What an evening! On Friday June 14th, my fiancé and I decided to attend this year’s SAVOR Craft Beer Festival at the Altman Building, a beer and food pairing event that moves around the country every year. Luckily this year it was in New York, and next year it will be back in Washington D.C. where the event started only a few years ago.
The event is a fairly young beer tasting event, but it has already gotten a strong following and not without reason. They present some of the best craft brewers and amazing and innovative food. Besides the obviously amazing beer selection and food options, there were so many choices that you would need both nights that they are in town to try it all and even then your taste buds go dead after the first hour and a half because the beers are so good you cannot wait to try the next one.
I had made myself a big list of beer and food pairings that I wanted to try, but I only got half way through the list when I realized that I would be too drunk if I drank much more and I was so full from the food that I was waddling out of the place. Yes, you may not be very gracious when you leave, but who cares? Everyone is drunk and everyone had an amazing time.
The choices of beers are too long to mention here but I will give attention to the top six beers in my humble opinion. This opinion takes into account that I am a sucker for Hoppy tastes and the occasional stouts. I do not intend on ranking the beers as it depends on the drinker; I will simply describe them.
I did not know that I would enjoy a Saison but I did. I was pleasantly surprised by the Boulevard Brewing Company’s Saison Brett. It was refreshing, flavorful and as good as a Brett gets.
If you are on the lookout for something hoppy there were the Flying Dog Brewery Single Hop Sorachi Ace and my favorite company when it comes to hoppy flavors was present too – the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company with their Hoptimum Whole-cone Imperial IPA.
The stout that stood out for me this evening and that I had not tried before was the Imperial Stout from the Crux Fermentation project. The amazing Black and Tan Brownie with Butterscotch and Pretzel bites did however make the stout taste that much better. Talking about a pairing made in heaven!
There were a couple of good girly craft beers there were a little sweeter than the average beer and they do not come by that often but are getting more and more popular. The two beers that are not to be missed this year are the Twenty from Avery Brewing Company and Samuel Adams Honey Queen.
Not just the beer made the evening also the food was too die for and I was impressed that even with the amount of people and different food bites the food was consistent, great and new thinking. Adam Dulye and The Monk‘s Kettle did a great job pairing the foods with the beers.
If you are going to Washington next year when SAVOR is going for another round, this would be a great event to check out.
– Line B.
Photos by Jensen Sutta and by Socially Superlative
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