The Defender
A new Brooklyn Defender is among us. Brooklyn Brewery teamed up with New York Comic Con and illustrator Khary Randolph to create the official beer of this year’s convention. It’s an explosive West Coast-style IPA with a reddish twist thanks to a dash of roasted malt. Bold, fruity hop bitterness and an intensely resinous nose smash into a sudden dry finish that will refresh and entice you.
This is our fourth year working with New York Comic Con on the Defender, and we’re already looking forward to another Super Week full of exciting Defender events all around New York City, Connecticut and New Jersey. Usually, that’s where the Defender’s journey would end, but this year is special. Starting in 2016, the Defender will be available in bottles and draft across the United States, standing tall for all those who believe in excellent beer.
The Beer
The Defender is constantly vigilant, standing guard over all those who dare to create, to dream, and to drink great beer. Defender IPA is a bright, juicy, West Coast-style IPA takes on a reddish twist from a dash of roasted malt. Bold, fruity, hop bitterness and an intensely resinous nose lead the way into a dry finish that blazes the trail for your next sip.
Defender IPA has been a part of New York Comic Con for four years. Brooklyn Brewmaster Garrett Oliver is a huge fan of classical comics, even maintaining a collection of near-mint condition comic books from his youth to today. He made sure that the Defender was full of bright, sharp flavors and just a bit of funk to capture the fun and energy of comics and comic fans alike. This year is the first time that the beer will be available to drinkers across the country, and everyone is excited to be bringing the Defender to new locales.
Brooklyn Defender IPA is forged in collaboration with our sidekicks at New York Comic Con as the official beer of the convention. Find it here and learn more about the beer on Brooklyn Brewery’s Beers page.
The Story
Hear more about the Defender, in his own words:
The early days were dark. The city was full of grit and violence, rife with crime and hostility, and spattered with indifference and grease. Even if you managed to make it home with your money in your pocket, there was nothing at the corner bar worth spending it on– just bland, boring beer, slugged down by desperate, broken-hearted people. We had to do something. I had to do something.
People saw it on the subways, on the boarded-up shop windows, on the gloomy walls and rusted-out shipping containers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard: neon names, incandescent murals, psychedelic landscapes proclaiming that the darkness was over, the blandness unwelcome, come and play, come and play. People tasted it, in living rooms, in basements, in the funky little bars and strange backwater restaurants: beer was back, beer was here, beer was alive again.
Some tried to bust it down, of course. They locked up the paint, they patrolled the back lots, they pushed the foamed-up so-called beer into the taps of anyone with their guard down. But anywhere their back was turned, I was there, and in time, many like me: painting, creating, brewing, fermenting the passion and beauty chased out years before by the concrete nihilism that tried to dry us out and grind us down.
It’s better today. Art screams from every corner and crackles from every rooftop. Good, bold beer bursts from the faucets of bars and restaurants and flies from the bottles and kegs of the bedroom-closet-brewers citywide. But there’s always the void on the edges, the blandness on the fringe, creeping close wherever a blank wall or open tap resides.
So I will continue to stand guard. Wherever a painter sketches, or a brewer stirs, or any voice in the clamor rises with a new tune, I will be there, ready to push back the gray-washed world always a few steps away. We are a world of light and fury and song, and I am the Defender.
The Artist
Khary Randolph was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He moved to New York in 1996 to attend the School of Visual Arts and graduated in 2000 with a BFA in Cartooning and Illustration. Since then, he has worked for a number of clients in the animation, advertising, and comic book industries and left his mark on many properties, including Spider-Man, X-Men, Hellboy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Boondocks, and Teen Titans.
Check out the full review of Brooklyn Defender IPA