beer demystifier - new york city - The Gotham Imbiber

There are hundreds of guide books focused on steering the
wide-eyed masses to New York City’s array of museums,
skyscrapers, Broadway shows and the like. Until now, there
hasn’t been one that concentrates on the snowballing craft
beer movement within the five boroughs. This publication is
designed as a resource for both New Yorkers and tourists
alike, containing area-by-area recommendations for bars,
restaurants, and beer stores where a good range of craft
beer can be enjoyed. In addition, you can find within these
pages a comprehensive alphabetical listing of all breweries
Introduction
About the book…
About the beer…
4
which have representation in the City, together with the beers
they brew.
Note that the bar, restaurant, and shop listings are the
personal recommendations of the author and may not be
representative of outlets with the largest selections, though
that is a major factor for inclusion. A bar with six taps pouring
interesting craft beers is much more likely to be included than
one with forty that pour mainly common ‘macro’ lager brands.
Craft beer = A high quality ale or lager, almost always brewed without the use of cheap adjuncts (rice, corn, etc.) commonly found
in mass-produced lagers, made by hand in small batches at a microbrewery or traditional regional brewery. Craft beer is the tasteful
antidote to common mass-produced, mass-advertised, bland
light lagers (aka ‘macro beers’) which had driven true beer
styles in America to the brink of extinction prior to the
emergence of the craft beer movement.
Cask-conditioned beer = Also known as ‘cask ale’ or ‘real
ale’, this is unfiltered, unpasteurized craft beer served without
any forced carbonation pushing it to the tap. It is served either
by gravity-dispense straight from the tap hammered into the
front of the cask (an example of this is shown in the cover
photo), or by use of a beer engine (also known as a
‘handpump’ or ‘handpull’) which is a simple manual pump
clamped to the bar which extracts the beer with the vacuum
created when the lever is operated. Cask ale or lager is beer
in its natural state, and should be served at around 54
degrees Fahrenheit for optimum mouthfeel – chilling beer
detracts from the full taste spectrum. Carbonation is natural
and soft, coming from the yeast which continues to ferment
the beer in the cask. Recently, there has been a dramatic
increase in the popularity and availability of cask-conditioned
beer, with pre-sold empty casks regularly coming over from
the UK (where they are made as cask ale is common there)
by the container load for use by eager domestic craft
brewers.
Look for the CASK ALE symbol in the listings to identify which recommended bars serve cask-conditioned ale.
Bottle-conditioned beer = The same principle as for caskconditioned
beer, having the presence of living yeast in the
bottle – bottle-conditioning – gives a fuller, more complex
mouthfeel and natural carbonation as the beer continues to
ferment and mature until the moment it is consumed. All
mass-produced macro lager brands are pasteurized and
sterile filtered to remove all living yeast, leaving a consistent
but totally dead product with pseudo life from forced
carbonation. Many craft brewers produce bottle-conditioned
beer, look for such wording on the label or for a light yeast
sediment resting at the base of the bottle.
About craft beer vs. mass-produced beer…
This is the political and ethical bit. And it’s also the ‘quality
vs. quantity’ bit.
Craft beer is lovingly produced in small batches by small
businesses which have passion and commitment to quality.
Most craft brewers started as homebrewers, boiling up 5
gallon batches of wort on the kitchen stove for home
consumption. Their dedication to the skill of brewing - and
the enjoyment of the finished result – forms the basis of the
craft beer movement today. In part two of this book, I have
listed the names of the head brewers of each brewery so you
can see for yourself who is actually responsible for creating