Re-introducing Drink Hudson Valley.

Jay Wulff here of DrinkHV.com, a website dedicated to promoting our local craft beer and spirits scene by posting news, events, reviews and everything else pertaining to our amazing local breweries, distilleries and the bars, restaurants and shops that support them.  In addition to the website, where we’ll post the weekly events and big news and mini-beer reviews, we also constantly share what everyone has going on via our Twitter feed @DrinkHV and on our Facebook page.  Anyone with news, events, tap lists or anything else they’d like us to share can post on our Facebook page, tweet at us or e-mail us at DrinkHV @ Gmail.com.  We cover everything South of Albany and North of the Bronx, and out West to Sullivan County and East to Connecticut.

Drink HV started last August with a kickoff event at the Newburgh Brewery, featuring a charity tasting with 5 of our generous local breweries, two distilleries and one local homebrew group, along with my podcast Masters of None interviewing each of them in front of the crowd. You can hear it on iTunes or by going to the show’s page here.  Our podcast is promotional partners with Blue Point Brewing from Long Island, where we’ve done many live shows and gotten to know the people of the L.I. craft beer scene, which inspired me to start Drink HV to help boost the burgeoning community we have in the Hudson Valley. It’s been amazing to get to know all of the great people who are involved with making this fantastic liquid we all get to enjoy, and it even led me to my current job as Director of Marketing for the Beer World stores in Kingston, Catskill and New Windsor.  In my 15 years of drinking craft beer, living in different parts of New York State, doing all of the things I’ve done from radio to IT to standup, never did I think I’d find myself as an actual part of this industry, but I have and it’s been awesome and I have my incredible wife and kids to thank for letting me do it (in addition to the great people behind Beer World as well).  For the record, I’m a malt man, I’m a huge fan of darker beers like stouts, porters, browns, dubbels and quadrupels and anything bourbon barrel-aged, but am always down to try any beer I’ve never had before and can appreciate all styles of beer.

I’d also like to take a moment to introduce the newest member of Drink HV, helping to compile the weekly events and focus on the lower Hudson Valley, William Bird.  William grew a fondness for craft beer while living in Brooklyn, and frequenting establishments such as American Beer Distributors, Bierkraft and The Gate. When he moved to Westchester County, he founded The Green Growler Craft Beer Grocery in Croton-on-Hudson.  Since leaving there he has worked as a bartender at Keenan House Kitchen & Tap Room in Ossining, NY.  Although currently closed, Keenan House will be reopening in March of 2014.  He loves IPAs and his girlfriend Jennifer, whom he spends evenings with sampling beers. 

That’s Drink HV in a nutshell right there, looking forward to growing our community of like-minded good beer drinkers and new breweries and distilleries in our area.  We’ve got a lot of cool events and other stuff coming up in 2014! Cheers! -Jay