With the booming booze business comes a plethora of festivals touting the best of the "craft" scene in spirits, wine and beer. While many of these events are very well curated, there tend to be many of the familiar faces at every event, especially when it comes to the city's many wonderful breweries. There's nothing wrong with, say, the fantastic Brooklyn Brewery or the stellar Six Point Brewery, but sometimes you just want a little strange, you know? Enter the Brooklyn Local Craft Beer Festival.
Now before you pass judgement on the borough designation, it should be known that all the boroughs—and Long Island—are represented at this upcoming fete; Brooklyn just happens to be where the party's at. Arch Rowan, one member of the Five Borough Beer Corp, who are producing the event, tells us the team made sure to look for as many breweries as they could, and the tinier the better. "The main thing was we really wanted to target guys who were lesser known, who are new, who are trying to focus on small-batch, artisanal ales," Rowan said.
To that end, you won't be seeing the Big Boys In Craft Beer on October 5th; instead, expect breweries who are new to the scene or have stayed on the down low. On average, attending breweries produced around 1033 barrels of beer in 2014, with about 18 different styles among them. Staten Island's brand new Flagship Brewery will be there, for example, as is Manhattan's Third Rail Beer and Long Island's Lithology Brewing Co. "When we were doing this project, we were all astounded at the great diversity of breweries that were in the city itself and just outside," Rowan recalls. "We constantly went to breweries and were surprised and said, 'These were the best ones'...and then we'd try something else and we'd have to add that on to the best breweries list."
In some cases, this event will be a unique opportunity to try breweries and beers that you simply cannot get at a store or bar. Case in point, Lithology, whose brews are only available at tasting events for the time being. They'll be pouring their Lafayette Farmhouse, which "blends characteristics of a traditional French saison with the sweetness of an American fall harvest," according to President Lee Kaplan—and the Lithology Brown Ale, made with three types of hops. "In some cases, because our batch size is smaller, we are able to produce beers with less available and more interesting grains, yeast and hops that otherwise have to be substituted in larger batches because of the quantity available," Kaplan explains.
The brewery will be licensed hopefully by December or January, but until then they're only allowed to serve product at events like these.
Hops (Arch Rowan)
Like many of the recurring festivals, the BLCBF will offer tastings from each brewery, utilizing a punch card system that lets guests track which beers they've tasted and notes about what they thought of them. That's not to say you get one sip and you're done; "the idea with a punch card system is to encourage people to try everything and to know what they’ve tried," Rowan explained. "We're not going to run out unless people are drinking over 100 ounces each, in which case we'll have a lot of people who are way too drunk. We won't allow that either."
To further aid in keeping everyone more or less on even keel, there'll be a few food vendors at the site selling munchies. Carpe Donut will be bringing their ridiculously tasty apple cider doughnuts to the event; Beer Bakery are bringing their baked goods made from spent grain in the brewing process; and Hops and Hocks will be bringing some tasty charcuterie. Check for the full lineup closer to the date.
For this year's event, all the breweries are either from the city or just outside, which suits the organizers just fine. "I think that there's something to be said for getting products that are from your own back yard, or getting products that you can actually visit the production facilities," Rowan muses. "I just think New York City is such a dynamic place with so much going on, it really lends itself its own creative energy. I feel like trying a lot of these beers, I'm always stunned by how good they are. I think a lot of that's just a product of the environment."
