| Road Trip By Glenn DeLuca For BeerNexus.com Vince, the Beernexus guru and fellow Draught Board 15 member, sends a few of us a note about an upcoming event at The Ambulance Brew House (ABH) in Nanuet, NY. I’ve heard some great things about ABH, but to this point have never gotten there so already I’m excited. And it’s a twenty tap takeover of The Other Half, so does that mean we only got half and there are twenty other lines somewhere else?? No, The Other Half is a renowned craft brewery in Brooklyn and yes I have to admit, this is the first time I heard of it. Yes I get out to tap takeovers and read the Ale Street News and some online publications/blogs but with well over 4,000 breweries I can’t know them all…but then again this one’s in Brooklyn not Dorothy’s Kansas, so guess I take the hit on that one. The Other Half Brewing was opened by Sam Richardson and Matt Monahan in 2014, so they’re a very young brewery. They think local so brew mainly for draft consumption, i.e. fresh, but they also do some limited bottles and cans. There’s not a whole lot on their website; guess they’re busy brewing, so I go to other sources to get more info. BeerAdvocate lists 135 current beers and 57 archived…wait they opened in 2014; do they sleep? Scanning the current list you see right away they like their hops; lots of IPA and Double/Imperial IPAs along with, more than I’d expect, saison/farmhouse ales, stouts and a few other different types. ABVs do range but as you would expect there are quite a few 6+, 7+, 8+and a handful in the 10-12 range. I do a quick count and there are close to 10,000 reviews with the vast majority being 4+. A handful <4 are an American Pale @ 3.77, American IPA @ 3.9, English Pale Ale @ 3.4, American Wild Ale @ 3.85 and some other lesser known styles such as Wheatwine and Biere de Garde; so yes it’s true that we hopheads typically rate our hoppy pales and IPAs higher…we just like our hops. I take a look at RateBeer; they have 159 entries with 2,500 ratings, most ratings in 3+. A lot less ratings for more beers, would be interesting to dig into the differences of BeerAdvocate and RateBeer, but that’s for another time. I did note an Imperial IPA collaboration beer with Trillium of Massachusetts fame, so they do appear to flying in the high brewing circles. Wow, this is going to be exciting. Everyone else wimps out so it’s Vince and I. We meet at the Marriott and after being presented with a new long sleeved version Beernexus shirt; we hop into his mobile and begin the cruise up Rt 287. Nanuet is only 5.4 square miles with a population about 18,000 in Rockland County only two miles north of the NJ border. I’ve passed through it a million times crossing the Tappan Zee heading up to and back from my New England journeys. Besides my travels my only other association is the Nanuet Mall, which opened in 1969, but as of 2013 is now called The Shops at Nanuet, which, no I’ve never been to, just heard of it. And yes they have another claim to fame; they’ve been listed in the Best 100 Places to Live by two different organizations in the last ten years; they must have something going. ABH is on Main Street. Vince has been there before so clues me in it’s a two lane road with parking on either side so we may have to search for street parking. As we head down Main Street there’s a big shopping plaza less than a mile away so we pull in there. It’s a 60 degree day, not a long walk and the walk back will do us good. We park next to an old Cadillac in great shape. We head down Main Street and it’s a mixture of quaint and basic type shops. Vince finds a men’s store with a sport jacket he thinks will go great at his next event (so who knew he was working the comedy clubs) but we can’t waste any time now. Here’s Jacquelyn’s Wine on Main, a wine bar and tapas, which looks like a very interesting place, but again we’re on a different mission. On the other side of the street I see The Whistle Stop. I look at Vince and tell him “I bet that’s the Ringside of Nanuet” to which he begins laughing as we have hit the Ringside a few times after a tasting at the Cloverleaf. Sure enough I look it up when I get home and it’s described as a “loveable dive bar”; I nailed it. At last there it is on the other side of the street, the Ambulance Brew House, so we cross and are entering at 12:04. For being open four minutes the bar is already full and a few tables taken; we grab a two seater by the door and begin to peruse the menu. Wow nine IPAs, six Farmhouse ales, four stouts and a wheatwine; there are no flights or growler fills, just 12 oz pours so we’ll need a strategy. I start with the Mosaic IPA and Vince the Space Diamonds, imperial IPA w/Galaxy hops. Here come two beautifully cloudy glasses and we have just entered beer heaven; both are amazingly good. Vince looks closer at the menu and they are doing 7 oz pours also, so we’ll be able to taste more. There is a small outdoor patio in the front of the building with some tables, but it appears the Brew House uses only one of the ambulance spots; the second ambulance door is a hair salon. Strolling through, there are old pictures of the staff and place when it was an ambulance house. There is also a rear patio with a few tables and a huge big screen. Sitting by the door we see the flow of people in but all of a sudden what doth