The Great American Ale Trail - Christian DeBenedetti [116]
KEY BEER
There are seven good Belgian ales on tap starting with Bavik Pilsner on the lighter side and heading all the way up the scale of liver impact to Koningshoeven’s 10% ABV Quadruple, certainly a fine place to stop if you’ve had the five in between.
WHOLE FOODS
95 E. Houston St. • New York, NY 10002 • (212) 420-1320 wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/bowery/beer-room
SCENE & STORY
As worldly New Yorkers discover craft beer from around the world and what it can do alongside great food, Whole Foods has kept ahead of the curve with an ambitious beer program, exemplified by this Lower East Side location and its huge, 1,000-bottle-plus “beer room.” There’s also a row of six local taps for growler sales, and recently the store began selling homebrewing equipment and sponsoring a brewing contest with Kelso of Brooklyn—first place gets to brew at Kelso and see his or her brew on tap at this Whole Foods and around the city.
PHILOSOPHY
Back when the first Whole Foods opened in 1980, beer was not a priority. “We didn’t sell much of it,” says Doug Bell, one half of the beer-and-wine–buying team (with Geof Ryan) for the company, based in Austin, Texas. Fast-forward thirty years and beer now gets the same exhaustive treatment as cheese and heirloom vegetables. Working together, the duo oversees the 225 beer-selling locations in thirty-eight states, with the largest flagship locations boasting more than 800 offerings—including some rarities found almost nowhere else in the country. Because each store also employs at least one resident expert on beer with the authority to set the shelves, look for hometown—or home state—favorites to dominate. “Our local buyers have their fingers on the pulse,” says Ryan.
KEY BEER
On draft, local powers such as Kelso, Brooklyn, Six Point, Captain Lawrence, Chelsea Brewing Company, and Sixpoint. In bottles, there’s an especially strong grouping of British ales and oversize Belgian bottles. Shop away.
ZUM SCHNEIDER
107 Ave. C (at 7th Street) • New York, NY 10009 (212) 598-1098 • zumschneider.com • Established: 2000
SCENE & STORY
Small and quickly crowded, especially during its Oktoberfest, Zum Schneider is one of the most authentically German beer bars in the city. It’s also among the nicest places to drink a sidewalk beer in summer in the East Village. There are excellent traditional specialties on the menu as well, from Blumenkohlsuppe creamy cauliflower soup to Schweinswürst’l, a plate of five grilled Nürnberg sausages with sauerkraut and fluffy mashed potatoes.
PHILOSOPHY
“Bier trinken ist ein gut essen (beer drinking is good eating).”—Immanuel Kant
KEY BEER
Look for unusual German seasonals such as the Traunstein Zwickel, an unfiltered lager from Munich’s Hoffbräuhaus.
Brooklyn
BAR GREAT HARRY
280 Smith St. • Brooklyn, NY 11231 • (718) 222-1103 bargreatharry.com • Established: 2007
SCENE & STORY
A valid criticism of many of the late-aughts era bars of Brooklyn is that they try too hard—way too hard—to be cool, old, local, artisanal, and gastronomically innovative all at once. The endless iterations of gastropub-meets-speakeasy aesthetic (a Brooklyn epidemic) have become tiresome. Overdistilling the past, their suspendered mixologists slinging obscure sloe gin cocktails with house-cured maraschino cherries overreach to the point of absurdity.
Not so at Bar Great Harry. This is a beer bar, period, not a period bar. The tiny, no-frills, dog-friendly Cobble Hill beer lover’s hideaway opened without fanfare, then proceeded to cycle through some 450 different tap handles in only two years, hosting brewmasters from across the land, like Carol Stoudt of Pennsylvania’s Stoudt’s. With low ceilings, a cozy, always-seated-with-regulars bar, and a recent back room