Bowl with Mikkel from Mikkeller

When Danish brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø of Mikkeller said he wanted to do something fun and different on his upcoming visit to New York, we decided that instead of the common tap takeover, we'd take him bowling! Join us on Thursday at the Gutter for some beers and ten pin action.  There will be 3 Mikkeller drafts plus some bottles as well as beers from 3 of Mikkel's favorite American breweries.

When:  Thursday, 1 September, 5pm - onwards
Where:  The Gutter, 200 N. 14th Street, Williamsburg
What:  pay-as-you-go

On draft:
- Mikkeller Dream Pils - originally known as "The American Dream" in Denmark, this is Mikkeller's version of a Danish pils brewed with American hops
- Mikkeller Drink'in the Sun - hoppy, American-style wheat beer. Easy-drinkin' so you don't get thrown off your game, 2.4% abv
- Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast - need some sustenance? How about an oatmeal coffee stout?
- Hill Farmstead Simcoe - single hop pale ale brewed with Simoce hops
- Hill Farmstead Double Galaxy - single hop imperial pale ale brewed with Galaxy hops
- Green Flash West Coast IPA - extravagantly hopped IPA
- Cigar City Marshal Zhukov - imperial stout

In bottles:
- Mikkeller Draft Bear - an 8%, hop-charged imperial pilsner
- Mikkeller Black - a monster of an imperial stout, 17.5% abv. Allegedly the strongest beer in Scandinavia
- Mikkeller Barrel-Aged Black Hole - coffee imperial stout aged in cognac barrels, 13.1% abv
- Mikkeller Barrel-Aged Black Hole - aged in tequila barrels

Nøgne Ø and Oysters Thursday Night

On most Thursday nights, Jimmy's No. 43 features a brewery to accompany oysters shucked by master shucker, Eddie Oysters. (If you've seen Eddie at work at one of the many beer events around town you know how amazing he is!)

This Thursday, 25 August, Norway's Nøgne Ø brewery will be featured. Drop on by any time to have a beer or 2. The oysters are usually available from 5-8 pm (or until they sell out) and the kitchen is open for dinner from 5:30 pm - onwards.

Jimmy's No. 43 is located at 43 E. 7th Street.

Brewer and commercial pilot Kjetil Jikiun began his brewing career as a homebrewer, having been inspired by the flavorful beers he encountered on flights abroad. Successfully recreating these beers that were not available in Norway, he was encouraged to start brewing professionally and Nøgne Ø - the Uncompromising Brewery - was founded to make beers of strong personality, individuality, and quality. The name is Norwegian for "naked island" and was a term used by poet Henrik Ibsen to describe the stark, barren, rocky islands off of Norway's coast. Brewed with rich Maris Otter malt and often with bold American hops (Kjetil is fond of the 4 C's:  Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Columbus), unfiltered and unpasteurized, Nøgne Ø beers are anything but stark.

The line up:
- Tiger Tripel (in bottles) - complex and balanced Belgian-style Tripel, 9% abv
- Porter (on draft) - dark malts provide notes of coffee, chocolate, and dried fruit, 7% abv
- IPA (on draft) - an American-style IPA with a big malt and hop presence, 7.5% abv
- Saison (on draft) - refreshing beer made for hot summer days and brewed with malt and wheat - the perfect accompaniment to oysters, according to Kjetil!

New Beer Shops in Manhattan

We're very excited about the fact that 2 new beer shops opened up last week! More places to buy good beer? Yes, thank you!

On Monday the 15th, our friends over at Beer Table in Brooklyn opened up Beer Table Pantry in Grand Central Terminal. Check them out in the Graybar Passage. They're open from 8am til 10pm and have a small but excellent selection of bottles plus several taps for growler fills.

This past weekend, the team behind Resto opened up a bottle shop next door called The Cannibal.  Not named in reference to their meat-centric menu but rather a tribute to great Belgian cycling legend Eddy Merckx. Unlike the beer list at Resto which features Belgian beer, The Cannibal will feature beer from around the world and has 10 tap lines for growler fills or on-premise drinking.

Introducing Anchorage Brewing Company

Gabe Fletcher started brewing at Midnight Sun Brewing in Anchorage, Alaska in 1998. When Shelton Brothers met him in 2008 at the Great Alaskan Beer and Barleywine festival, he had begun to work with wild yeast and barrel-aging at Midnight Sun and was happy to share some of our bottles of Jolly Pumpkin. When he called about a year ago to say that he was starting his own brewery, we told him that we'd love to help him sell his beers. All of Anchorage Brewing beers will be aged in oak barrels and fermented with brettanomyces yeast.

We're pleased to announce that the first release has made it down from the cool North and is now available in New York. Look for 750ml corked bottles of Whiteout Wit at your favorite store. Whiteout Wit is a 6.5% Belgian-style witbier brewed with Sorachi Ace hops; spiced with lemon peel, coriander, and black peppercorn; fermented with Belgian yeast in the tank; aged in French oak Chardonnay barrels with brettanomyces; and finally bottle-conditioned with a third yeast strain.



Look for Love Buzz Saison and Bitter Monk Double IPA this fall.

Beer Dinner featuring Cantillon and Jolly Pumpkin

In June, Peter Hoffman's venerable restaurant Savoy closed (read Edible Manhattan's send-off here), to be reopened in the fall with a more casual bent. Chef Ryan Tate decided that he wanted do a dinner that pairs the seasonal dishes he is known for with intriguing beers that could give any fine wine a run for its money.

