Tokyo alone serving craft beer there are only a few in Manila and zero in Cebu where we visited. Cebu was surprising because of the number of wine shops where you could get good quality French wine for reasonable prices. For the most part if you want beer in The Philippines I hope you like San Miguel (the local brand of beer primarily represented by a pilsner).
My main goal in Manila was a place called Global Beer Exchange where they serve a number of western beers on tap and have some Filipino beers in bottles. I also visited a place called Burgers and Brewskies where they had some highly satisfying burgers and one Filipino beer on tap. Both places also had some Japanese craft beer in bottles and other craft beer selections from around the world. I didn’t go inside but there was a place called Draft in Manila where they largely serve foreign craft beer selections.
The most well known brewery in The Philippines is called Katipunan. I briefly tried their IPA at Burgers and Brewskies but didn’t order a pint after that because it was pretty boring. I was surprised that it was an IPA based on the flavor. It tasted mostly like an amber and didn’t have a very strong hop flavor to it. Later my husband tried their porter at Global Beer Exchange. He thought it was good but largely forgettable compared to the porters and stouts in the US. It didn’t have the same strong coffee or chocolate flavors typically found in the US.
I got to try an extra hopped pale ale from Fat Payly’s, a brewery in The Philippines. It had a similar extra strong grapefruit flavor to one I tried in Japan but much stronger. I wasn’t able to enjoy this one at all. It might be a favorite of yours though if you really do like fresh grapefruit. This is nothing like the nelson hop that is typically associated with grapefruit flavor. It was way too much for me and I reacted similarly to how my husband does when he tastes any IPA.
In general good luck finding local beer in The Philippines and if you do stay far away. I suggest either learning to like San Miguel (local mass-produced pilsner) or drinking wine or nothing at all.
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
My exploration of Japanese craft beer was mostly a failure. In total I tried three Japanese IPAs and beers from a total of four different Japanese breweries. I visited only one brewery. I didn’t have the patience to search for the craft beer bars even though I knew exactly where they are. This is because getting around Tokyo can be a huge pain. In the end I drank more sake than beer in Japan and I would suggest you do the same.
I’m not sure the exact age of craft beer in Japan but it is clear that it is still very young or at least hasn’t gotten to be very popular. Most bars still heavily feature the big beer brands that you have probably seen in the United States (Asahi and Kirin). Like big beer brands around the world they are in the pilsner style. Though they aren’t bad, they are a bit boring for the IPA fan (me) or the stout and porter fan (my husband). Every restaurant that serves alcohol has plenty of Asahi, Kirin, and Sake.
The first full day in Japan I got to visit a small brewery on Tokyo Bay called T.Y. Harbor Brewery. This brewery is on a small island on Tokyo Bay that you have to take a few train lines to get to from either side. It is located at 〒140-0002 Tokyo, Shinagawa, Higashishinagawa, 2−1−3. They are open for lunch and dinner and if you arrive in between meals they will only serve you beer (perfectly fine for us). They are small enough that I got to speak with one of the owners there a little bit.
T.Y. Harbor Brewery Taps.
4oz tasters are not available like you might find in the USA so I only got to try the IPA and a small taste of a beer made with cherry blossoms. My husband got to try an Imperial Stout. The IPA was a different flavor than I typically expect in San Diego. It tends towards the tropical fruit and caramel malts, giving it a light sweetness. It was probably the best IPA I tried in Japan. Hy husband described the stout as having lots of coffee and roasted malts flavors.
T.Y. Harbor IPA.
The beers here cost about 800 yen (around $8) for 420ml. 500ml would be a pint but they compensate for the fact that the head of the beer typically means you don’t get a full pint of beer. From what I read online this is similar to the price at other major craft beer bars in Japan. Before I left I got to try a seasonal beer brewed with cherry blossoms. It was light on alcohol and color with a nice cherry flavor and some flavors similar to drinking tea.
I also got to buy an IPA from a convenience store somewhere. It was an IPA from Aooni brewing in Japan. It tasted like it was on the lighter end and seemed to have the same tropical fruit hops as the one from T.Y. Harbor Brewery above.
Aooni IPA can.
I then had another Japanese IPA I bought when I was in Manila, Philippines. It was an Imperial IPA from Baird Beer called Surugu Bay. It had a flavor heavy towards the malts and possibly rye with some seriously strong grapefruit flavor. It seemed different from the Nelson hops you typically taste and more like eating actual grapefruit (including the part of the flavor I could never enjoy).
Baird Beer Surugu Bay Imperial IPA.
Also at one point in The Philippines I found beer from Kiuchi brewing. I tried an interesting 7% beer made from Red Rice that had a nice fruity flavor without a strong alcohol taste. As far as I could tell the brewery didn’t make any IPA that I found.
If you do decide to visit Japan to try local craft breweries, I would suggest venturing outside of Tokyo. Hopefully Tokyo’s confusing street configuration doesn’t exist as much once you leave Tokyo. I didn’t ever get outside of Tokyo except when I was at Narita airport. Otherwise, I would try taking a taxi to one of the bars if you get confused. I don’t know how well the drivers know their way around but it isn’t too expensive for short trips that it might be worth it.
For most casual craft beer fans who can appreciate good sake, I would suggest you instead enjoy Japan’s rich selections of sake and possibly some single malt whiskey (though they are very expensive).
Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.
