We are excited to see General Lafayette Inn & Brewery up on BeerMenus. You can see their full selection of beers brewed in-house including the newly released Biere De Cerises and the Griffin's Mild. Check out their selection here

Today Luckydog opens at 303 Bedford Avenue (nr S 2nd St.) in Williamsburg. This new beer bar has 20 taps, a cask beer engine (see chalk board below), and a big back yard. Luckydog plans to have a rotating selection of crafty beers intended to please the casual beer drinker and the connoisseur alike. With plans to soon offer small plates of meat and cheese, the Lucky Dog also encourages patrons to order and bring in food, which is particularly convenient with the Dumont Burger location directly across the street.

Below are a few photos I took which are not my best work and do not do the place justice

Rattle 'N' Hum recently launched an iPhone app to keep you up to date on their beer selection on the go on your iPhone or Apple Touch. A lot of bars are too lazy to update their beer menus to tell you what they have, Patrick at Rattle 'N' Hum has just raised the bar.

You can download the Rattle 'N' Hum iPhone app here

Check out a screen grab:

...is now on BeerMenus. The Flying Pig Saloon has over 60 beers including many hard to find beers like the Avery Samael's on draft.

The most recent bar to start updating on BeerMenus/Philly is TJ's Restaurant And Drinkery. Their menu is full of new beers that were not previously on BeerMenus and it has a huge bottle list. Check out their beer menu and grab a beer at TJ's to thank them for providing you better information on what [great] beer they have.

The guys behind The Good Beer Seal have created a seal to recognize the beer bars in NYC that are dedicated to bringing good beer to the community and have gotten City Hall and Mayor Bloomberg to officially declare July "Good Beer Month" in NYC. Read more

Watch the video of Jimmy Carbone and Ray Deter announcing the Proclamation of July Good Beer Month.

In a program on NPR last week, Steve Chiaotakis reports that "For the beer business, it seems the better the brew, the more the bucks." Sales reports indicate that as the economy is tanking sales are up for the more expensive craft beer -- the ultra premium beers are growing the most. Why would people be spending more money on craft beer while their bank accounts shrink? The most likely reason is that when people are forced to cut back spending on big things like a vacation or a new car, they try to ease the blow by finding more affordable ways to splurge, like ultra premium beer. If you're not going to make it to Europe this Summer, why not drink a refreshing Berliner Weisse or Hefeweizen and pretend like you are in Germany? Listen to the program here

It looks like they will be pouring the Hefe Weizen, India Black Ale, Belgian White, Vienna Red Lager, Raspberry Wheat, Pig Iron Porter, Light Lager, and the Ironbound Ale. You can check out the latest info on the Maple Shade blog

On Monday (7/20) we will be drinking 8 different hefeweizens paired with some great cheeses from Murray's Cheese Shop. Conforming to the German purity law the Reinheitsgebot, these beers are brewed using only hops, water, yeast, and malted grains. The hefeweizen is the German wheat beer that has all of the thirst-quenching and refreshing characteristics of the Belgian White beers that we had at the last event, but these beers have no adjuncts like spices or fruit to hide behind. The purity law in Germany has had a very interesting influence on the brewing culture in Germany forcing brewers to perfect the use of the 4 main ingredients in beer, but preventing them from experimenting with additional ingredients that brewers use in other countries. Come try these 8 hefeweizens and decide if the purity law is prohibiting creativity or helping brewers create the best pure form of beer.

The beers:
Weihenstephaner Hefe
Schneider Weisse
Schneider Hopfen Weisse
Schneider Aventinus
Plank Heller Weizen bock
1809 Berliner Weisse
Schlenkerla Weizen
Sierra Kellerweisse

Learn more and buy tickets

We launched today! We are excited to see more updates and more places involved. If you have any suggestions, please let us know in the forums section.

