New York Cork Report

2011 Beer of the Year: CB's Brewing Company Krysztoff Baltic Porter

By Mark Tichenor, Rochester Beer Correspondent

Some breweries just don't get a lot of respect. Then again, some breweries haven't always taken the steps to earn it. For most of its history, Custom Brewcrafters subordinated the desire to make truly world-class beers and clung to their original business model, making small-batch, neutral, house-label beers for Rochester area bars and restaurants.

You could see that mentality start to shift a few years ago with the launch of the CB's line of signature beers launched by then-brewmaster Jason Fox and continued by Bruce Lish, the current head of brewing. These beers marked a turnaround for the brewery, which even changed its name as it oriented toward marketing its own beers. The culmination of the new direction is Krysztoff. 

Shelves and taplines are strewn with delicious dark craft beers, and today's drinker is in very little danger of getting something awful by ordering at random. Far less common among all those stouts, porters and imperials is complexity. The bulldozer nature of dark roasted malt overwhelms most other flavors save vanilla, chocolate and coffee. 

Kryzstoff retains a ton of dimension for a beer so dark, mostly manifesting as dark fruit such as date, plum and cherry. These become more evident when the beer warms, but, personally, I find it an exercise in willpower to wait long enough for a refrigerated bottle of Krysztoff to come down to temperature. These flavors are buoyed up by a burly body with zero tolerance for wateriness. The body keeps the sweeter favors distinct from the earthy notes confusing the palate at first but, ultimately allowing each drinker to settle on which element he or she likes most. 

Finally the finish. In a beer that uses so much roasted malt, it's tempting to shut your eyes and assume a crash position just before the swallow, in full anticipation of the sour, bitter finish that... just doesn't come. Instead there's a rounded, seductive wash of light coffee across the back of the tongue, and the finish recedes like a gentle wave. Of course, this forces you to go right back in for another sip. 

Most impressive of all is how Krysztoff hides its alcohol. This is a 10% beer, but it feels smells and tastes like a 6%. This could lead to some dangerous and/or hilarious situations, depending on how much respect a drinker affords this porter. 

The reason this beer won New York Cork Report 2011 Beer of The Year: CB's was able to take a traditional, established style, treat it with respect, and scale it up into something great without going over the top, getting trendy or turning the beer into a cartoon. That is a simultaneous exercise in creativity and restraint you just don't see too often with American craft beer. 

 

 

The "Beers of the Year Finalists" That Didn't Win... That We Loved

By Julia Burke, Beer Editor

The best and worst aspect of our "Beers of the Year" program is the difficulty of choosing a favorite; while we agreed on Krysztoff, and Mark Tichenor has plenty more to tell you about that particular Baltic porter (look for his post next week), several beers caught the crew’s attention in a big way.

I highly encourage NYCR readers to try all of the finalists if they haven’t already. 

The first time I had Ithaca Beer Company's Brute I found it truly staggering. I had just begun exploring sour beers and this one was a pucker-inducer of epic proportions — a real surprise from the brewery I knew as the mother of Flower Power IPA. Somehow I couldn’t stop drinking it. That was two years ago. Brute became a regular item on my see-it-and-grab-it list, and it seemed to get better every time I tried it.

This year I picked up four bottles at the brewery during an autumn trip. When I cracked one open to introduce to a first-timer, I knew instantly it was brewer Jeff O’Neil’s (now of Peekskill Brewpub) best yet. The Brett pucker is still there, but the bready Champagne yeasts character and soft, pillowy malt bill (barley, wheat, and corn) are singing right in harmony for a beer that’s so balanced and luscious it drinks more like a great dry riesling than a tongue scraper. This is absolutely one of my favorite sours in the world and a true achievement. The acid hounds at the table, like me, Lenn, and Bryan, could’ve downed a bottle of this; team members less accustomed to such prickle in their beers found it bracing and weren’t sure they could drink a glass.   

 The Cork Report team is a little more than half hophead, give or take, so I knew the two double IPAs at the table would be rock stars as well. I was correct, and the act of comparing Captain Lawrence Captain’s Reserve (the hometown IPA of my downstate friends) with Southern Tier 2X (my own beloved local favorite) was intense. Captain’s Reserve had its claws out, with fierce hop bitterness but a controlled and drinkable intensity; 2X showed sweet and sultry even though the Captain has it by 1% ABV in the booze department. In a style category that often amounts to hop swordfighting, these beers showed power and ferocity and had the hopheads among use drooling with pleasure. 

