Category: BLOG

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TAP NY AT HUNTER MOUNTAIN

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After a year hiatus, we finally made our way back to the Catskills for the best beer festival in the the North East: TAP NY. If you remember our content, from 2011 you would know that TAP NY is a food and beer festival held at Hunter Mountain in Hunter, NY. Every year, breweries from throughout the Empire State gather here to pour up some of their best beer and take home bragging rights (there are a number of awards up for grabs). Since we last visited there has been an exponential growth at TAP NY. This year’s ticket sales neared 6,000 purchased passes for both the Saturday and Sunday sessions. Continue reading “TAP NY AT HUNTER MOUNTAIN”

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BEER – Founders Brewing Company, All Day IPA

 

I can’t remember the exact article I read back in January, but I do remember one of the key points it made was about beer trends within the craft beer scene. One of the trends mentioned in the article was barrel aging and the other was session beers.Lets face it, not everybody wants to drink 10% imperial styled beers, let alone go out to a bar for a night and not be able to stand up off your stool after a few pints. You want to be able to enjoy yourself and have conversation, all while enjoying a pint, without being that drunk guy. Continue reading “BEER – Founders Brewing Company, All Day IPA”

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OFF FLAVOR

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This past Saturday, I took a sensory training class called “Off Flavor,” put on by my good friend Os Cruz from HeySmartBeerDude.com and Vito Forte of The Copper Mine Pub. Off flavors are something that are experienced in beers quite often, in certain cases it is tolerable but there are extreme cases that completely ruin the beers we drink, this short class is the ideal way to learn to identify them.

With everyone going for Cicerone certifications and becoming beer judges lately, Os Cruz, saw an opportunity to aid people in their studies by hosting this class to help people along during their studying process. Since I am going for my certified beer server in a few months I thought it would be a great way to learn something and grab some new content for the blog. Continue reading “OFF FLAVOR”

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TRAP ROCK BREWERY & RESTAURANT


We don’t have many brew pubs here in New Jersey 10 to be the exact number and yet I feel they are over looked as a source for good food and great beer. Brew pubs live in the shadows of big breweries under the radar turning out some of the most interesting and freshest beer around. Over the next few months we are going to visit our local brew pubs here in NJ and we are going to kick things off with Trap Rock Brewery & restaurant in Berkley Heights. Continue reading “TRAP ROCK BREWERY & RESTAURANT”

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SMUTTYNOSE BREWING COMPANY NOONAN


Can you remember the first time you had a black IPA? I know I remember mine and being a little obsessed with the idea at first. Here you have a black, roasty beer with the hop profile of a traditional American IPA. Visually, my mind could barely wrap around the idea of a “Black IPA”, but my palate sure could. Upon looking up some facts about the Black IPA style I came across a fellow by the name of Greg Noonan and a little story about one of the first craft breweries here in the US. Long story short (you can read the story below) Greg Noonan and fellow brewer Glenn Walter created this magnificent recipe in 1994 and set a trend for the Black IPA today. It seems every brewery is making their version but only one is paying homage to it’s creator –  Smuttynose Brewing Company from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Continue reading “SMUTTYNOSE BREWING COMPANY NOONAN”