I celebrated my anniversary yesterday.
No, not that one.
And because it was not that one, I was permitted to go out and celebrate all by myself.
So I did.
And of course there was only one place that I considered.
The local.
Jones Wood Foundry.
I wasn’t planning on staying long.
I never plan on staying long, it just happens sometimes.
Actually, I was only hanging out there for a couple of hours, which is about my average duration during these kinds of visits, but I did end up consuming more than I had accounted for.
Two pints of Old Glenham blonde ale, looking and tasting excellent.
A smaller pour of the Black Country Bitter, all good so far.
But then the cider/mead sales rep came in with samples, many samples, and I was invited to join the JWF crew in examining these samples.
So yeah, a wall of mead and cider to wash down the ales.
There was some good stuff there, four of which will be appearing in canned form at JWF in the near future.
So, if fermented farm products are your thing, get yourselves over to JWF and inquire.
They have all passed the expert (well, enthusiastic amateur) quality control test.
One of the reasons that I had attempted (and failed) to limit my intake yesterday afternoon, was that I had helped some other folks celebrate their own anniversaries last week.
Several other folks.
Three on Thursday, forming an impromptu cask crawl, and a long-distance outing on Saturday with three more casks at the end (middle?) of it.
Two of my local bottle shops, City Swiggers and Vinyl Beer, celebrated anniversaries last Thursday, and both decided to mark the respective occasions with stichfaß from Eckhart; a Czech amber lager at Swiggers at 4pm and Eckhart’s latest, an Altbier, at Vinyl at 7pm.
It should have been an easy neighborhood crawl for me, seeing as Whispering Haven is located practically dead center between these two venues, with neither being more than eight blocks away.
I could do that in three hours.
I could even stop home after Swiggers and make myself a bite to eat, or take a nap.
But then the NYC Cask Crew popped up with a Wild East cask takeover at Shakespeare in midtown at 6pm, and I decided that I wasn’t going to miss that, so …
… I took a hike in the middle of my local crawl.
Combined with a couple of walks earlier in the morning, to run errands in the UES, I ended up chalking up over ten miles for the day, not too shabby.
It wasn’t technically Wild East’s anniversary, I missed out on that the prior week, so I just had to make an appearance, it is expected of me.
It was a long crawl with four casks all told (Wild East had two on at the Shakespeare), and a Grimm and a Cantillon thrown in for good measure at Swiggers.
I also got to see Shakespeare at its fullest … jeez!
And I got to visit another new beer store, Vinyl, for the first time ever, thanks to the travelling Eckhart stichfaß.
The good folks of Eckhart have been dragging me all over the city, and I finally got to come back home with them, or as close as dammit.
As for Saturday, I also managed to chalk up three casks, but had to travel a long way to find them.
As many regular consumers of my weekly ravings will confirm, I have been known, on occasion, to take all manner of public transportation to check out the cask offerings, regular and sporadic, in all corners of the quad-state (NY, NJ, CT and LI) area.
It was New Jersey’s turn again this past weekend.
I had long heard rumors of a cask program at Little Dog Brewing in Neptune City down on the North Jersey Shore, had scoped out how to get there via New Jersey Transit, and started to follow them on Instagram to try to get ahead of any cask news.
It paid off late last week (too late to post here) with an Instagram announcement of their 11th birthday party which was going to feature some casks.
Two hours by NJT train from Penn Station to Bradley Beach, with a change at Long Branch, it is at the outer limit of my self-imposed reverse commuting boundary, just close enough (or far enough away) to earn a permanent reference on the scorecard below.
And what a lovely little place it is too.
Two rooms, the brewery in one and a tap room in the other, with barely enough room to swing a cat, or a little dog.
But the bar was large enough to hold a couple of pins for the event, and a permanent beer engine providing ongoing cask ales for those determined enough to make the trip from NYC, or lucky enough to live nearby.
And those lucky regulars that I met there were all very welcoming, as was their pioneering owner/brewer Gretchen, who has been brewing in NJ for around thirty years now, including several locations that I had visited in the distant past.
I got the personal brewery “tour”.
I got pours of all three casks: all very solid, all delicious, all lower in ABV, all classics.
And I spent a very nice couple of hours amongst new friends, all on a first-name basis from the moment that I stepped through the door.
A little too far for me to get to frequently, I do have to do my rounds you know, but it will definitely get repeated visits when time allows.
And not just for anniversaries.
Talking of anniversaries, some of you may be curious about my own little low-key event yesterday.
I was reminded of it last Thursday, when I passed by the large office building at 90 Park Avenue, just at the end of the block from the Shakespeare pub.
It was the location of the first office that I worked in when I initially arrived on these shores, November 15th, 1979.
How long?
Forty-six years?
Really?
Scorecard w/e 11/18/25
In the past week the Cask Whisperer has enjoyed the following casks:
- Old Glenham Black Country Bitter @ Jones Wood Foundry
- Old Glenham Severn Blonde Ale @ Jones Wood Foundry
- Eckhart Czech Amber Lager @ City Swiggers
- Eckhart Altbier @ Vinyl Beer
- Wild East Standard Deviation Stout: Holiday Spice @ The Shakespeare
- Wild East King of the North Red Ale @ The Shakespeare
- Little Dog Kevin American ESB @ Little Dog Brewing, Neptune City NJ
- Little Dog Citra Pale Ale @ Little Dog Brewing, Neptune City NJ
- Little Dog Bourbon Stout @ Little Dog Brewing, Neptune City NJ
Upcoming Cask Events (Festivals and Otherwise)
- Save the dates! The 2026 edition of NERAX will be from March 25th to 28th next year. Tickets will be available in early 2006.
Upcoming Random NYC Casks
Nothing noticed so far.
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).
- Little Dog Brewing, Bradley Beach NJ (one handpump, Little Dog beer range).
