Flour City Brewers Fest winners and highlights

Festival’s 28th edition featured more than 70 breweries from across New York. Here are my favorites from another memorable fest.

The Flour City Brewers Fest, the yearly Rohrbach Brewing-produced festival at the Rochester Public Market, continues to be one of my favorite nights of the year.

Not only do you get to sample incredible beverages from across New York, but you also get to interact with the people responsible for those drinks. Brewers make it a point to come to Rochester for this festival.

And my wife Cassie knows how much I love this event. That’s why, this year, she asked me to secure an extra ticket. She said I would be distracted and sidetracked for most of the evening and she didn’t want to dissuade me from what is pretty much my Super Bowl. (That’s true love, kids.)

Cass was right. I ran into so many people I haven’t seen in months and was able to connect with so many friends. The whole night was really a blur, but there were some beverages that really stood out during last Friday’s event. Here is a recap of my favorites from the 28th edition of the Flour City Brewers Fest:

1. Eli Fish (Batavia, Genesee County) Foeder-Aged Dortmunder: This is the beer I kept coming back for, over and over again. At under 5 percent, it featured that beautiful, crisp pale lager finish with enough oak character to really round it out. It’s a reminder to us all that brewer Adam Burnett is doing some really cool things in Batavia and we owe it to ourselves to get our asses out there ASAP. (This is really just a reminder to myself.)

2. Bullfinch (Syracuse, Onondaga County) Simulacrum hazy DIPA: I was incredibly excited to finally try some beers from brewer/owner Dave Collins and his new Syracuse brewpub, which is in the former Gordon Biersch space at the Destiny USA mega-mall. I was able to try a few different ones and enjoyed them immensely. Dave has a really great resume (he was the original head brewer at Buffalo’s Resurgence Brewing), which heightened my expectations I really enjoyed Dave’s classic (it’s funny to call a style like this classic, but with this style and this hop combo, it’s a classic) hazy double IPA. Hopped with Citra and Mosaic, it featured an incredibly light body and didn’t contain a hint of the higher alcohol content. Next time I’m in Syracuse, I’m definitely gonna visit (and bonus, it’s right near Buried Acorn Brewing).

3. Lake Hour (Geneseo, Livingston County) canned cocktails: As we entered, this was the first table we crossed with beverages. I had come across Lake Hour a month or two earlier on Instagram and was intrigued. This upstate upstart crafts really cool vodka-based canned cocktails in really cool flavors like Rosemary Yuzu, Peach Jasmine, Honeysuckle Ginger, and Watermelon Cucumber. It was the first drink I sampled and it still made an impression on me. That says quite a bit and I can’t wait to try more. (I’m also hopeful I’ll be able to profile the gentlemen behind Lake Hour in the coming weeks.)

4. Dope Munchie Crew (Rochester) OG cookie: It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the Dope Munchie Crew was the very first table you encountered upon entering at the northern Union Street entrance. David McDonald’s cookies are one of my favorite treats in the Rochester region. McDonald, who will be head chef at Rising Storm’s soon-to-open spot at the Daisy Flour Mill, comes up with the coolest flavor combos in his cookies. I’m still partial to the OG, however. It blends white chocolate and sesame into an incredible treat.

5. Living Roots Wine (Rochester) Pét-Nat Rosé: If there’s a theme to this list, it’s that I want to support going good people doing good things. That makes it easy to support Colleen and Seb Hardy, the couple behind Rochester’s only urban winery. For Flour City, Nick Lemesis, Living Root’s sales manager, brought a whole of different wines to sample. Cass and I are proud wine club members and look forward to the curated selections quarterly. One of our recent favorites was the effervescent Pét-Nat Rosé, which was among the wines featured at Flour City.

6. Happy Gut Sanctuary (Rochester) kombucha: Catt and Rob, the amazing couple behind Happy Gut, are lifesavers. They handed me a bottle of kombucha at the exact moment I needed it most. (Maybe this is a bit dramatic, but this is my space, so I can really do what I like really.) But Rob’s fermented tea creation was absolutely perfect as it provided some refreshment and represented an alternative to the night of beers. It was a needed reset. I love how Catt and Rob are as nerdy about tea as I am about beer and seltzer. And special shout-out to Public Market resident Katboocha for the pour of its Apple Crisp kombucha. That cinnamon-y goodness was a perfect choice for he fall-like evening.

7. Three Heads (Rochester) Iron Smoke Barrel-Aged Barleywine: Dangerously smooth, super velvery, especially with a few years of age on it. (And look out in the future for a ranking of every member of the Kind IPA family. I’ve enlisted some guest judges and I’m excited to dive into the legendary Rochester IPA.)

8. Strange Design Public House (Geneseo, Livingston County) Wading in the Velvet Haze IPA: Aside from liking Phish (I swear, this will be the last Phish slander you read in this newsletter), I really love what owners Tommy and Kristi Lee Streamer and head brewer Ben Bernard are doing at this Geneseo brewpub. I crossed paths with the Strange Design crew later in the evening. At that point, it was all a little fuzzy and a little cold. I recall really enjoying my conversation with this crew and I know that’s the same type of hospitality they exude when you visit their brewpub in the historic Livingston County poorhouse.

9. Naples Brewing Co. (Naples, Ontario County) NYIPA 28: Aside from being awesome guys, Dan diGiovanna and Trevor Andrews, the owners and brewers at NBC, are incredibly talented. I love how they focus on using NYS-grown ingredients in their hazy IPAs. You wouldn’t expect to have a New England-style IPA with all local ingredients. But that’s what Dan and Trevor have done with this series. I love how it demonstrates how much better ingredients have become here. As as they joked to me, they’ve come a long way from the homebrew I sampled before they opened more than two years ago.

What an embarrassment of riches. So much variety and so many awesome people pouring their creations. That’s really the thing that makes Flour City so special — the the people. Plus, it’s really impossible to top the Rochester Public Market as a venue. I’m already looking forward to next year.

Two Genny releases next week

Is it too early, just in time, too late? You can be the judge of that. Regardless, Genesee is releasing two of its seasonal favorites next week: its Oktoberfest and its Cran Orange Kellerbier. Both signal the arrival of fall and are ideal crushers for those shorter days.

Using the #gennyfallrant hashtag or by directly messaging Genny on Twitter (or X or whatever it is called now), Facebook, and Instagram, fans can weigh in on this all-important debate. Some comments might even be featured on Genny’s social media channels.

And if Genny is encouraging rants, here’s mine: Please bring your Schwarzbier. Your brewery is built to make kick-ass German-style lagers and this was one of your best. Also, it’s beyond time to bring the Genesee Brew House Northern German Pilsner out of retirement. Last produced at Genny’s big brewery in 2016, I think it was among the best beers to ever come out of the St. Paul Street complex.

GCVM event highlights history

One of the coolest institutions around (actually founded by the Wehle family, the family responsible for helping Genesee prosper for decades) is inviting us to experience “the journey of hops — one of NY’s original cash crops — from field, to brewery, to pint glass.” The Genesee County Village and Museum hosts its annual Hop Harvest Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 2, at the museum in Mumford.

The public can enjoy two historic beer styles produced by Rohrbach, along with other local craft beers. You’ll learn about hop production in the 1800s, while enjoying live music and a beer garden. Attendees can visit Grieve’s Brewery, a reconstructed Geneva brewery that dates back to 1803. Grieve’s is one of the few working 19th century breweries in the country.

The event looks like it’s gonna be a blast.

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