Hello fellow BA's! I am headed to NYC in a couple weeks and staying in the Flatiron District. Have not been to the city for quite some time so I thought I would reach out to you folks that know the area. I would greatly appreciate recommendations for bars that have good tap lists. Bars with beers I am unable to drink in the Los Angeles area would be the emphasis. thank you in advanced for sharing and please do not hesitate to contact me if you are ever in the LA area and would like recommendations. Cheers!
Do a search as this question has been asked a million times. Once you figure out which bar you'd like to go to just check beermenus.com. Most bars in the area use it and update their taplist often.
rattle n hum + ginger man combo, double windsor and mission dolores in brooklyn spuyten duyvil and bierkraft blind tiger sucks yet to hit pony bar soft spot in my heart for stag's head and burp castle (but not jimmys) p.s. beer scene in NYC sucks in general. special note: don't expect decent food with your beer here.
I'll throw in Jimmy's No 43 & The Stags Head. Decent selection at the Pony Bar but it's too anorak for me.
Amazing that neither of these have been mentioned yet, but Torst (in Brooklyn) and Top Hops (on the Lower East Side) are the two best beer bars in the city.
have you been to the other bars mentioned? what's your criteria for "best beer bar in the city"? p.s. re: my slagging blind tiger (which i hate) above, it's not just because at any decent hour it's full of bros shouting at the top of their lungs. it's also that the above average selection is either sold without regard to freshness or on dirty taps, because half of the beer that i knew should be world class there tasted like it was tapped from a septic tank.
Many times. Lived in the city for a while. Rattle has really gone downhill in recent years, is often jammed to the gills (although not as thoroughly as the Tiger) and is just not my thing. Ginger Man carries the whole crowded problem to another level and many of its (admittedly very large in number) taps are entirely ordinary. When it's not so full, I enjoy myself, but prefer the other bars I mentioned. Spuyten Duyvil admittedly has wonderful beers available, but is really only habitable on nice days from April through October, when the backyard garden is a feasible option. It also has had severe issues with misrepresented beer in the past (see, e.g., the Cherry Adam from the Wood fiasco which I believe is still up in the forums). They've gotten better recently, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Mission Delores is actually quite nice, I just prefer the two I mentioned. As to those two, Torst has my favorite tap list in the city. As the effective taproom for Evil Twin, there are usually a couple beers there that are simply unavailable anywhere else in the world. They also have a very strong tendency to put on other hard-to-find spectacular beers (e.g., the Zymatore project beers, which are often on tap). The bottle list, even in its now sadly reduced state, is excellent. And the food options, whether at the bar or at Luksus, are delicious. Top Hops, on the other hand, lives by its bottles. The draft list is nice, if not spectacular, but the entire bottle selection (which is, at least for NYC, the selection of a good bottle shop) is available for in-bar consumption at a $2 premium relative to takeaway. As a result, FBS is about the same price as at any bar in the city, but is available for 6 months out of the year (as opposed to occasionally), while larger format bottles are available at prices that are exceedingly cheap for a bar. Doesn't hurt that the owner (Ted) and the bartenders are great people and strong supporters of the beer community.
It seems to me that this forum's love with Top Hops stems entirely from the people that run it. That's great and all, but as a beer bar it's very middle of the road (in terms of both taps and bottles on hand) and I wouldn't recommend it to an out of towner just looking for good spots to hit on a visit. My two cents.
Fairly new place, but they have been getting some great beers in bottles & on draft - One Mile House!
Whoa. Just... whoa. If you weren't someone I know has been on BA for a while, I'd assume you're talking about the wrong bar. I've been hanging out at the tiger since the old Hudson street location and have a pretty solid relationship with a number of the longtime employees, not to mention extensive (read: I drink too much) experience with the bar in general - I definitely need to disagree with some of what you are saying. For starters - I 100% agree that the happy hour crowd can be a gigantic pain in the as*. The bar isn't big, a huge number of people are always crammed in, and they aren't necessarily the most enjoyable bunch of patrons (to be kind). That said - You are mistaken regarding both the freshness and the tap cleaning. The owners, managers, and employees all take pride and having fresh beer served properly. Seriously. I recommend talking to the bartenders about it - all are great people and would be happy to tell you about how they manage the beer rotation and tap system. (admittedly they might be less friendly during a slammed happy hour/event, though even then they tend to be brisk but not rude). Of course, it sucks you had beers there that didn't taste fresh, mistakes happen anywhere. In fact, it's happened to me once or twice at BT (I've been there many hundreds of times, so I attribute it to the law of large numbers), and I can guarantee you the bartenders would cheerfully get you a new beer. In fact, even if you get a fresh beer that you just don't like for some reason, they'll get you a new beer. They are a pretty laid back, non-judgmental crew, it's never an issue to voice displeasure with a beer. It's never pleasant to get a bad beer, but in my pretty broad experience, BT is one of the absolute most reliable bars insofar as keeping fresh beer around. What it boils down to - I've never been to a bar with a more customer-friendly, beer-respecting staff across the board. From the newest bartender to the most seasoned. I definitely suggest you go there on a weekend afternoon for lunch/brunch, get some food (their food is killer), and chat up whoever's working. I think you'll come away with a different perspective (aside from the whole happy hour crowd issue, that's pretty much a lost cause).
glad to hear defenses for the places i'm slagging. i'll give BT another chance, but i had some awful known-winners (particularly IPAs like victory's "is this the same victory that makes double simcoe?" awesome ranch series and a couple bear republic offerings + i think green flash west coast IPA of all things, and terrible iterations of jolly pumpkin's weizen bam and allagash's confluence... they were so bad that i was shocked, and it's not like my palate was fried or i had a cold or anything). will give top hops another chance too. i'm always glad to hear impassioned endorsements of places.
Was there this past week. Hit up Beer Culture near Broadway district for cheap bottle purchases. You can open there or take back to room for later. They also have 12 or so taps. Maybe 15. Very cool place. Good peeps working there. Example: 12oz bottle of Ithaca Flower Power at Beer Culture was around $2.50 or so. At regular bars/brewpub your looking at 7-8. Also you have the Valhalla not far from Beer Culture. Plenty of taps. Not much ipa selection when I was in there.I was mainly looking for ipa's I can't get in Cali. The food sucked there. Eat before or after. The atmosphere there was good. I would go back on my next visit.
