BEER REVIEWS: Other Half Can Round-Up

My search for the best beer in New York continues….

There was a time before the pandemic that if you wanted to get a can of Other Half beer, you either had to find your way to the brewery in the far part of Carroll Gardens (and usually wait in line), travel to their second brewery upstate in Rochester, or have a very nice friend.

Since then, I’ve noticed that Other Half has been spotted at local craft beer stores and even at Whole Foods on the Bowery (which in fairness has a pretty amazing beer selection). They’ve also opened a tap room in the middle of Rockefeller Center. So they are by no means exclusive any longer.

But that just means their flavorful IPAs can reach a wider audience. IPAs are no longer their sole focus, although I still prefer their hop-centric ales to their overly sweet loaded pastry stouts. So for this post, I’ll focus on some recent IPAs I tried.

The first one I did in fact pick up from Whole Foods. It’s not my favorite place to shop but I found myself on the Lower East Side recently and I find it to have the most affordable beer options with the best selection. It’s really remarkable at all the cool local stuff they have here.

The Double Dry Hopped Showers is a hazy New England IPA with lots of candied grapefruit on the nose and big bold hop aromas. It drinks much smoother than you might expect with a rich hearty mouthfeel. Bursting with grapefruit and papaya flavor, it’s a very pleasant juice bomb. As you’d expect from Other Half.

Moving on, I found one of Other Half’s vegetable named beers. Similar to their Spinach and Tomato Factory beer, the Broccoli is vegetable in name only. Although if they wanted to add some non-hop greens to their beers, I’d be first in line to try it.

The broccoli motif shows up in a lot of their beer names (see below), but this is the original Broccoli with a dry hop of Cascade, Mosaic, Simcoe, and Hallertau Blue. It’s also made with the addition of Mosaic Lupulin Powder, which is essentially a concentrated hop powder.

This Imperial IPA pours a creamy yellow haze and smells like peach candy chilling with some fresh mango. Another surprisingly smooth heavyweight, it has a lovely melon note with a subdued bitter finish. It’s surprising and deceiving being labelled an Imperial. Also for being called broccoli since I detected no brassica note whatsoever.

So to get Space Broccoli, the brewers swap out Cascade hops for Galaxy. See the space thing there?

I was surprised at the stark difference here. Granted this is not dry hopped, but it poured a much less vibrant gold with much more mild aromas. I picked up white grapefruit and a touch of melon with a bracing heavy sweetness that I didn’t love. I found it overly sweet in fact.

Now I must admit I did have this beer sitting around for a while before I got around to trying it so maybe it changed a bit. But I was less impressed with Space than the previous version of Broccoli.

The final beer for this round-up came from the new Rockefeller Center location and it featured the lowest ABV at 5.8%.

11 Pounders had a bright golden opaque pour. Aromas of lychee and pineapple emerged from the large white foamy head. Incredibly smooth and balanced, there was a nice strawberry flavor with a floral finish. There was very little alcohol heat, which made it so easy to drink, and a full-bodied finish. Another home run.

I’m pleased to report through their expansion and a worldwide pandemic, Other Half has managed to hold on to their commitment to focused quality balanced, bold IPAs. It’s a pretty good bet if you see a can from this brewery and it has those three letters on it (IPA), you’re in for a flavor bomb.

Is Other Half Brewing Company’s DDH Showers the best beer in NY? It rains an 8 out of 10 for this pleasant hazy juice bomb with all the expected tropical notes. 

Is Other Half Brewing Company’s DDH Broccoli the best beer in NY? This gets an 8 out of 10 for its concentrated hop bitterness balanced by a mellow juicy melon flavor. 

Is Other Half Brewing Company’s Space Broccoli the best beer in NY? For me, this was the only clunker of the bunch with an overly sweet heavy finish. It is possible the beer had mellowed while I was storing it. Still, for now, a 6 out of 10.

Is Other Half Brewing Company’s 11 Pounders the best beer in NY? I loved the unique strawberry notes and the easy drinking quality. A winning 9 out of 10.