Dieu du Ciel! at Blind Tiger and Spuyten Duyvil

Every year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the brewers from Dieu du Ciel! in Montréal roll into town for a big event at Blind Tiger and a smaller one at Spuyten Duyvil. It's the beer highlight of the holiday season. But they weren't able to make it in 2012 so there was a void in the beer universe. Now, to rectify that, J-F, Stéphane, and company will be here this week with special beers and brewpub exclusives. The list for each night is different so I highly recommend hitting up both nights.

When:  Wednesday, 24 April, 3pm onwards
Where:  Blind Tiger, 281 Bleecker St.

The beers:

• Grande Noirceur - imperial stout, 9% 
• Fortunella - kumquat ipa, 7.2% 
• Pionnière - imperial black ipa, 9.5% 
• Chaman - imperial pale ale, 9% 
• Basse Messe - kölsch, 5% 
• Péché Mortel - imperial coffee stout, 9.5% 
• Péché Mortel Bourbon - aged in bourbon barrels, 9.5% 
• Solstice d'Hiver - barleywine, 10.2% 
• Neuvaine - amber ale brewed with and wormwood and fennel, 8%  
• Pénombre - black ipa, 6.5% 
• Mea Culpa - india cream ale, 6% 
• Purgatoire - old-style porter aged in red wine barrels, a collaboration with Trou du Diable, 10.2% 
• Isseki Nicho - imperial dark saison, 9.5% 
• Cornemuse - scotch ale, 8% 
• Equinoxe du Printemps cask - scotch ale with maple syrup, 8% 
• Grande Noirceur cask

When:  Thursday, 25 April, 5pm onwards
Where:  Spuyten Duyvil, 359 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn

 

Les bieres:

• Morality - American-style IPA, 7.2%
• Péché Mortel 11th Anniversary - imperial coffee stout brewed with special coffees, 9.5%
• Symbiose 4 - sour beer aged in oak barrels, 6%
• Solstice d'Hiver Bourbon - barleywine aged in bourbon barrels, 10.2%
• Revenante - smoked porter, 6%
• Wallonade - Belgian blonde, 4.2%  

 

Mikkeller Week at Adobe Blues

Adobe Blues loves Mikkeller so they're featuring the brewery all this week, starting on Monday, 8 April. It's lovely weather out there so why not take the ferry over to Staten Island. Adobe Blues is an easy bus ride from the ferry terminal and is located at 63 Lafayette Avenue.

Here's the selection:

On draft 

• Koppi - coffee IPA
• Wheat is the New Hop - collaboration with Grassroots Brewing, brewed with wheat and fermented with brettanomyces
• Monk’s Brew - 10% a Belgian-style brown ale 

Bottles

• Hop Burn Low - imperial pilsner
• 1000 IBU - 9.6% hoppy, hoppy, hoppy IPA 
• Sally's Field - Belgian blonde aged in chardonnay barrels
• Spontankriek - cherry lambic  
• Spontanframboos - raspberry lambic 
• Chipotle Porter
• Barrel-Aged Monk's Brew - aged in red wine barrels with raspberries
• Black Buffalo - 19.3% imperial stout aged in Buffalo Trace bourbon barrels
• Gypsy Tears - collaboration with Stillwater Artisanal Ales and Fanø Bryhus, a hoppy stout fermented with brettanomyces 

Tuesday Tasting with Tom Oliver of Oliver's Ciders

When:  Tuesday, 9 April, 7:30 pm
Where:  Jimmy's No. 43, 43 E. 7th Street
What:  $20 for 6 samples

This week's Tuesday Tasting is a special one because Tom Oliver, of Oliver's Cider and Perry, will be the guest speaker.  He'll be discussing and we'll be sampling 3 of his traditional ciders and 3 of his perrys, including the award-winning Gold Rush, a collaboration with Greg Hall of Virtue Cider.

The old farm in Herefordshire where Oliver's Cider House sits has been producing cider and perry for at least three centuries. Not much has changed there in that time.  Tom uses only fresh (mostly hand-picked) unsprayed fruit, with minimal intervention. Cattle and sheep graze the orchards year-round, providing nitrogen and natural weed prevention.
The pears and apples he uses are picked at full ripeness, sometimes stored to mature further, then washed, milled and, whenever necessary, macerated. Then they are pressed and fermented by wild yeasts and aged in old oak barrels for up to 10 months, before being blended and then bottled.

Seating is limited so to guarantee a spot, it is recommended to arrive early. 

Thursday Tap - German Bocks

This week's Thursday Tap at Jimmy's No. 43 is a double-header featuring 2 gravity kegs from the Weissenohe brewery in Franconia in northern Bavaria. Starting at 5 pm, Jimmy's will tap 2 spring bocks:  the Virtac Bior, a 7% spiced bockbier brewed from a medieval recipe, and Bonator - a malty 8.2% doppelbock named for the missionary St. Bonifatius (or Boniface), the patron saint of Germany.


