Last spring we were faced with the shocking news that Brooklyn Brewery beers would no longer be available at the Shake Shack stands out in center field. Every season at most stadiums things change from season to season. Usually they’re small things; advertisers change, menus get tweaked, music changes and mid-inning contests are different. Maybe there’s a new dunk tank, a home run apple, or a new banner or piece of memorabilia celebrating the home team.
This season the Mets are making major structural changes to the dimensions and height of the wall. This won’t have any real affect on the win-loss record, but it’ll probably create more home runs for fans. At least it’ll create a different seating area that should be interesting.
So what smaller changes can we expect at Citi Field this summer? The easy one is that Keith’s burger stand will probably become a permanent fixture somewhere and we’ll get some new test product in that space. Citi Field has an extensive beer list, but what it lacks is local community beers. While on a Citi Field food tour last season, I was told that some of the concessions were chosen because of their local affiliate. Cascarino’s is so close that if you called them up and gave them Citi Field’s address, it’d fall within the delivery zone. Hopefully they’ll take this into account when looking at the beer available next year. The only local beer outside of the Delta Club was Blue Point’s Toasted Lager at Catch of the Day. Great beer, but not enough. Nor is the couple of places you can get Brooklyn Lager. It doesn’t have to be the perfectly paired beer for Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, or El Verano Taqueria even though it should be. A handful of craft beer booths around the stadium would work just as well. Plenty of people in New York love their craft beer and want to drink something more than Budweiser at a baseball game even if Anheuser-Busch is going to brand the cans with a Mets logo this year.
Ommegang is a New York brewery from Cooperstown. There should be a tap of beer from there in every stadium across the country in my opinion. There’s already some in the Delta Club, so why not make it available to all? I bet it’d be possible to get Brooklyn Brewery, or a different local brewery, to contract-brew specific beers for the Mets. How cool would it be to be able to get a Tom Seaver Ale, a World’s Fair Unisphere Rye, or a Home Run Apple Cider?