NYC Food and Wine Festival Washed Down with Cask Ale

I was comp'd three tickets to the NYC Food and Wine Festival's Grand Tasting on Sunday. It was a gift that gave too much and hasn't stopped, 24 hours later.

I am happy to say that although the main event didn't have beer in the title, the presence of Blue Moon, Palm and Negra Modela made The Grand Tasting more than worthy of entry to this burgeoning record book. There were what seeemed like hundreds of restaurants, bars and distributers spread across Pier 59 hawking the latest and greatest in NYC grastronomy. In addition to a few mass market beers, I was happy to see at least one friendly face from Craft Beer Week with Resto flexing it's food muscle - their Duck Confit was one of the best dishes of the day.

Highlights

1. Resto's Duck Confit - See above.

2. Blue Moon's Marketing Mural - Thanks to the clever folks at a CO advertising agency, Blue Moon drew plenty of attention with a community mural that attendees were invited to paint. The mural, depicting an "on brand" still life of Pumpkin Ale, will be photographed and turned into outdoor advertising in NYC. Snaps to MSR for sneaking your initials on to the bottle cap - you'll live on billboards for fiscal quarters to come!

I call it savvy marketing. Other's call it this: "To Blue Moon Brewing Company, a billboard isn’t just an ad—it’s part of a community. They think of billboards just like pieces of public art because, after all, if one goes up in your neighborhood, you look at it every single day. That’s why they started their Community-Created Out-of-Home project. The Blue Moon team goes to beer, art, and wine festivals all around the country, and lets the community paint the billboards that eventually go up in their neighborhoods."

3. Blue Moon's Pumpkin Ale - The most intriquing beer on tap and an excellent comming attraction for the Pumpkin Ale Blind Tasting later this week.

4. Palm's Distributor Giving Up On His Dry Month Vow - We caught him drinking at 1:53 PM

5. Being Five Blocks South of the Chelsea Brewing Company's Cask Ale Fest -
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then this one is worth 2000. Thanks to Bryan O'Hare (Freehold, NJ) (yep, that's his site) and the Caporusso brothers (Hoboken, NJ) for keeping my day alive while the deacon had to move on to other, less intoxicating activities. Coming attraction thanks to Bryan (below left) is a field trip to beer making in Freehold, NJ.

My new friends, who were well into their day when I arrived at Chelsea Brewing Company invited me to join their adventure and we were successful in tasting 39 of 39 Cask Beers on tap. (Yes, I can't acturately remember if we had them all, but look at that picture... we had to have had all of them.... there's over 60 glasses on that table).

While I give myself an effort grade of A+, I feel I failed in my duty to keep fair records since I can only accurately write about two of my tastings:

Saint Somewhere 'Pays Du Soleil' (?ABV?) - A delcious fruit juice type beer. Less traditional and delicious.

Dark Horse 'One Oatmeal Stout' (?ABV?) - A beer designed to help survive midwestern winters, this oatmeal stout was a fine final memory before falling into a pleasurable abyss of stouts, porters, and ales

The day in pictures: