Blinded by the Tiger

My wife and I took a brief long-weekend trip to New York City and one of our activities was a food tour around one of the great neighborhoods in Manhattan, Greenwich Village. During the tour our guide pointed out a local watering hole called The Blind Tiger on Bleecker Street which she said has "lots of good beer on tap." Well enough said!

After our tour concluded we wandered around in Greenwich Village and found ourselves at The Blind Tiger's door. Smaller than it appeared from outside, we stepped into a charming, little pub very reminiscent of some of the great bars we encounted in Ireland last year. Our guide was dead-on with her report that they had "lots of good beer on tap" - 28 very unique choices to be exact - with only a few I had even heard of. We found a couple of seats and placed our order. I started with the first of 4 new-to-me IPAs available - Smutty Nose from New Hampshire. My wife, Ashlee, is a big fan of ginger beer ever since our trip to Australia a couple of years ago and was excited to see Hitachino Ginger Beer on tap as well. I had a few sips of it on the way back from ordering it at the bar and have to say it is pretty good despite my less-than-enthusiastic opinion of ginger beer. This one was not near as overwhelming in ginger taste as some others we have tried. It also had a whopping 7% ABVwhich was even more than the Smutty Nose weighing in at 6.7%. The Smutty Nose was decent although not as hoppy as I really prefer.

Ashlee stuck with her ginger beer on the second round (the girl is loyal) while I opted for Green Flash IPA out of California. Now this is what I was looking for! Good and hoppy with a great opening flavor and pleasing aftertaste. Ashlee was happy to remain seated in the active little bar people-watching and sipping her ginger beer. I, of course, was VERY happy to continue hanging out in The Blind Tiger as the USA and Canada dropped the puck for Olympic Gold and there were two more IPAs on the board calling my name to try them. Number 3 on the IPA hit parade was Moyland's IPA from California. Not bad, but the Green Flash stayed in the lead as my favorite. I finished my IPA tour with Southern Tier out of New York. And the winner by a nose (not a smutty nose) was Green Flash.

I finished the afternoon with a Slyfox O"Reilly Stout from Pennsylvania which was nice and hearty in flavor and weight and at only 3% ABV, a good way to slow down before I was walking out of the place like a blind tiger! We met some really nice locals who obviously enjoyed beer and they were telling us about another place in Brooklyn called Spuyten Duyvil (Spitting Devil) that had an interesting beer menu as well. Definitely something worth checking out the next time we visit The Big Apple, and I sure wouldn't mind coming back to The Blind Tiger.

BY THE BY: On our way to NYC we got stuck in the Philly airport for four hours due to a mechanical problem with our inbound plane. We drowned our sorrows in a fairly cool airport bar there called The Jet Bar (kind of a Hard Rock Cafe-style place) and they had two decent local mircobrews on tap: The Sly Fox Pale Ale had a clean, smooth taste, and the Dock Street Rye IPA wasn't as hoppy as I prefer, but it was an interesting blend and a decent beer overall.