Join us on Wednesday at Jimmy's No. 43 for a dinner featuring beers from Michigan's Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, brewers of oak-aged beers, and Belgium's traditional Cantillon Brewery, still making authentic lambic the traditional way, fermented with wild yeasts. There will be an informal discussion on each of the beers and the unique brewing process.

When:  Wednesday, 17 August, 7pm
Where: Jimmy's No. 43, 43 E. 7th Street
What:  $55 for 4 courses paired with 6 beers; purchase tickets at Brown Paper Tickets.

As a preview to the dinner, this Tuesday's $10 Tasting at Jimmy's will feature sour beers, including selections from Jolly Pumpkin and one Cantillon. The Tuesday Tastings start at 7:30 pm.

PS. It's Jimmy's birthday on Wednesday, too!

The French Connection

The French are known for their very civilized vacation policies. Pretty much the entire country shuts down for the whole month of August while everyone heads to the countryside, the beaches, or the mountains for les vacances. Assuming that you are not so lucky and are stuck in a hot New York City, why not pretend for a few hours that you are seated in charming café surrounded by hop fields, sipping a cool glass of beer. As we keep saying, the French do make very good beer which is sadly underappreciated in this country. Rattle n Hum will be putting on 10 kegs of some of the finest beers that France has to offer and cooking up some French-inspired food.

There is a reason that Manet did not title this painting The Wine Drinkers

When: Tuesday, 16 August, 4 pm-onwards
Where: Rattle n Hum, 14 E. 33rd St.
What: pay-as-you-go

Les bières:

Brasserie St-Germain Page 24 Réserve Hildegarde Ambrée - an amber bière de garde, the traditional style from the north of France, generously hopped with the local Brewers Gold and Strisselspalt varieties and brewed with locally-sourced malt, 6.9% abv

Brasserie St-Germain Page 24 Réserve Hildegarde Blonde - the blonde version of their bière de garde, 6.9% abv

Brasserie de Bretagne Sant Erwann - Brittany's St. Yves (Sant Erwann in Breton) was a 13th century ecclesiastical judge who was a champion of the poor. This 7-grain, 7% abv blonde ale made with barley, wheat, buckwheat, oats, rye, spelt, and millet is brewed in his honor.

Brasserie de Bretagne Celtika - golden triple, 8.8% abv

Brasserie de Bretagne Gwiniz Du - Gwiniz Du means "black wheat" in Breton and this amber ale is brewed with roasted wheat, giving the beer a hint of spice, 5.4% abv

Jenlain Ambrée - Brasserie Duyck, brewer of Jenlain, is credited with reviving the bière de garde style, a malty farmhouse ale brewed in the cooler months and then stored for consumption in the summer in the days before refrigeration. Their amber version is full of malt sweetness, with notes of caramel and dried fruits, 7.5% abv

Jenlain St-Druon - a blonde bière de garde brewed with a little bit of wheat and 3 varieties of Alsatian hops, 6% abv

Pietra - an amber ale brewed with chestnut flour, from the island of Corsica, 6% abv

Pietra Colomba - a Belgian-style wheat beer, hazy and refreshing, but brewed with the local wild herbes du maquis which give the beer a more herbal note, rather than the typical citrus and spice, 5% abv

Thiriez Extra - Daniel Thiriez brews farmhouse ales in the tiny town of Esquelbecq, close to the Belgian border, and his beers tend to blur the lines between French bières de garde and Belgian saisons. The Extra is a very hoppy, effervescent saison-like beer that is extremely refreshing and easy to drink at only 4.5% abv

The Pilsner Event at Blind Tiger

Each month, Blind Tiger has been featuring a specific style and they kick off the month with a style event. This month, the featured style is pilsner and we've got a bunch of tasty offerings on tap. Don't turn your nose up thinking you don't like lager; instead, come to explore the range of flavors found in this style which is very unforgiving to any brewer making mistakes. The clean profile that make pilsners so refreshing also offers nowhere to hide any off flavors.

When:  Wednesday, 3 August, 3pm onwards
Where:  Blind Tiger Ale House, 281 Bleecker Street

We find that pilsners often tend to get lost next to quadruple-hopped, barrel-aged, imperial beers. Not that those beers don't have their time and place - sipping a glass while parked on a couch, perhaps - but when it's hot out and you want something thirst-quenching yet flavorful that you can drink several of in one sitting, true pilsners brewed with 100% malt are hard to beat.

Originating in Pilsen, in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), in the 1800s, the light color and delicate flavor of this new style were quite novel at the time and its popularity quickly spread to Germany and beyond.

Blind Tiger will be pouring 12 pilsners, both imported and domestic (I must profess a fondness for Victory's Braumeister Pils), including 6 Shelton Brothers beers (see the full draft list here):

- Kulmbacher Edelherb Pils - voted the #1 pils in 2 blind tastings in Germany sponsored by the newspaper "Die Zeit"
- EKU Pils - a little maltier than northern German pils but with more hops than a southern Bavarian pils - the perfect balance between the two
- Mahr's Pilsner - unpasteurized pilsner from Franconia in northern Bavaria
- Christoffel Blond - robust, dry-hopped pilsner-style lager from the Netherlands
- Mikkeller Dream Pils - originally known as "The American Dream" in Denmark, this is Mikkeller's version of a Danish pils brewed with American hops.
- Mikkeller Draft Bear - an 8%, hop-charged, imperial pilsner? Why not! Just make sure you're comfortably seated on your bar stool.