Last night I found a great new spot, Cask Bar + Kitchen. The atmosphere is great for post-work drinks, dimly lit, but doesn’t leave you searching for a cell phone back light to read the menu.

They’ve got 12 different quality draught beers! Everything from my local favorite Bluepoint Toasted Lager to a killer IPA by the name of Green Flash. In addition to the 12 drafts, they also have two different Casks – which is pretty unheard of in NYC.

The bartenders were both really knowledgeable and seemed to thoroughly enjoy their jobs, another rarity in Murray Hill.

They have a great menu describing each beer, including the alcohol percentage so you’re able to decide how to start your night – nice and calm with a Guinness Stout coming in at 4.1 % or hit it hard with a Southern Tier Unearthly DIPA at a whopping 11.0 %

Cask Bar + Kitchen

Scotch Silly is somewhat Scottish and not at all silly, it’s a Scotch Ale brewed in the Belgian town of Silly. Scotland and the Flemish region of Belgium share a long and tragic history of being shit upon by centralized powers to the south, so I guess that’s why they get along so well.  Actually, Silly is in Walloon country, but it’s only a few miles south of making my analogy work, so I am going to pretend like I can’t read a map.

Scotch Ale is essentially a strong pale ale that originated in, you guessed it, Scotland. How does a Belgian town end up brewing beer in a Scottish style? The answer, like much of European history, is a healthy combination of boozing, sex, and terrible, terrible war. Although Belgians had been brewing Scottish-style ales for quite some time, Scotch Silly really took off following WWI when Scottish troops stationed in Belgium needed potable liquid that wasn’t tainted with mustard gas as well as something to keep them from remembering they were just living in a Siegfried Sassoon poem. Said troops became reacquainted with the beer (and post-war trauma) following WWII, and the little town of Silly has been churning out its Scotch Ale ever since.

Scotch Silly is a nice dark amber color, and it smells malty, real malty – makes you think of caramel or toffee. Tastes amazing, almost exactly how it smells with a nice sweet finish. I normally dislike sweeter beers, but the Scotch Silly does a nice job of not making me hate it. The finish on your tongue is something like the crust of a creme brulee or even peanut brittle. This beer is pretty strong at 8%, so it’s definitely a sipper – but it is perfect with a hearty meal on a cold day. Or no meal on a cold day, whatever.

I picked up Magic Hat’s Circus Boy “Hefeweizen” because I really like hefeweizens. I used to live in Germany and that’s all I used to drink. I loved the fruity, creamy flavor and the tall, curvaceous, half liter weizen glass it was served in. German hefeweizens are actually pretty easy to find here in the United States, which is good because our domestic varieties are all sorts of terrible. I’ve always found American hefeweizens lacking. Some have given me nightmares. I’m still in therapy.

OK, they’re not that bad – like take the Circus Boy for example. It’s a perfectly fine beer from a brewery with a nice record of churning out hits. It tastes fine too – nice and light, with wonderful citrusy aromas and flavors, perfect for summer or any time, really. But, hey, it’s not a hefeweizen, at least not the kind I came to adore.  For starters, it’s not as cloudy as its pure German cousins, and I feel like it’s too fizzy which for some reason enhances a weirdly metallic aftertaste. Also, it comes in puny 16oz bottles, which means that you’ll need two of them to fill that nice weizen glass (and you can’t NOT fill the glass – starting with a less than full glass is like being forced to watch Sex and the City even after you know you missed the only part in the episode with boobs).

Maybe I’m just spoiled, but I’d go with a nice Weihenstephaner any day. It comes in a slightly bigger bottle and you can do the awesome hefeweizen pour. Come to think of it, that’s what’s wrong with Circus Boy – no yeast in the bottle. Where’s my yeast, Magic Hat?

Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA

I love this beer. I find it thoroughly satisfying and way easier to drink than a lot of IPAs out there. I also like that it’s pretty easy to find, something you’ll appreciate when you’re darting out to the nearest bodega during halftime because you didn’t plan the crucial beer:people:time ratio correctly. 60 Minute has the added bonus of having a healthy 6% ABV – inspiring alternating states of lofty euphoria and soul-sucking misery, something that long-time Jets fans will find entirely appropriate.

Miller Lite

I know, I know, this site’s supposed to be about good beer, but the bar I went to watch Jets games had Miller on $1 special during gametime and I am only human. And very, very cheap. This beer is light (lite?), so you can drink, like, beerzillion of them and still be coherent enough to tell where the TV is. Over the course of several years, I began to associate Miller Lite with football, and life was peachy. Then one day the bar replaced the Miller special with a Bud Light and it was just wrong. It was like waking up and finding your car exactly where you parked it, only upside down, or that weird feeling you got as a kid when you saw your teacher somewhere outside of school. Fuck you, Bud Light for ruining my football zen.

Arrogant Bastard Ale

I love you, Rex Ryan, you magnificent arrogant bastard. This one’s for you.

Heineken

My dad loves the Jets. My dad loves Heineken. So that explains that. And the beer is green, like the Jets. I don’t much care for the new mini-kegs though – it always makes things too foamy you have to assemble it like some night table from IKEA. I don’t assemble beer, I drink it. Also, the creepy robot ads for those things were just too much. That doesn’t make me want to drink beer as much as it makes me fear some bleak Orwellian future. They redeemed themselves with one of my all-time favorite ads, though.

