The Director's Cut
westchestermagazine.com, September 19, 2013
I wrote this weekly food blog for six years, from 2008-2014. In 2009, I won a prestigious CRMA (City and Regional Magazine Association) award for Best Blog, beating out runners up in all subjects from big city magazines—Boston Magazine, The Washingtonian, Chicago Magazine, etc. The judges wrote that my blog, "won us over with its big personality, breezy conversational tone and wonderful insider detail—the kind that makes the reader feel like an in-the-know foodie. Julia Sexton gave us a terrific behind-the-scenes look at restaurant kitchens and their complicated relationship with health codes ... And she served up a detailed, name-dropping review of a new restaurant. Thoroughly satisfying and fun." My editors were thrilled—this was a major win for WM.
I know what you’re thinking: has Sexton lost her damned mind? She just wrote this 4500-word cover article that exhaustively discusses the locally brewed beer scene (October Westchester Magazine, on your newsstands now) and now she has the supreme self-indulgence to offer her Director’s Cut?
Well, folks, I’m here to say that I have lost my damned mind, so here is the precious stuff that I had to cut from my article. Here goes:
Two Great, Unsung Beer Bars: Craftsman Ale House and Holy Smoke BBQ
Harrison’s The Craftsman Ale House does not have a super-ambitious, on-trend menu (it serves pretty simple pub fare), so it didn’t quite fit into my article’s Five Best Restaurants for Food and Beer. BUT this great beer bar is exceptional in so many other ways. First and foremost, Craftsman Ale House offers a tidy, ever-changing list of excellent craft beers on tap. These beers are available in handy flights for sipping, sampling, and comparing—but (and this one’s a bonus)—this is a beer bar by-and-for beer lovers. Do you have a geeky beer question about what you’re drinking? Say, where is Allagash’s Curieux made? What strain of hops does it use? How is it aged? What is its ABV? Go ahead and ask your waiter at The Craftsman. Not only does s/he know the answer, but, chances are, s/he knows a hell of a lot more, besides. PLUS, Craftsman Ale House has a particularly stunning spirits list. I’ve written about this before, but, in short, this carefully curated list includes all the exceptional, boutique, oddball, and local spirits on today’s craft distilling scene. And then there is the fact that Craftsman Ale House is operated by enthusiastic home brewers and hosts frequent home brewing events.
Of course, there also The Craftsman’s tap takeovers and brewer visits to consider. If you’d read my beer exegesis carefully (and who didn’t?), you would have read about the fabled Mikkel Jarnit-Bjergsø of the famous Danish gypsy brewery, Mikkeller, who actually has a twin brother who is actually also a brewer. (Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.) Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø is Mikkel’s twin and the brewer behind Brooklyn’s Evil Twin Brewery and Törst craft beer bar. Jeppe has brewed beers for Denmark’s—and, right now, the world’s—most fetishized restaurant, NOMA. In August, Jeppe stopped by The Craftsman, so guess what? You totally could have met the word’s coolest gypsy brewer in Harrison, New York. Whoa.
Then there is the delightfully opinionated beer list at Mahopac’s Holy Smoke BBQ. What the hell are they smoking up there (besides, well, meat)? While its 30 taps offer an interesting spread from local, national, and international breweries, it’s in the bottle list that things get really crazy. We’re talking 13 bottles that focus on the extreme, sumo-style, heavy weights of the beer world. All but two are over 8% ABV. There are four barley wines, four stouts, two Belgian Strongs, a Belgian Tripel, an Old Ale, and a Wee Heavy. I’ll just drop a Wee Heavy link here in case that the guy on Jackass just popped into your mind. All of the above will leave you staggering after two. At Holy Smoke, growlers and flights of 5 ounce draught beers are also available. It’s not a surprise that the beer list at Holy Smoke was rated World Class (A+) by BeerAdvocate.com.
But then there is the surprise of Holy Smoke’s excellent whiskey list that bears the ultra-seductive charm of also being quite cheap. When we visited last week, we snagged a perfectly quaffable glass of Elijah Craig’s 12 yr. bourbon for $5.50. There were plenty of other seductive choices, many of which bore amusing southern names, that include the delightful Elmer T. Lee bourbon by Buffalo Trace at $6.25 per glass. Seriously, if I could afford the car fare back down from the bleak frozen tundra of Mahopac, I would drink whiskey at Holy Smoke all night.
And now that we’ve completed our excessive, five-hour Director’s Cut, we rejoin our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress…
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