ITH Beer Guide

There's a new brewery in town set to open seemingly any day now.* Not gonna lie, I'm pretty damn excited to have another brewery in Ithaca. The state of beer around here (Tompkins County at least) leaves a bit to be desired . A new brewery is opening up you say?! There looks to be some potential here. I love the location. The guys have a science background which I think bodes well for QC/QA. The branding is sharp. And the tasting room sounds like it's going to be fun (check that first link). But-- you knew there would be a but --while having not tasted any of their beer yet, I already have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It comes down to a crowd-funding campaign.  To me, crowd-funding campaigns are about making something possible that wouldn't exist without the help of us commoners. At the same time there needs to be some sort of return on the investment. Crowd-funding artistic endeavors is cool I think. If enough of us pledge 10 bucks, this band will be

I'm seeing all sorts of posts from back in Houston and other major cities and breweries about celebrating IPA day. Meanwhile, here in Ithaca I haven't seen a thing. So, it got me thinking. What would I do? If I owned a bar in Ithaca, what local(ish) IPAs would I have on tap? So, I made a list. Without further ado, here's my 10 tap lineup of NY IPAs, plus a few on backup, because obviously we'd blow through at least a few kegs. I kept this to ~2 hours from Ithaca--essentially Cooperstown to the east, Syracuse to the north, Binghamton/Elmira to the south, and Rochester to the west. Flower Power by Ithaca Beer Company . I can't possibly have IPA Day with the local pioneer. Afterall, Food and Wine Magazine even included Flower Power as one of the "most important craft beers ever brewed" .  Mass Riot  by Prison City Brewpub. This one may be a longshot, but how special a tap would that be to have in town? Mass Riot by Prison City in Auburn was rated the b

The Northeast/New England IPA (NEIPA) craze has officially taken the market by storm. We're talking cloudy, juicy hop bombs with little bitterness on the back end. The Alchemist kickstarted the craze with their now infamous Heady Topper, and right here in upstate NY Prison City Brewpub (Auburn) is now known nationally for their Mass Riot IPA thanks to a Paste magazine write up.  (Seriously, look at all those NEIPA showing up in that top 10 ranking!) While I haven't had the privilege of enjoying Heady Topper or been lucky enough to visit Prison City when Mass Riot was flowing, it's great to see more and more of these cloudy IPAs coming out of local breweries. As luck would have it, a trip to Syracuse coincided with Full Boar Craft Brewery's release of their take: Fricken Wicked! Here's my take on their offering. Beer Details Brewery : Full Boar Craft Brewery and Tap Room Location : North Syracuse, NY Beer : Fricken Wicked! ABV: 7.2% The appearance on

In my last post, I reflected on the state of beer in Tompkins County , and there's certainly some major room for growth. Here, I'd like to take a quick look at what's going on nearby in the Finger Lakes (FLX) region. Is this going to be a comprehensive look at the rest of all FLX beer country? Not quite--and it certainly depends on what you define as Central /Finger Lakes/Southern Tier. But these are some of the counties where I think some big things are happening: No. 15: Cayuga County Cayuga County Brewery licenses: 5 Per capita: 1 per 15,658 The take: This county defined by water -- from the Finger Lakes to Lake Ontario -- has a surprising number of noteworthy breweries. Sprawling land mass for a county with Auburn being the central city. I've visited just 2 of the 5 in this county (Prison City Brewpub and Aurora Ales and Lagers), but both were fantastic. Prison City has a great rotating selection of in-house beer including their highlight acclaimed Mass Riot IP

Before getting into the actual beer, I want to start with a post on the state of beer around me. Don Cazentre recently had a post on NYup.com ranking the ten counties with the most total breweries as well as doing a full county ranking of breweries per capita based on 2017 1st quarter numbers. Let's start with my current home base: No. 20: Tompkins County Tompkins County Brewery licenses: 5 Per capita: 1 per 20,985 The take: In an around the Cornell University city pf [sic] Ithaca, you'll find older and newer craft breweries. The oldest is Ithaca Beer Co. A few things struck me with this one: The "take" is quite possibly the blandest of takes possible. Is that even considered a take? Even the typo gives the impression they didn't really care to write anything meaningful here. I'm generally not surprised at where Tompkins landed in the ranking. If anything, I maybe expected them to be lower--probably because the "per capita" stat *might* be a

I've started a number of blogs in my day. These have mostly been for personal/family use (more like journals shared with a select few), but I think I need someone looking over my shoulder to push me to post more. And I also need a muse. What better muse to loosen these lips (or limber up these fingers as it were) than booze? More specifically, my favorite type of booze: BEER! So, here we go. Another blog. This time it'll chronicle my experiences with beer with a focus on the Ithaca, the surrounding Finger Lakes (FLX) region, and beyond. It seems there isn't a lot of attention spent around here on promoting what's happening in Ithaca--or maybe I'm just not as looped in as I was in Houston--and I think that's a damn shame. Let's change that! After all, beer people are good people. I'll post beer reviews, brewery reviews, my occasional two cents on the beer industry, and everything in- and out-between. I'm also on twitter:  @ITHbeerguy Cheers!