Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage (or food) that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
I never thought of Long Island as a beer place. Which I suppose can be traced back to my New England roots and general avoidance of New York.
But Blue/Point Brewing has been around since 1998, predating terrible Hamptons white parties — at least the one thrown by the guy who made every piece of sports memorabilia worse — and serving locals its flagship Toasted Lager for more than 25 years. It was part of the great craft brewery buy-up of the 2010s, becoming part of Anheuser-Busch. Then it was part of the great Tilray consolidation of, well, the last few years, becoming another asset in the brand’s massive portfolio.
There’s obviously good and bad that comes with that. The autonomy of a locally owned business is gone, which can cull brewing freedom and lead to homogenized products. The plus side is, well, now you’ve got a national distributor and can push into new markets who, like me, never thought of Long Island as a beer place.
If Blue/Point has been hamstrung by its corporate overlords, you can’t tell by its beer lineup. The Toasted Lager remains a style I’m not sure I’ve seen anywhere else. They followed that up with an imperial blonde ale, which is a combination that seems… weird, right? Light beer, big boozy flavor? I dunno, guys, seems quirky at least.
Anyway, let’s see how those taste.
Imperial Sunshine: B-
I’ve never heard of an imperial blonde ale before, but I’m intrigued. It pours with a big fluffy white head that takes a couple of minutes to dissolve down to a lacy mesh atop the beer. It smells like oranges and a little wheat.
The first sip showcases the heaviness you don’t get from the smell. There’s a bit of a malt liquor feel here, which makes sense at 9.6 percent alcohol by volume. The end finishes more like a lager than a blonde, but that isn’t a bad thing. A heavy beer that tastes like a heavy beer? That’s kinda refreshing, honestly.
What you wind up with is a big, boozy brew that starts like a hazy IPA but, instead of hops, you get a Heineken/King Cobra vibe. There’s utility to that, even if it doesn’t taste perfect. The orange and wheat make a solid impression up front before things get… well, not spicy, but you understand you’re dealing with something that’s a little closer to a cocktail than a traditional beer. It’s like a Blue Moon grew up and wound up dealing drugs. Nothing hard. OK, maybe a little meth.
A *little* meth.
Toasted Lager: B
(Ron Swanson voice): The [expletive] is a toasted lager? The label says it’s brewed Long Island style, which is… not helpful. But it pours nicely, with a honey brown color and inch-high head that simmers down in about 45 seconds. The smell off the top is pretty inessential. It’s got a light malt feel to it but there’s nothing there to suggest you’re drinking anything other than a lager.
The good news is it’s a very nice lager. The toasted malt is front and center, putting this close to an Oktoberfest beer with a softer finish. It’s big on grain and light on complexity. What you get up front is what you’re left with at the end.
In a world where craft brewers have leaned hard into trendy beers, it’s nice to have a throwback. This isn’t special, but it’s reliable; easy to drink on a warm day or a cold one.
Would I drink it instead of a Hamm’s?
This is a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I drink Blue Point beers over a cold can of Hamm’s?
I might swap in a Toasted Lager here or there or maybe an Imperial Sunshine should I need a big dose of booze at once. But for the most part, this is a good enough beer I might order off a local taplist but not seek out in a crowded beer section at my local Woodman’s.