Philadelphia Weekly recently put out a guide to Philly brew pubs. Check it out

BeerMenus is teaming up with Maggie Fuller, of Beer Ethos and Resto, the restaurant with over 100 Belgian beers and a food menu to match, for a series of beer dinners this Summer. Our first dinner takes place on Monday (July 13th) where we will be exploring Belgian White beers, a perfect thirst-quenching summer beer style. Resto's executive chef Bobby Hellen and owner Christian Pappanicholas will be bringing out their best plates for this 5 course beer dinner. In the Belgian tradition, this will be a true beer and food pairing giving equal attention to both the beer and food. If you have yet to visit Resto, take a look at their food menu and their beer menu to see what to expect.

Email julian@restonyc.com or call 212-685-5585 to secure your seat for Monday.

Check out the schedule of events we are doing together this Summer.

Tonight the East Village Tavern will be welcoming Greg Hall with a big lineup of Goose Island beers. Come meet Greg, learn about the Reserve Series, and enjoy $5 pours from 6-9PM.

The beer:
Night Stalker
Bourbon County Stout
Matilda
Pere Jacques
Honkers
312
IPA
Demolition
Imperial IPA
Summertime
Sofia (bottle)

...for the shout out today. You can read the article here.

Tonight at Rattle 'N' Hum we will be drinking 8 Witte beers paired with great cheeses from Murrays Cheese Shop. We will have Maggie Fuller, of Beer Ethos, and Chris Munsey, of Murrays Cheese Shop with us to discuss the great beers and cheeses.

For this event we will be discussing the history of the Witte beer style, and we will explain each beer in the flight.

The beers:
St. Bernardus Wit
Ommegang Witte
Captain Lawrence Sunblock
Bruery Orchard White
Bruery Orchard Black
Birrificio Friska
Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca
Glazen Toren Jan De Lichte

Buy Tickets and learn more

BeerMenus.com officially launched this week in Philly. Since launching the site in NYC from our Brooklyn headquarters a little over a year ago, we have received repeated requests to expand to other cities across the country and even abroad. During that time, Philly has consistently shown itself to be one of the premier craft beer centers in the country (you already know this).

The participation by Philly's bar owners--before the site even launched--was phenomenal. And it is expected that BeerMenus/Philadelphia will quickly put BeerMenus/New York City to the test to see which City bests the other in terms of participation by bar owners and craft beer lovers alike.

A big topic of conversation is how to keep ever-rotating beer menus accurate. To solve this problem, we enable bars to login and update their menus. The process of updating takes a bar under 2 minutes on average and can even be done on an iPhone or Blackberry. The skepticism about accurate menus has been completely silenced in NYC. Many bars update their beer menu every time they come upstairs from changing a tap line effectively making their beer menu 100% accurate (often more accurate than the print menu in the bar).

We are just getting started in Philly. Now that the site is up and running, we will be recruiting many more bars to make updating their menus a part of their routine.

We hope the site helps Philly's many knowledgeable and passionate beer lovers find better beer and in turn helps the best bars, restaurants, and beer stores get discovered.

Thanks so much for the warm reception Philly.

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of attending Urban Oyster's Brewed In Brooklyn Walking Tour. You may have heard rumors about the rich history of brewing in Brooklyn, but this walking tour will teach you everything you need to know. Brooklyn used to have over 70 operating breweries - almost a brewery on every corner - and this created a very unique brewing culture and neighborhood atmosphere. On the tour you get a private tour of Brooklyn Brewery, you get to see the few remaining German breweries built in the 19th century, you get to see the sites of breweries that have been torn down, you get to talk with local residents whose families have been in the neighborhood for generations, and of course you get to drink great beer along the way. These tours run every Saturday from noon to 3PM. I encourage everyone to take a walk through Brooklyn with Dave and Cindy for a lively and humorous tour of Brooklyn's rich brewing history. Check out some photos I took along the way...

Local 1 fermenting at Brooklyn Brewery



The flight of beers at Brooklyn Brewery



Edward Hittelman Brewery



A perfect pairing at Danny's Pizzeria