The Weissenohe monastery was founded in 1050 and brewing on the grounds began shortly thereafter. The monastery buildings and land were sold to the Winkler family in 1803 but the brewery still exists (along with the chapel) and beers are still made using the traditional and time-consuming double-decoction method.


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

Gypsy Brewers at Owl Farm

Tuesday, 12 March, The Owl Farm in Brooklyn will be having a Gypsy Brewer event. The beers will be pouring all day and they'll have special prices from 6-10 pm. Along with beers from Evil Twin, Stillwater, and Omnipollo, they'll also have the following beers:

Draft:

• Beer Here Hopfix Rye IPA
• Mikkeller Yeast Series 2.0 Brettanomyces Lambicus - pale ale fermented with brett lambicus
• Mikkeller From To Via - hoppy spiced porter
• To Øl Sans Frontiere - dry-hopped Belgian ale fermented with Belgian ale yeast an brettanomyces
• Pretty Things St. Botolph's Town - English brown

Bottles:

• Stillwater+Mikkeller+Fanø Gypsy Tears - sour hoppy stout
• Stillwater+Mikkeller Our Side - hoppy saison

Take it away, Owl Farm:

In the beer world gypsy brewers are brewers who don't have a permanent home. They travel the world brewing wherever and whenever they can find space to brew. There are pluses and minuses to this lifestyle of course. It's hard when you don't have a home. But on the plus side: when you don't have a mortgage and car payment and other attachments you can spend more of your money and energy on interesting ingredients and techniques, and you can take risks without worrying as much about the bottom line. So,here at The Owl Farm, on March 12th, we'll be celebrating the gypsy brewing lifestyle with some rare and unique brews."

The Owl Farm is located at 297 9th Street (near 5th Avenue) in Brooklyn).

Tap Takeover at Proletariat

On Tuesday, 26 February, Proletariat will be featuring all Shelton Brothers drafts plus some bottles. There will be a mix of classics and new beers and we guarantee that all will be delicious!

The list:

• Baird Red Rose Amber - inspired by steam beers but instead of being a lager fermented at ale temperatures, it's an ale fermented at lower temperatures (Japan)
• Beer Here Kama Citra - brown ale brewed with British malts and American Citra hops (Denmark)
• Blaugies Darbyste - a saison brewed with wheat and fermented with fig juice. Named for John Darby, a temperance preacher whose followers enjoyed a "soft drink" made from fig juice (Belgium)
• De la Senne Zwarte Piet - a dark, 8.2% Belgian ale, formerly known as Equinoxe (Belgium)
• De Struise Svea - IPA brewed with barley, wheat, oats, and rye. To Sweden with Love (Belgium)
• Dieu du Ciel! Aphrodite - cocoa and vanilla stout. Called "Aphodisiaque" in Canada but our government says that that name is misleading. Is it? (Québec)
• Haandbryggeriet Dark Force - imperial double wheat stout? Yes! (Norway)
• Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial - a brown ale inspired by the Trappist ales of Belgium. Brewed with cacao, cinnamon, and sweet orange peel (Dexter, Michigan)
• Mahr's Ungespundet - unfiltered lager/kellerbier. An all-time Shelton Brothers favorite (Germany)
• Mikkeller Yeast Series 2.0: Brettanomyces Lambicus - round 2 of the yeast series. All of the beers are 6.4% pale ale but fermented with a different yeast strain. This one uses the Lambicus (lambic) strain of Brettanomyces (Denmark)
• Thiriez Extra - extra hoppy saison brewed with Bramling Cross hops (France)
• Trou du Diable Schieve Tabarnak - golden ale brewed with rye and Nelson Sauvin hops. A collaboration with Yvan from De la Senne (Québec)

Proletariat is located at 102 St. Mark's Place in Manhattan. They open at 5pm and Joel and I will give a brief talk about the beers around 6pm. Special flights will be available for purchase.

Tasting at City Swiggers

On Wednesday, 20 February, we'll be sampling some of our beers at City Swiggers on the Upper East Side. If you're not familiar with City Swiggers, it's been a welcome edition to the uptown beer scene for just over a year. Alan and Pamela run a great little shop where you can pick up bottles, get your growler filled, and stay for a pint from one of their 14 taps.

Come by to try beers from Jolly Pumpkin, Mikkeller, 8 Wired, Adnams, Bretagne, De Ranke, Freigeist, plus cider from Henney's.

City Swiggers is located at 320 E. 86th Street. The tasting starts around 5:30pm and runs until 9pm.