I don't want to sound snobbish but...
Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 2:25 pm
We took some time off to have a bit of a get-away. Sunday we drove out to eastern Long Island, spent a little time at Sag Harbor, then crossed over to Shelter Island, where we had made accommodations. We stayed over through Monday, and left Tuesday morning.
Shelter Island is a special place for me, because it's where we vacationed every summer when I was a kid. We had family and property there, and I came to realize that although we've been out a few times for Columbus Day weekend, it's been too long since I had a summer visit. And I really felt I needed it.
And the place has changed, but after three or four decades who and what hasn't? I won't get into that. Here's what I'm posting about:
The Island now has a craft brewery. It's a real nano; tiny scale, but there it is, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I determined to stop by and have a flight. They had run out of three of their eight beers, and of the remaining five, I chose a wheat, a plum ale, their signature IPA, and a German IPA.
I'm sorry to say, I was kind of disappointed. The wheat was a pretty good summer session beer, but the plum ale seemed to be more of a wine cooler than a fruit beer, and didn't even have that much fruit flavor. The signature IPA was very hop-forward, which I don't mind, but there didn't seem to be enough malt backbone to help stand up to the hops. Even a little bit of crystal malt would have given it some more body and heft. The German IPA was better balanced, I thought. The sweeter Munich malt helped round out the hops and gave it more depth.
I wish them all the best. I think it's really neat that Shelter Island has it's own craft brewery. But with competition as close as Riverhead Brewing and Montauk Brewing, both of which are sold on the Island, they'll need to really step up their game.
This doesn't mean the beer was bad, and the fact that they'd sold out of three of their offerings says something (either that those beers are really good, and the weekend was profitable, or else that they're poor planners and didn't schedule their brews properly). But no business can stay afloat without meeting the competition's challenges.
Shelter Island is a special place for me, because it's where we vacationed every summer when I was a kid. We had family and property there, and I came to realize that although we've been out a few times for Columbus Day weekend, it's been too long since I had a summer visit. And I really felt I needed it.
And the place has changed, but after three or four decades who and what hasn't? I won't get into that. Here's what I'm posting about:
The Island now has a craft brewery. It's a real nano; tiny scale, but there it is, and I thought that was pretty cool. So I determined to stop by and have a flight. They had run out of three of their eight beers, and of the remaining five, I chose a wheat, a plum ale, their signature IPA, and a German IPA.
I'm sorry to say, I was kind of disappointed. The wheat was a pretty good summer session beer, but the plum ale seemed to be more of a wine cooler than a fruit beer, and didn't even have that much fruit flavor. The signature IPA was very hop-forward, which I don't mind, but there didn't seem to be enough malt backbone to help stand up to the hops. Even a little bit of crystal malt would have given it some more body and heft. The German IPA was better balanced, I thought. The sweeter Munich malt helped round out the hops and gave it more depth.
I wish them all the best. I think it's really neat that Shelter Island has it's own craft brewery. But with competition as close as Riverhead Brewing and Montauk Brewing, both of which are sold on the Island, they'll need to really step up their game.
This doesn't mean the beer was bad, and the fact that they'd sold out of three of their offerings says something (either that those beers are really good, and the weekend was profitable, or else that they're poor planners and didn't schedule their brews properly). But no business can stay afloat without meeting the competition's challenges.