Drank That Local Sh*t explores the nitty-gritty of Long Island-born beers consumed by Niko Krommydas—with assistance from their creators.

BrickHouse Brewery & Restaurant/The Maudness

Style: Session Red IPA

ABV: 4.4%

Date of Birth: 06/05/14

Availability: Draft

Super Neat Beer Description Thoughts N’ Stuff

Piney. Caramel. Dry. A rough, snappy finish. Resiny. It’s bitter—perhaps too bitter—but still flavorful and different, as most in the hugely popular “session” sub-genre gush with fruitiness. The Maudness, however, is extremely piney. I enjoyed. I alluded to the transformation of BrickHouse in my latest column for Pulse, but I must reiterate: Paul Komsic and Arthur Zimmerman have resuscitated the brewpub, longtimingly offering a static menu of dated recipes, with relevancy and adventure. The Maudness is a beer with both.

Creator Story Time!

The Maudness has two distinct meanings. As an adjective, The Maudness is used to describe the organized chaos that becomes a unified vision under our general manager Maud Franklin. As a noun, The Maudness is our 18th anniversary beer, a sessionable but extremely hoppy red IPA.

When I first drove through Patchogue four years ago, BrickHouse caught my eye right away. I was always a fan of brewpubs and had just moved to Blue Point. I quickly became a regular, bringing my growlers back and forth, going to art shows and watching live music. There was an awesome scene happening in Patchogue—you could just feel the buzz. I was just getting into homebrewing at the time and hated my job, so I decided to fill out an application at BrickHouse. I figured I could maybe get my foot in the door on the kitchen side of things and learn about beer.

Well, I just hit my four-year mark here and looking back at Patchogue, what it was then, what it is now, is pretty amazing. Main Street is full of attractive businesses, more people want to come to town than can actually park, and it is forcing everyone to be at their best. But with just as much change in town, I feel like I have seen twice as much change at BrickHouse and Maud is a huge reason for that. She is actually hitting her eighth year here on our 18th birthday. One by one she has brought BrickHouse up to speed on so many different levels—especially beer.

In the last year, Arthur Zimmerman has came aboard as brewmaster and I got promoted to brewer, and together we have been able to really work on changing the perception of our beers. Trust me, I’ve heard it all and I don’t dispute the past. But Maud has put a lot of faith in us and let us just create and prove ourselves and it has worked out great so far. We used to have a set lineup of staples for years, but now we have been putting out a new beer almost every two weeks. We even started to distribute to places like Bubba’s Burritos Bar in Islip, Morrison’s in Plainview, and Relish in Kings Park. This is the first time our beer is being served across Long Island.

Brickhouse wouldn’t be what it is today if it wasn’t for Maud, that’s why we wanted to brew this beer, actually the 18th new recipe from Arthur and I, for her. When we were brainstorming, we knew we wanted to do an easy-drinking session IPA but we wanted to put a twist on it for Maud. We decided to go with a red-colored ale to pay tribute to her being Irish. We also wanted to make this beer very hoppy and resiny to pay tribute to her “hippy days,” so we decided on using Chinook, Columbus, and Centennial hops for bright, piney aromas. What we ended up with was a sessionable red IPA with just enough body to know you’re still drinking a real beer, but also more then enough hops to satisfy any hop-head on the longest of lawn mower days. [Paul Komsic, brewer at BrickHouse Brewery & Restaurant]