Fine pastry stout collab with Northway Brerwing knocks off rich cinnamon babka as semi-dry cassia bark, milk chocolate and vanilla caking connect above cookie dough base. Ginger-snapped vanilla cookie, baked cinnamon streusel and black and white cookie illusions retain prominence.
MALTA, NEW YORK
Within walking distance of Active Ingredient, UNIFIED BEERWORKS began operations in Malta during 2018. Owned by former homebrewing husband-wife team, Jeff Mannion and Erika Anderson, the friendly pub serves a closeknit hometown community.
Inside an overhead-doored gray aluminum warehouse, Unified’s marble-topped bar, plank wood bar frontage, metal and wood stools, front-windowed tables, basic cement flooring and exposed pipes (plus olden ceiling-hung lanterns) create a clean Industrial feel.
Centralized white tile-backed stainless steel draught handles contain twelve-plus proprietary suds emanating from the rear brew tanks. A limited pub menu includes tacos, chips and sandwiches.
I stepped up to the bar and grabbed all eight flight size servings including three IPA’s, two lagers, two fruited sours and a New England pale ale during my New Years Eve ’22 visit.
Dry Bavarian-styled light lager, A Glimpse Of Bohemia, let delicate floral-spiced citrus hops settle atop laidback cereal grained sweetness.
Dry chocolate-chalked dark lager, Midnight In Dresden, gained peated coffee and dark toffee illusions in a dark-roast hop setting.
Orange-spiced lemondrop souring and salted guava-mango tartness draped clay-like crayon waxing for hazy New England-styled pale ale, Right Time And Place, picking up tertiary ‘honeydew, tangerine and lychee’ illusions above the toasted pale malt base.
Soft-toned NEIPA, Echoes In Eternity, combined yellow grapefruit, orange and tangerine tanginess with subtle gooseberry-guava souring, tannic white grape musk and fennel-salted lemongrass herbage.
Fruitful flagship NEIPA, All The Juicy Things, evenly displayed fruit salad tropicalia as Valencia orange, navel orange, mandarin, clementine, cara cara, tangerine and tangelo tanginess graced gentle pale malt spicing and slight fungi musk.
Brisk vodka-nipped orange peel sweetness and yellow grapefruit tang penetrated clean Nordic yeast-infused Welcome To Valhalla Imperial IPA, leaving ancillary peach-pineapple-mango-clementine fruiting and dank pine resin on its dry pale malt bottom.
Tart fruited sour variant, Waxing Nostalgia: Black Razz, meshed black raspberry piquancy with mild vanilla bean bittering contrasting lemon sugar cookie sweetness as distant black cherry, boysenberry and blueberry illusions circulated thru candied lollipop finish.
Conditioned on tangerine and strawberry, Feel As One Fruited Sour gained salty lemonade tartness and tannic oaken cherry bitterness to infiltrate its adjunctive citric-berry conflux.
On tap at Centre Street Public House, juicy fruited medium body retains zesty grapefruit-peeled lemon tang and spicy orange candied tartness, picking up a nifty juniper-berried vodka nip at clean citrus finish.
