Other Half Brewing January 2018

The pineapple is subtle but you can taste it. It kind of gave it that (for lack of a better explanation) chocolate-covered strawberry mashup of "dark" and "light" sweetness. It came out much more as the beer warmed to room temp

 

Digging this batch of Citra, forgot how good and simple the single hop series are. More of these in 2018 please kthx.

 

Finback kills it with Stouts (Lazy Axe, Harambe, Hawk and Whale collab, BQE series, etc). Also, Heavy Boots of Lead by Singlecut is amazing IMO.

 

I didn't say that there wasn't a single good stout coming out of NYC. And in a subsequent post I listed two of the same beers you did as being stand out examples (although for my tastes I would have to disagree on HBoL).

I guess the way I look at it, is that when it comes to hoppy stuff, other than a couple of HF/rarities I've drank at a bar, I can't remember buying any non-NY beer in the last year. When it comes to stouts I can't say the same at all - probably 80% of what I buy is out of state. I guess that's where I'm coming from.

 

Have to agree with @rozzom here. Heavy Boots was awesome the first bottling but subsequent releases seem not to be as well balanced. And as good as the Finback stouts are they can be impossible to get in bottles, and difficult to find on tap- unless you want to schlep out to the transit desert that is Ridgewood. I guess the latter would be worth it if there weren't easy access to awesome stouts from so many breweries out of state.

 

Is Grimm considered 'in state' yet? Cause they make awesome Stouts. Honestly I feel like NYC itself is lacking outside of hops at the moment. HVB has filled in the gap for sours for me since we see a lot of their stuff on tap but there is nobody in NYC who is doing Sours anywhere near as good.

 

Maybe I'm just too partial to cans at this point. Bottles are nice to share and are probably more appropriate for something ba or 11% and higher, but cans are what I want to drink night to night. With all the high abv ipas constantly being put out I don't see why there aren't more 4-packs of stouts being put out this time. Am I far off from what people want looking for an 8-10% stout at around $18 a la Ambassador from Interboro last year? Threes did a whole release like this, but I don't think anyone else did.

I'd also drink a canned saison if a local brewery regularly released one.

 

I was counting Grimm, even though they have made a couple I really enjoyed

And yeah totally agree - NYC is verging on being a bit one trick pony-ish with hazy hops. All relative of course - don't get me wrong I love what's happened here in the last 4-5 years

 

Speaking of Stouts, has anyone opened a bottle of the peanut version of Hypersleep? I'm thinking of picking up a bottle...

 

Same here, 95% of the IPAs I drink come directly from local breweries. 95% of the other styles I drink come off the shelf from other areas. I haven't had a lot of the local stouts, but when I have BCBS, Parabola, KBS, FW Anniversary , etc in the cellar still trying to drink down, hard to justify buying more local stuff.

And I do still have an original bottle of OH stout I never drank, saving it is a collector's item !

 

I forgot you dabbled with non-IPAs

 

Yep, there was even a New York Post article about it !

 

Yea I was super interested in that one but its hard to justify given that I still have Twigs, Berries, Creamies, both Cognac Smokescreens, BA Get Busy Living, and Velvet Magnum already from just OH.

 

I figured with all the action in this thread there was a line 50 deep already in this blizzard waiting for cans of DDH, lactose-infused, hazy DIPAs to be released at 3 today.

 

As someone who moved here from Tampa this month the stouts here are severely lacking and doesn't seem to be a priority at all despite this weather. Not that weather really matters as we do stouts all year in Tampa.

 

While I don't disagree that most of the NYC breweries are lacking in styles other than hoppy/hazy IPAs, it is also a style that you can't get quality shelfies whereas almost any other style you can so I'd rather have breweries like OH, Interboro, Greenpoint, LIC etc. cranking these out every week. I can get my stout/sour/saison fix by stopping at a Whole Foods. A good situation IMO.

 

Have you bought any of the 8 oz cans of barrel aged Ambassador from Interboro? I picked up a 4-pack which ends up being 32 oz of BA stout, but I feel like 8 oz cans are the perfect format for 12+% BA beers.

Also, Trillium packages Free Rise in cans, but it's probably their least popular can. I enjoy it, but really wish they would package their Trillium wild ale in 4 packs.