ITH Beer Guide

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! ...