In 2009 I had the pleasure of going back to New York (Hands down my favorite place to go on holiday) on my Honeymoon.

I made a promise to myself I would try and find some cool real ale places to visit while I was there.  Of the 2 actual real ale places I went to this was the most jaw dropping place.

The legend is “Americans cant brew and cant drink”. I’m here to dispel that myth. America has more brew pubs in one large city than the UK has in total most likely. Brewpubs are simply one of my favorite things to visit.

A pub….which brews its own beer in house and serves it fresh over the bar. What more can you want? The Chelsea Brewing Company is set on the west side of Manhattan in (shockingly) a district called Chelsea.

The brewery itself is set on pier 59 of Chelsea Marina. The brewpub itself contains awesome mahogany bars, a cigar lounge, a great restaurant menu (best nachos ever as recommended by my wife) and best of all….a huge selection of home brewed ales.

The location itself is not immediately obvious in that you need to walk into what looks like a multi story car park, once past this you find it right next to a huge outdoor golf driving range.

On entry you are greeted by these gorgeous copper giants

These are what the beer is served from. This gives you an idea of just how fresh this beer is. I cant tell you how much those hold but its a LOT….a HELL of a LOT.

The selection was staggering. As well as all the generic NY and US beers like Sam Adams etc and a huge range of spirits they have (what people come for) a good range of in house brewed ales.

Here is the chalkboard

Those are some impressive ABV’s. Some of these beers will catch up with you quick.

The pumps are equally cool looking

I quaffed a half of pretty much all of them and must say I was amazed. The beer was of an excellent quality. The raspberry beer no offense to batemans but “urinates from quite a height” on their raspberry beer (which I’ve tried on 2 occasions and detected only a HINT of raspberry)

Chelsea’s raspberry wheat beer tastes DISTINCTLY like raspberries with a refreshing aftertaste with a healthy ABV to boot.

This is a pic of the summer soltice wheat beer.

This was cool and refreshing. Just what you need on a day when it was peaking at about 32 degrees and VERY humid.

To get back to the brewing part, to put the serving vats into perspective here is another photo

The brewery itself is held behind a glass wall on the opposite side of the bar. I was caught staring like a child looking into a toy shop by the head brewer who beckoned me in for a look.

As i walked in i was greeted by the insane blarings of punk (a good start in my opinion) and was given a great little tour by the brew-master who was in the process of doing the “hop back” (driving the ale through a barrel containing MORE hops to add hop flavour)

Quite honestly a bar like this is an experience. The UK doesn’t have enough pubs like this who brew and sell their own in house (Which is good for the environment since it means less trucks taking huge barrels around)

I came out of the whole affair pretty darn drunk and full of amazing nachos. All in all this was a pub which could show a lot of UK pubs how to do things and at the ABV’s they were offering dispels the “yanks cant hold their drink” myth (Though I’d like to think I did a good job showing them how a brit drinks 😉 )

I promised to send the Brew-master a bottle of my own creation, the last brew i made i forgot but soon im hoping to mend that and send him a bottle over.

If your ever in NY this is for SURE a pub to visit if only to sit outside in the sun and watch boats go by with some quality real ale.

CHEERS!!

For more info on the Chelsea Brewing Company you can visit their website by clicking HERE