I Want To Go To There: Downed Lands Brewing in Warwick, NY

Drowned Lands Brewing

Every once in a while I’ll stumble onto (usually scrolling Instagram) a brewery I have never heard of but looks damn cool. Today that is Drowned Lands Brewing in New York.

I first saw their can art and overall design. For some reason I have been really into this kind of hand drawn Lo-Fi look lately.

Investigating further I saw this:

That is a pretty rad and unique to me beer garden/taproom.

Normally I’d say I’ll probably never see this place. But being as it’s not super far from Newark/NYC, an area I’m sure I’ll visit again someday.

What Should I Do With These Old Beers!?

For various reasons I have these old beers.

Mostly they were bought on accident, either from not checking the dates or unable to see the dates due to the packaging. One is a gifted old beer.

Should I throw them out?

Yeah but there’s nothing worse than an old IPA, especially a hazy.

I currently have the space for them. They may not taste good but they are still beer. And I don’t have an infinite beer budget and sometimes run out BUT still really want a beer.

And sometimes a dude will show up and just want beer and not care how old they are.

Well, I guess I’ll keep them around then. Since I have the space for them at the moment.

Glad I worked that “problem” out here.

If I only live bed in a place that snowed and I needed to save parking spots, my problem would be solved here:

What do you do with your old hoppy beers?

Cold IPAs are Pale Lagers but whatever, OK

We are so desperate to have IPA in the description of our beers that peeps are making pale lagers and assigning a new IPA term to them.

So yeah, a couple of breweries are trying to create a style of beer called “Cold IPA“ but in actuality it’s a hoppy lager with a large ABV.

Yeah, you know what? Fuck it.

Why not just call everything IPAs from here on out?

  • Brown IPA
  • Stout IPA
  • Barrel Aged Stout IPA
  • Farmhouse IPA
  • Seltzer IPA
  • Your Mom’s IPA

Less arguing and confusion now.

Every beer style should just have IPA at the end of it so we can move on to just drinking beer without prejudice.

A Picture Of A Dive: Billymark’s West NYC

At first glance I thought this was a picture of a mini-mart (or a bodega as they like to call them in NY). It’s pure dive artistry.

It reminds me that I have a soft spot for dive-y marts with a little bit of character. And before the Pandemic, I was trying to figure out what to do with that soft spot, creatively.

Since the Pandemic though, I don’t go in them. Too small of an air space to breathe if I don’t have to, ya know.

But now I know, once all spaces become safe again, I’ll be doing posts on here, dedicated to the little marts I experience throughout my day.

Oh yeah, so it turns out the above picture is of a dive bar in NYC, not a mart.

As you can see it’s called Billymark’s West and doesn’t look too bad inside as this picture by NY.Eater.com suggests:

They even did a write up on the place. Hope it survives the COVID with its Labat’s Blue selection intact.