This morning one of those “Your Memories” things popped up on my Facebook feed. It was from five years ago, when I joined my wife in New York City for a few days while she was there on a more extended stay.
The specific “memory” was of our visit to the Heartland Brewery and Rotisserie at the Empire State Building.
We had gone out walking in midtown Manhattan and went up to the top floor of the Empire State Building, only to turn around, put off by the high price of admission to the observation deck. Back at ground level, was passed by Heartland, noticed it was a brewery, and decided to go in out of the cold and to make the most of the evening.
The place was one of those where they’ve gone a long way to make the venue feel old-timey when it obviously isn’t, but it was nice enough. Friendly and warm. Packed with tables and booths, it was obvious that the beer was produced somewhere else, but that’s no matter.
We didn’t order any food, so I can’t comment on that, but I recall the beers all being quite solid. They were all classic styles -pale ales, a stout, a heffeweizen, amber, and so on. I remember particularly liking the stout and the heffeweizen. Not bad for my first taste of NYC local beer!
From what I see online, that location is now closed, but Heartland –an employee-owned company– still maintains two locations near Times Square.
I do hope in plying that touristy area, they’ve kept up the quality of their brewing. However, since they’ve won a few medals at the New York State Craft Beer Competition in recent years, there’s no reason to think they haven’t still got it.
Illinois Brewery in Hot Water Over Owners’ Insensitive Posts
By juan
On June 12, 2020
In Breweries, Commentary, Uncategorized
An small brewery in Illinois finds itself in the midst of a shitstorm thanks to its owners online postings.
The story was first caught by A Good Beer Blog, who preserved and tweeted the screenshots, and followed-up on by PorchDrinking.com. Following the story, one finds oneself bearing witness one big WTF? moment in a year already abundant in them.
It turns out that Natalie White is one-half of the team behind a place called Steam Hollow Brewing Co. in Manteno, IL., and that that post is but one of several in the same vein.
If that were not bad enough, a few days later, the couple proceeded to become involved in a verbal altercation #BLM demonstrators. In a since-deleted FaceBook post the Whites claimed that they “were trying to cross a busy road and had a car of people yelling behind us. A few quick seconds of conversation as the cross light changed, we were called racist, etc.”, but admit to being “sarcastic”. The protesters, on the other hand, have argued that it was the Whites who started the incident.
To make matters worse, in defending themselves, the Whites doubled down on the conspiracy theories:
How could they even think that that could ever be counted as effective damage control?
Unsurprisingly, the backlash has been immediate. Not only are they being eviscerated pn social media, but as reported by PorchDrinking.com, even the Illinois Brewers Guild has been quick to put distance between themselves and Steam Hollow: “Steam Hollow is not a member and the views expressed by the owners do not reflect those of the guild.” BreweryFinder.org, an online brewery directory, has stated stated that Steam Hollow has been “permanently removed from our directory”, and even Steam Hollow’s distributor has apparently stopped doing business with them.
At a time when emotions are running high and even government officials and managers in large corporations are being taken to task for what they say in public -and even in private- , it boggles the mind that the White’s could think that the “private views” they stated on very public social media platforms would not rebound on to their business.
To paraphrase something I said regarding the similar case of 12 Rounds Brewing in Sacramento a few years ago: