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Our friends over at LocalBozo were nice enough to write up last night’s Hopfest: Backyard Hops In Support Of BK Farmyards at Brooklyn Brewery. Read what you missed (or relive the event):

The Good Beer Seal’s “July Good Beer Month” continues on in 2012, with more exciting events day after day. Throughout this steamy month, exciting ale centric programs will be held at each of the 40 Good Beer Seal bars throughout the city. The LocalBozo crew has been out celebrating these events, while learning a great deal about our favorite adult beverage. On Monday night we headed back to Williamsburg’s “Brooklyn Brewery,” a venue that has become our regular stomping ground for “Hopfest: Backyard Hops In Support Of BK Farmyards.” The large brewing room was literally transformed into a “House of Hops,” allowing event goers the opportunity to walk around to taste the brews and smell the miracle flower produced by “backyard” hop growers throughout New York.

Read the rest of the article here.

This Monday, July 16th, July Good Beer Month™ and the Good Beer Seal present Hopfest: Backyard Hops In Support Of BK Farmyards from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at Brooklyn Brewery. Hopfest will feature a three hours of unlimited walk-around food and beer tastings with local “backyard” hops growers throughout New York City. Teaching you how to grow hops will be:

• The Bronx Brewery, in collaboration with the New York Botanical Gardens and the Cornell Cooperative Extension, whose Urban Hop Project is growing hops at community gardens throughout the Bronx;
• Jeff O’Neill (Peekskill) and John Segal (Segal Ranch Hops);
• Ben Granger (Bierkraft – Edible did a great story about Ben a couple years ago);
• John Liegey (Greenport Harbor);
• Host Brooklyn Brewery with more hops growers TBA.

In addition to plenty of beer, food offerings include dishes from Parish Hall, Jimmy’s No. 43, East Village Meat Market, and Sigmund’s Pretzels, among others. Tickets available now.

The gauntlet has been thrown. Beer Union has decided to undertake an effort to visit all 40 Good Beer Seal Bars for July Good Beer Month (full disclosure: they’ve gotten a jump start, having visited four of the bars starting last week). We hope you’ll join in (or join them) on a quest to visit the Good Beer Seal Bars (lots of events will be added to the calendar, here).

This week on Beer Sessions Radio™, there was a New Jersey take-over! Surprisingly, NJ is no longer swimming in the wake of the NYC beer scene, having its own Craft Beer movement, lead by several key brewers and New Jersey Craft Beer owner, Mike Kivowitz. Joining host Jimmy Carbone is Michael Kane from Kane Brewing, along with Augie Carton and Jesse Ferguson from Carton Brewing. Kane is a draft-only microbrewery that is certainly making waves among NJ’s craft beer lovers. As many New Yorkers already know, Carton Brewing is the leading brewer whose reach is gaining inroads in the city.

Just as NJ itself is defying simple compartmentalization, so its beers aren’t easily categorized. Kane and Carton blend styles to create unique beers, including those brought to the studio: Carton’s 0077XX and Boat Beer and Kane’s Single Fin and the Head High IPA. Tune in and you’ll also find out the real reason the monkey ran all around the mulberry bush!

If you want to take a tour of NJ breweries and craft beer bars, join Mike on the Monmouth County Bus Tour next month. Guess what? The PATH runs in both directions? Who knew?! Now you’ve got a great reason to visit Jersey: cool craft beers you just can’t find anywhere else.

It took awhile, but the Good Beer Seal has now reached the fifth and final Borough! Tonight at Jimmy’s No. 43, it was announced that Staten Island’s very own Adobe Blues and Killmeyer’s Old  Bavaria would be the first Good Beer Seal bars in the fifth Borough. The night celebrated new Good Beer Seal bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well. It was a very competitive ballot, and in the end a simple majority of votes meant that a lucky eight new bars will now join the ranks of Good Beer Seal bars in New York City. So, as they say, “the envelope please…”

From the Island of Manhattan:

• Earl’s Beer and Cheese – This pub at 1259 Park Avenue is “a small neighborhood joint where the craft beer flows with the force and volume of a surging river and the sublime cheese-related concoctions of Chef Corey Cova get churned out like it’s gourmet chow time for the hungry Navymen of the USS George H.W Bush.”
• Dive Bar – The original Dive Bar (732 Amsterdam) has been an Upper West Side haven for great beer and good grub for years, and we welcome her into the GBS ranks!
• Idle Hands – This EV/LES bar (25 Avenue B) has long been an entertainment hot spot, and co-owner “Rev” David Ciancio has been a fixture in the burger world of NYC.

From the Island of Long (okay, we mean Brooklyn):

• 61 Local – A big part of the Good Beer Seal bars is community, and 61 Local embraces that one-hundred times over. You can find them in the heart of Cobble Hill at 61 Bergen Street.
• Sycamore – You want flowers with that? The owners of Sycamore Bar and Flowershop (yep, you read that right) took a big risk combining two seemingly disparate businesses. Then again, what is a hop other than a flower? Find them at 1118 Cortelyou Road.
• Pine Box Rock Shop – In Bushwick (12 Grattan Street), this bar offers rotating taps and vegan-friendly food options. Did we mention it’s in Bushwick?

And, finally, the Island of Staten:

• Adobe Blues – You can enjoy Southwestern-style eats and an old west saloon atmosphere at 63 Lafayette Avenue.
• Killmeyer’s Old Bavaria Inn – An old-style bierhaus that hosts craft beer tastings in its summer garden, the owner was a co-founder of Adobe Blues before opening the new bar on the south end of the island at 4254 Arthur Kill Road.

We congratulate the class of 2012! Welcome to the Good Beer Seal.

This week on Beer Sessions Radio™ (full episode here) Jimmy Carbone welcomed  studio guests Mark Sljukic of Lagunitas, Brandon Moore of American Beer Distributors, and author (and Siebel Institute instructor) Lucy Saunders. Together this eclectic group talked about the various certification programs that are bringing a bit of gravitas to being a beer expert, along with Lagunitas’ expansion (both in California and Chicago), the benefits of drinking locally, and the history of beer in New York (Nina Nazionale of the New York Historical society joined the show talking about the Historical Society’s Beer Here Exhibition). Learn about aging cheese with hops, cooking with beer, and some of the offerings you can expect from smaller breweries in the region. Oh, yes, and we answer that age-old question: What beer goes best with a Margherita Pizza? (Hint: It’s all about the basil, baby!)

It was a colorful group of beer insiders drinking even more colorful beers this week on Beer Sessions Radio™ (full episode here). An Inside Look At Beer brought together beer lovers from California (Harris Damashek of Underground Eats and Sonoma Springs Brewing Co.) to Great Britain (Garren Baker and his soon-to-be-wed friend Steve), along with host Jimmy Carbone, Union Beer Assistant Sales Manager Andrew McLeod and Cory Bonfiglio of Proletariat.

The fellas discuss their favorite “first beers” and beer writing, while trying out new brews from Alaska to Michigan, California to Maine. These beer insiders also talk about the future of the craft beer industry as new and existing brewers open throughout the country and breaking into the competitive New York market.

We also bid adieu to long-time guest coordinator Brett Thompson, who’s switching coasts. Cheers, Brett!

This week Jimmy Carbone was joined in the studio by Blind Tiger’s Jen Schwartzman and Matt Bean of Men’s Health. Matt started with a discussion of pairing beer with food; last year he won the food-beer smackdown at the SAVOR: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience with his sour beer/bacon-covered-dates pairing. He’ll be facing challengers at next month’s Fest, including DC Brau, Green Flash and Ommegang.

Jen and Matt were later joined by fermentation experts Claire Hartten and Claudia Keel. Jimmy discusses his love of Kimchi, and Candice Santaferraro calls in from Frog’s Leap Farm and Winery to discuss some of the homemade mead that she’s been fermenting. For the full episode, listen here.

Beer Sessions Radio™ Episode 114 (listen here) sounds like the lead-in to a joke: America Walks Into a Bar is the title of guest Christine Sismondo, who joins Killmeyer’s Old Bavarian Inn owner Ken Tirado to discuss Prohibition and the history of “tavern as meeting hall.” In addition, Barry Smyth of Fraunces Tavern talks about some of the oldest bars in America.

The history of the tavern pre-dates the Revolutionary War and, in fact, is caught up in many monumental events in Colonial America (the Salem Witch Trials, early political meetings). Of course, beer was a big part of early American history because it was considered the safest way to hydrate.

Check out the episode and hear some urban legends of NYC bars and get a history lesson in libation!