Not every week can be spent in search of the Holy Grail.
Sometimes real life gets in the way of cask-driven adventures.
But even then, if you cannot proactively go out looking for the next great cask, the cask may come to you, passively.
And then there are those occasions when you get to explore without a cask destination in mind but end up whispering in the most unlikely of venues.
Such was my week last week.
A bit of a mash-up.
Mmmm mash.
It started with the chaos that always accompanies my lovely wife’s return from the South, coinciding with a surprise visit from my daughter and grandsons, and a couple of their friends, who decided to swing by and hang out in the playground in my building.
We then got the sad news that a dear friend had passed away and that the funeral would be held on the Friday; he had lived a good life and a long life (95 years old), but it is still always a shock, for friends as well as family.
Other scheduled events were going to keep me away from my local all week, and my wife also had an excursion planned for the Saturday, so it was looking for a while to be a total cask-free week.
But we did get to walk some: to the Sixties for an international junk food sampling (yay!), to the Upper West Side for school pickups, and around the Reservoir, Great Lawn and North Meadow just for the exercise.
And then, after the funeral, we ended up at Jones Wood Foundry for a memorial lunch; not my idea, but you didn’t see me objecting when a fellow mourner suggested it.
Two Old Glenham beers (Baggins Wood IPA and Weavers Pale) and an order of bangers and mash (mmmm mash) in honor of our dear departed friend, who was a real pork sausage aficionado; we always tried to pick up some for him whenever we were anywhere near Butcher Block or Myers.
And then on Saturday the Bronx Library Center held an all-day seminar on book publishing which my missus was keen to attend, so I toddled along as navigator for a subway trip and short hike to Fordham and Belmont.
Which left me with up to five hours to kill in the area while my wife was being educated at the library.
My first thought was to continue eastward along Fordham Road to get to the Bronx Zoo, with maybe a little detour to the south and Arthur Avenue to check out the Bronx Little Italy neighborhood.
That maybe turned into a definitely when I realized that the Arthur Avenue Retail Market contained the Bronx Beer Hall.
I knew that I wasn’t going to find a beer engine there, but I was intrigued.
My old mates from home have this theory that you could toss me out of an airplane anywhere in the world, and within an hour I would find a like-minded community and have an absolute blast.
This theory was confirmed over the next three and a half hours, until my wife bailed out early from her studies and summoned me back to escort her home again.
The market has existed for around eighty five years, with the Beer Hall occupying its place in the very center of the building for the past thirteen.
How did I not know this before?
I made up for lost time, spending all of those three and a half hours parked at the bar, soaking in the atmosphere as the market did its market thing all around me, chatting with the bartender and any fellow customers who would listen, and supping on their house brew, an Italian Pilsner brewed at Vosburgh (see Gun Hill).
And quite a bit of that chatting concerned cask ale, as I chewed the ears off of a young couple who come down to the market regularly from Westchester County.
I had overheard them talking about Ploosh ESB from Marlowe Ales and discovered that they shared a love of the cask, and that they were regulars at both Marlowe and the Ambleside pub up in Mt. Kisco.
The cask world is indeed a small world.
This was a really fun little detour, and I didn’t even get to explore the rest of the neighborhood, bar the streets that I took into and out of the area.
We will be returning, I am sure; perhaps with a side trip to the Bronx Zoo or NY Botanical Garden next time.
I would have to carefully steer my wife away from the stalls with all of the meat products on display, but I am sure that my departed friend would have loved the place.
And for those folks who are counting, yes I have somehow managed to chalk up sessions in all five NYC boroughs over the past month.
Scorecard w/e 10/21/25
In the past week the Cask Whisperer has enjoyed the following casks:
- Old Glenham Baggins Wood IPA @ Jones Wood Foundry
- Old Glenham Weavers Pale Ale @ Jones Wood Foundry
Upcoming Cask Events (Festivals and Otherwise)
- November 8th: Blue Point 21st Cask Fest at Blue Point Brewing, Patchogue NY (Tickets now available, please check on Eventbrite!)
- Save the dates! The 2026 edition of NERAX will be from March 25th to 28th next year.
Upcoming Random NYC Casks
- Friday, October 31st for the Bushwick Halloween Brewery Crawl, Grimm will be showcasing a cask of their Double Negative: Grimm Reaper. This looks to be an interesting crawl, starting at Niteglow and looping in KCBC, Kato, Eckhart as well as Grimm.
NYC Cask Venues
Known Operational/Active Beer Engines
- Jones Wood Foundry (x2)
- Fifth Hammer
- Wild East
- The Shakespeare (x3)
- Drop-off Service
Occasional Pins (worth a follow on Instagram)
- Strong Rope
- KCBC
- Tørst
- Blind Tiger Ale House
- Threes Brewing
- Brouwerij Lane (First Friday Firkins)
- The Owl Farm
Cask Venues Reachable from NYC by MTA or NJ Transit Train in Under two Hours
Metro-North Hudson Line
- Draught Industries, Beacon NY (one handpump, Old Glenham beer range).
- Coopers, Beacon NY (one handpump, Old Glenham beer range).
- Happy Valley Arcade Bar, Beacon NY (one handpump, Old Glenham beer range).
Metro-North Harlem Line
- The Ambleside Pub, Mt. Kisco NY (four handpumps, Old Glenham beer range).
Metro-North New Haven Line
- Marlowe Artisanal Ales, Mamaroneck NY (one handpump, Marlowe beer range).
- Nod Hill Brewing, Ridgefield CT (two handpumps, Nod Hill beer range).
NJ Transit NJCL Line
- Triumph Restaurant and Brewery, Red Bank NJ (one handpump, Triumph beer range).
