Some Quick Notes (On The Occasion Of My Return To Captain Lawrence)

Today, I made it back to Pleasantville, New York's Captain Lawrence Brewing Company after a prolonged absence. While Captain Lawrence is still establishing its presence in the lower Hudson/Westchester County region (they still only bottle a select number of their beers in bombers, and a prominent display in the brewery's tasting room is a poster listing the small-but-growing number of establishments that serve Captain Lawrence beers on-tap), one constant since the brewery's opening has been Saturday tasting-room hours from noon to 6 pm.

Brewmaster Scott Vaccaro was among those behind the tasting-room bar on this warm spring afternoon, and, as a pleasant surprise, there were 2 new (well, to me) beers on tap. Here now are some quick notes on these new offerings from the Captain:

The first one that I tried was Sunblock, a Belgian-Style Wit beer. Captain Lawrence has done Belgian-style beers in the past (two of their standouts, Liquid Gold and Xtra Gold, are variations on Belgian Pale Ales). Unfortunately, Sunblock suffers from comparison to these standout drinks. Where Captain Lawrence's Belgian Pales are masterpieces, Sunblock sort of seems like a first draft. It's very light - extremely light, in fact, enough so that the nuances of the beer (hints of orange and spice) become insubstantial. The notes on Sunblock hint that there is a hop bite to be found at the end - I can't say that I found this. This is a rare miss for Captain Lawrence; certainly preferable to a macrobrewed light beer, but nowhere in the class of their other Belgian-inspired brews.

The other new offering was their Brown Bird Brown Ale, a spiced brown ale, and holy cow - another winner for Vaccaro and the folks at Captain Lawrence. My glass of this may have been enough to supplant Brooklyn Brown as my favorite of this genre. Originally intended as the Captain's fall/winter seasonal, Vaccaro and Co. have decided to brew Brown Bird year round - the beer's malty, dark-caramel finish is a welcome taste and, served fresh and cold from the tap, hit the spot nicely on this warm spring day.

It's always a pleasure to get up to Pleasantville and sample the goods of the Captain - the addition of these two beers bodes well for this developing brewery!

Quick Takes: Sixpoint Belgian-Style IPA

Since the beginning of December, I've been spending the bulk of my time in New York City (a new job has me slowly relocating from the Capital Region to the outerboroughs of NYC ). One of the upsides of this switch has been a chance for me to explore some new breweries and beers.

Yesterday, while accompanied by my friend Juan (who, coincidentally, provides voice-over work for a series of commercials touting Miller Chill beer), I went to Great Jones Cafe, a lovely little hole-in-the-wall place on Great Jones Street in Manhattan with a great jukebox and a pretty solid beer selection. When I saw that they offered the Williamsburg, Brooklyn-located Sixpoint's IPA on tap, I jumped at it.

The pour of this beer was thick, with a hazy orange color to it. It was surprisingly creamy, which is something I've not really associated with IPAs before, but man, were those hops front and center. The strong hoppiness of this beer was supplemented by a citrus-y taste to it.

After the fact, I found out that Sixpoint's IPA is considered a "Belgian Style" IPA. Sixpoint's website is mum on what this means (actually, it's pretty quiet on most things - it's currently undergoing renovations), so I'm going to go out on a limb here and wonder aloud as to whether this means that it uses ingredients more commonly found in Belgian styles of beer in an IPA brewing process. I'm stumped, to be honest (but that's not hard).

Needless to say, I was very taken by this beer, and would gladly kill a man (or woman, or child) for another taste. Phenomenal.