appear, but a huge red ambulance with its lights on, parking in front of the place. It’s the owner in a 1968 Caddy, beautifully restored! I and quite a few others go out to check it out. I’m told it was on display somewhere, but could only be sold back to the Ambulance House. If not one of their originals it was the same style they had. And best of all the logo on the back door window; “Craft Beer to the Rescue”…perfect! Back inside, I grab my phone so I can start logging in the beers on Untapped and sure enough the app opens but won’t pull up any beers for me to log them in. I can see what others have tried and decide the Double Dry Hopped All Citra Everything is next and I go for another 12 oz as everyone is saying it’s great. Back to the phone I look at the Settings and see I’m on Optimum Wi-Fi with no Internet connection WHAT! I haven’t even had one beer so what the heck is a Wi-Fi connection w/o Internet (something like a beer glass w/o beer?) and what good does that do, wow thanks for automatically connecting to that. As I continue to fart around trying to get a connection, Vince, with a grin, pulls out his trusty notepad and begins jotting down his notes. You see Vince still has a flip phone so doesn’t deal with any of this; he’s very happy to continue to use pen and paper, which as I grovel and ask for a sheet and pen he points out that he never has a malfunction in his documentation process. Vince decides to order Like Whoa (the Trillium collaboration) and Passiflora, a fermented farmhouse ale, both 7 oz. All are again excellent. I’m ready to give both the Mosaic and the DDH All Citra 4.75s! We need some sustenance, other than beer, so check out the food menu and order a Mediterranean flatbread, which is very good. I had noticed at the four seat tables on the other side there was a white box with a white cord hanging from it with a sign above “Pull White Cord for Beer or Emergency.” Don’t know if they were really connected but definitely part of the ambiance. I ask our server why we don’t have one at our table and w/o missing a beat and a straight face she replies “because we knew you would pull it.” Ouch, I just stepped into that one, we both know it and I have no comeback, so I gave her a fist bump. We’re on to round three and go with three 7 oz pours; Southernhopalistic, IPA with Wakatu, Topaz and Nelson Sauvin hops, Mylar Bags, an imperial IPA w/Galaxy, Citra, Amarillo and El Dorado hops and a 2015 Smoke Screens & Oil Slick, an 11% imperial stout, since we need to try at least one of those. We haven’t tried them all, as we would have needed a room above The Whistle Stop, but all were excellent and really one of the better beer events I’ve been too. ABH has only been open 2+ years, but has a great reputation. As Vince points out they only have beer and wine, no hard stuff and good food based on our initial selection. It’s midafternoon, time to move on, so we pay our bill and there’s a discount coupon for the hair salon next door in the folio; seriously two folliclely challenged guys like us need hair, not a discount. We head outside and stop to chat with the owner who explains to us they also own the salon so there’s a method to their madness. Now I’ll drive forty five minutes to drink beer, but not to get a haircut, even if they rub my head like he promised. As we walk to the car we both expounding on what great beer Other Half Brewing makes. I sum it by saying “you can’t get enough of it, especially if you can’t find it.” Vince looks at me and tells me “that’s brilliant” as if I’ve just come up with the next catchphrase, maybe I’ll trademark it. Vince wants to hit the Growler & Gill, a nearby beer emporium, with a great selection of bottles as well as taps and food. We look it up and I punch the address into the navigation and we proceed to drive up and down Rt 59 for ten minutes or so not being able to find it. I look a little closer and see the address is 148, not 149 and since there is no 149 we’ve been trying to find a non-existent building. We’ll chalk that up to operator error. We finally arrive and it’s a small non-descript storefront but it’s long so much larger than it appears. They do have a great selection of bottled and canned beers which we check out before heading to the taps, at which point I’m blown away. They have a really good selection of drafts I’ve never seen. I order a flight of 3 IPAs I’ve never had and a Cigar City Jai Alai, which I’ve never seen on tap; I assume the benefit of being in NY and not NJ. I then realize they have the Dogfish Red and White, which I quick substitute for one of the IPAs and he throws it in…like winning the lottery! We grab a table and order a plate of nachos to split and both really enjoy the beers and food. A great way to end the day. As we head back down Rt 287 into the Garden State, we reminisce about the places, the weather, but mostly the great beers and how lucky we are to be experiencing this. At this point I suggest you go back to the main page and read Vince’s article since he wrote about the same trip, just to see if you think we actually took the same trip or not… Glenn DeLuca writes about beer and culture of drinking. He may be reached by writing thebigG@beernexus.com. *** *** *** |
Glenn DeLuca
Outtakes from a life of beer.
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