A Pilgrimage to Monk's Cafe

On the East Coast, bibliophiles have Strand; art-lovers The Met; baseball aficionados Fenway. Beer nerds? Beer nerds have Monk's Cafe. For decades, owners Tom Peters and Fergus Carey have operated what is widely considered one of the single finest beer-drinking destinations in the country.

Monk's impeccably curated and extraordinarily deep Belgian-centric bottle list complements two bars' worth of rotating taps that feature a fantastic cross section of American, Dutch, British, and even more Belgian brews. Of particular note is that Monk's routinely features Russian River's beer on tap, something that no other bar outside of parts of California and Denver can boast of. When I queried the staff on how this was possible, one of them informed me that Tom had first met Russian River's founder and master brewer, Vinnie Cilurzo, "back when he owned the Blind Pig in Temecula [ie early 90s]." They had bonded over a shared affection for the storied brewing culture of Belgium, something both drew upon as inspiration for their work. Apparently, the friendship has not only survived, but thrived - ergo, the regularly occurring Pliny the Elder, Blind Pig, and Damnation on tap. 

Gone Home to Chicago (Part 2): A Visit to Hopleaf, Chicago's Legendary Beer Bar

Part 1 can be found here.

While home in Chicago earlier this month, I had the chance to drop into Michael and Louise's Hopleaf Bar, the legendary Chicago beer spot located in the Uptown neighborhood of the city. Why legendary? Well:

1. Informal conversations with friends knowledgeable about the Chicago beer scene have repeatedly resulted in the proffering of voluminous praise for Hopleaf's always excellent tap list.
2. Google search after Google search turned up Hopleaf in list after list of the best beer places in the city (and even the country). Chicago Magazine went so far as to call it "The Archetype" for all of Chicago beer-dom.
3. Everyone loves it - Hopleaf has managed to maintain a 4+ star Yelp average with a staggering 1,300 reviews on the books - more than double the number of the next closest beer bar with a similar score.

I walked in excited; I saw my all-time-favorite beer Zombie Dust on tap and nearly fainted:

After my gamely-accompanying friends shook me out of dazed reverie, I ordered a pint of Zombie Dust (my first time having it on tap), a B. Nektar Meadery Zombie Killer (to continue the theme), and a Stillwater Cellar Door (sorry, there just wasn't a third sonambulist-themed beverage). 

Beer Spot Review: Tørst

Tørst's bar - photo credit to NY Grub Street

How well-respected do you think you'd need to be to have one of the oldest, most famous, and well-regarded breweries in the world specially make a beer exclusively for you to purvey? To get an answer, you'd have to check in with Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø of Evil Twin and Ølbutikken fame. Since 2005, Brasserie Cantillon of Brussels has specially made Blåbær Lambik for Jeppe: he sends them blueberries, they incorporate them into a blended series of wild-fermented lambics that they ship back to him in Copenhagen, and he then sells them out of his world-renowned bottle-shop, Ølbutikken.

Up until a week ago, you couldn't buy Blåbær Lambik anywhere but Ølbutikken, which, given the plane tickets required to reach Denmark, made it a challenging value proposition for all but the most intrepid beer nerds.

Last Friday, the necessary journey got a lot shorter for New Yorkers with the opening of Jeppe and Daniel Burns' (of Momofuku and Noma fame) new beer bar, Tørst. Located in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, this sleekly decorated spot instantly attracted hordes of beer connoisseurs interested in trying not only the bottles of Blåbær Lambik that Jeppe brought along for sale, but also the dozens of other rare, obscure, and otherwise impossible to find brews that Jeppe had stocked from Evil Twin, Mikkeller, Beechwood BBQ, Cantillon, and more.