Good Beer in NYC is closing

Awful news. They were one of the greats.

 

God damn it. Terrible news, a great store run by good people.

 

That's very sad. Been there many times over the years.

 

Used to live in the neighborhood and it was a good spot. That sucks.

 

Absolutely sucks. Used to go a lot when I lived in the west village. That said I think it’s probably more like 12-13 years, not 22. I moved to NYC from the UK (and began my US craft beer journey, having grown up on UK cask) in 2008. And I want to say GB opened like 1-2 years later - did he have a different location beforehand? If so I had no idea; from talking to him at the time I had gotten the impression it was a new venture for him.

 

NYC is already a beer desert compared to other cities.

 

Maybe Manhattan is. Brooklyn (and maybe Queens too) certainly is not.

 

That was def true 10 years ago. These days certainly not true

 

I really, really wanted to like Good Beer, went there many times while living in the city. But it was always kind of disaster, organization wise, and the prices were all over the map, even for NYC. Staff always seemed checked out, too. Meanwhile, shops like Milk and Hops ran a tight ship and provided a clean, friendly spot for gathering, and they survived Covid just fine (well, they survived, anyway).

 

Completely false.

 

When I worked in Manhattan I went to M&H at least twice a week. It was my favorite place to go to, whether in-house or (for me mostly) to-go. I went in November of last year for the first time post-covid, and it definitely seemed like it had changed. All the bartenders has changed over, wasn’t a huge fan of the girl who served me and the prices were absurd, even for Manhattan. I went over to Beer Run and not only were the prices at least $1-2 cheaper per can, they had much better selection and a more welcoming bartender.

 

Last time I went, maybe a year ago, they were charging $10 for a single can of Sip of Sunshine, which I thought was insane.

 

I bought like 6 cans and I think it was 4 lagers and 2 stouts and I paid almost $50 for them. I couldn’t believe it. Their prices used to be good for Manhattan.

 

Even Bread and Honey is more reasonable than that. I used to grab Finback from them pretty regularly.

 

B&H was a little harder for me to get to. Obviously, a little pricy (I mean, that neighborhood, lol) but selection was/is top tier.

 

I always justified it by comparing it to the subway + bus ride out to Finback (before they were in Brooklyn). It was like 1.5 hours each way.

 

There's not many beer scenes I'd take over ours. There's more good breweries in Brooklyn than some whole states, and there's great beer bars all over Manhattan that get some of the best distribution in the country. Outside of the prices which are just a function of NYC being NYC, it's pretty great.

 

I passed M&H on a daily basis for years, walked in a couple of times, saw warm cans sitting on shelves and crazy prices, and walked away. Never understood how places like that had customers except for tourists. If Good Beer was worse than M&H I guess I didn't miss much. Not surprised that St. Gambrinus closed too — the same story of the warm overpriced cans. 209 Station might be the next. I know I'm spoiled by living in Gowanus, but there are breweries around the city and no rip-off supermarkets with large refrigerated selections to avoid "beer" stores.

 

I just spent a month in midtown and besides Haymaker there was not much else. Don't get me started on the Irish bars.