Also showing beautifully was Brooklyn Brewery’s Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen Weisse. This gorgeous collaboration between Schneider brewmaster Hans-Peter Drexler and Brooklyn’s Garrett Oliver, in which each brewer made a hoppy weissbock in the other’s brewery, shows incredible layers of citrus, yeast character, and beautiful Amarillo and Palisade hops — a marriage of exceptional old-world brewing skill and good old American hop character. This beer is truly a joy to drink; it kicked off the tasting and I think some of the team members were reluctant to move on to the next finalist. 

I’m thrilled for the chance to taste with such a diverse crew: while our backgrounds, day jobs, tastes, and experiences may differ, our passion for great artisan beverages brings us together. It’s a great exercise to taste your favorites with such a mixed group, and because I believe it’s the mark of a great beer to occasionally be able to win over converts, it’s an important practice too. 

2011 Beer of the Year: Custom Brewcrafters Krysztoff Baltic Porter

By Julia Burke, Beer Editor

On behalf of the New York Cork Report I’m proud to announce our 2011 Beer of the Year: Custom Brewcrafters Signature Series Krysztoff Baltic Porter.

We’ll have more commentary on this amazing beer, and on other beers that impressed the entire crew, in the next few days, but at this time I would like to congratulate Bruce Lish and his team on a simply fantastic accomplishment. I’d also like to congratulate all the incredibly skilled New York brewers who created this lineup of finalists.

I think I can speak for all Wines/Beers of the Year attendees when I say that tasting these finalists was an unforgettable experience. The discussion around the table as we sipped and compared two flights was a joy for me; to have such a variety and such a high level of quality, from all over the state and from brewers of widely diverse backgrounds, was a treat and a mind-blowing example of how much progress our state’s beer culture has made.

Stay tuned for more on the Beers of the Year, but for now, I raise a glass to the Custom Brewcrafters brewing team on crafting the most exciting beer we tasted this year.

NYCR Wines of the Year Weekend Kicks Off This Afternoon.. With Beer

Last year's (much smaller) WoTy tasting.

By Lenn Thompson, Executive Editor

The planning is complete, all of the wines and beers have been gathered, and later this morning the non-Long Island members of the New York Cork Report family will hit the road, heading to the North Fork for our third-annual Wines of the Year Weekend, which we've taken to referring to simply as WoTY.

As with our staff and coverage of New York's adult beverage team -- this year's WoTY program has grown significantly compared to last year's.

Last year, we dipped our toes into beer, adding a small Beers of the Year, tasting a handful of beers after all of the wine tasting was complete.

This year, the BoTY tasting will feature 10 of the best beers being brewed in the state, and we're going to taste the them this afternoon. They deserve a separate tasting.  We'll announce the winner tonight via Twitter and Facebook, with more coverage here on the site next week.

Tomorrow morning, we'll re-convene to work our way through 16 flights of New York wine, choosing regional category winners and maybe (if the voting is unanimous) some state-wide category winners.

We'll announce those winners tomorrow afternoon or evening -- again via Twitter and Facebook. The tasting always inspires more stories -- some unexpected -- so you'll be reading about the tasting quite a bit.

WoTY weekend is about much more than just the tastings, however. Because of our collectively busy lives and being spread out across the state, WoTY is also the only time each year that the entire gang (or at least most of it) gets together. We are proud of the hard work we have and do put into making this site what it is. This weekend is a celebration of that too.

Finalists Announced for NYCR 2011 New York Beers of the Year Tasting

By Julia Burke, Beer Editor

On behalf of the NYCR Beer Team, I'm proud to announce that our "Beers of the Year" program has grown to ten nominees this year.

2011 was a huge year for growth and exciting change and we are thrilled to recognize these outstanding breweries, scattered all over the state, for crafting some amazing brews. The following beers represent numerous styles (and riffs on styles), brewing philosophies, techniques, and ingredients but all demonstrate a commitment to quality that makes us proud to say we're from New York. 

Western New York breweries:

• Southern Tier Brewing Company XXIPA
• Southern Tier Brewing Company Choklat
• Three Heads Brewing "The Kind" IPA
• Custom Brewcrafter's Brewing Company Signature Series Krysztoff Porter

Central New York breweries:

• Brewery Ommegang BPA
• Horseheads Brewing, Inc. Hot-Jala-Heim
• Ithaca Beer Company Brute

Downstate New York breweries:

• Captain Lawrence Brewing Company Captain's Reserve IPA
• Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen Weisse
• Southampton Publick House Cuvee des Fleurs

We will taste these beers and select a Beer of the Year at our tasting over the weekend of February 10-11. Congratulations to all of the finalists.