Colt 45

The Jets are going to knock back some Colts on Sunday. Why shouldn’t you? Plus all the chicks at your football party will think you are hot shit. I’m just kidding, you and I both know there will be no chicks at your football party. Not after the way you behaved last year.

Brooklyn Lager

I needed to have at least one New York beer on this list, and the reliable Lager from Brooklyn Brewery is a fine choice. Plus, it’s only 5.2% ABV, which is pretty damn sessionable. You might have heard that the Jets actually play in New Jersey. I don’t care, their helmets say “NY” on them and I love taking things at face value. I was originally going to have Sixpoint’s Sweet Action here, and it’s a really good beer, but you try explaining why you’re drinking something called an “American Blonde Ale” at a football game.

There you go, six awesome options for this Sunday’s game. Girlfriends, I am not responsible for the behavior of your respective boyfriends’ behavior this weekend.

Let’s go JETS.

I do like the label, though. It’s got a picture of hapless Romanov Nicholas II, who, unlike this beer, couldn’t even show a little spine and put down some minor people’s revolution. What a choke artist. The Czar is an Imperial Stout which means that, like most Russian rulers, it is dark, brutal, and full of alcohol. Avery recommends buying a few extra bottles and keeping them around for a few years (also like Russian rulers) as the beer will continue to mature in the bottle – becoming stronger with age. I’ll have to try that, but beer doesn’t tend to stay undrunk for very long in my house. Neither do I, for that matter. If you’ve tried any of the older vintages, fee free to comment below and let me know your thoughts.

This beer is big. You know that by simply sniffing the beer – the sweetness and even the alcohol in this beer is plainly evident. It’s actually kind of imposing yet still inviting. The beer pours a dark, deep black with a nice tan head. It tastes kind of like it smells – the alcohol is there from start to finish and only becomes more bold as the beer warms in the glass. Overall, this beer is just a bit too strong for my taste. The sweetness of the beer isn’t well balanced so you’re left with a ton of alcohol and a ton of sweet on your tongue. I would have preferred something a little more bitter or something with a bit more smoothness to help deal with the beer’s 10-11% ABV. Cellaring this big beer may help balance it out, but it will also up the ABV so I’m skeptical. It does, however, come in a nice 22 oz bottle so you won’t have to get up for another beer for a while, something I will always, always approve of.

Anyway, on to the beer. I picked up a six pack of the The Poet at the local beer store. The packaging is purple, and it has a large raven on it, which i guess leaves the drinker on his or her own to draw the connection to Edgar Allan Poe – a poet of some note. I think. The beer is a nice deep brown color, almost black – you kind of have to catch it in the right light to see the color. Not much head to speak of, so I can’t really comment on that, but perhaps a more aggressive pour would give me better results. The beer smells like a stout should – roasted malt, coffee, some chocolate. The Poet apparently inspires some to verse, as one guy on BeerAdvocate.com noted an “almost ghostly scent of roses long dead.” Wow. I’m totally dropping that line next time I want to hit on a beer.

The taste of this beer is somewhat tricky. It tastes of coffee and bitter chocolate, and it has a nice amount of sweetness to it – not too much, not too little. I kept expecting to get hit with some stronger flavor, but it never came, save for a little bitterness in the end. Overall, it felt just a bit too watery and thin for my tastes. Brian agreed, saying that he’d probably pass on this if there were other oatmeal stouts at the bar. This is probably a good choice if you want the aroma and flavor of a stout with a thinner body. Oh, and at 5.2% ABV its fairly low in alcohol for a stout, so it’s probably a good choice if you want to have several beers. The Poet’s a good beer, but it’s not going to stand out in my mind as a truly great stout.

As you might guess, we here at Tap That spend a lot of time around beer. We can’t help it if some of that beer somehow finds its way into our mouths. It’s only natural – we drink beer like the moon affects the tides. I know that analogy doesn’t work and I don’t care. I blame beer.

Moving along.

My name is Keith and I write most of the content you see in the show and on the site. Each week I’d like to perform a completely unscientific, totally biased, and in no way expert review of some of the beer that finds its way to Tap That.

It will work like this: I’ll pick up a beer. Usually one that I have heard is good, but in the event of an emergency I’ll just use my wine-picking skills and go by the picture on the label. Or you know, you can contact me and recommend something. I’ll then drink the beer (I know, shocking twist there) and tell you what I think. Hopefully I’ll be joined by some of the Tap That crew, and I’ll probably tell you they were there anyway to avoid you all thinking that I’m drinking alone in my sad little basement. I’m not going to rate beer because I think ratings are arbitrary and weird (like my love life) and anyone with basic reading skills should be able to get a good idea of what we thought of the beer. I know that excludes like 80 percent of our audience. Sorry.

Caveat Lector: We like beer, we never said we were good at evaluating it. I have a tongue that might as well be made out of cardboard for the use my palate is, Brian’s first response after tasting any beer is that he’d rather be “rocking a Colt 45″, and, well, Scott is posing next to a case of Miller goddamn Lite in his profile picture.