Brown's Brewing Company's Troy Taproom and Brewery — Restaurant in Troy

Last night as evening took over the day, I locked up this cool rental bike near Brown's Brewery. I strolled through Brown's looking for photo opportunities and so made my way back to the deck. I found a few cool murals of faux windows looking out over agricultural scenes, hop gardens and vineyards and fields of grain. And yet, I couldn't get a good picture of the work because the deck was lively with guests. As it should be on the second Saturday of a three day weekend. Pictures are not the point of a biergarten patio overlooking the Hudson River. Serving pints are the point of the patio. So I asked for a place to sit and enjoy the inevitability of night. The hostess walked me to my table, "I see you are a photographer. There should be plenty to photograph from this table". Right on the rail, I saw the Green Island drawbridge, a powerful pair of towers to lift the platform. The towers have become a symbol of Brown's Brewery too. "Yes, maybe, but the river shore has few focal points. A picture needs a center of interest". "What about that flag furling and unfurling in the wind"? "Wow, you have an eye! That flag has been hung 9/11 style, perfect for Labor Day". "What do you mean"? "After the attacks on the Twin Towers, the American Flag had to be hung from a derrick. All the proper poles had been knocked flat". "I see. I am a photographer too. My camera won't go into autofocus. I've taken to focusing and setting the f-stop on the fly". "Geeze, don't be surprised that an anonymous admirer drop ships a camera, addressed to the hostess. You have an eye"! "That would be awesome. I've had the camera for seven years". "Buy a new camera already. You're worth it". I settled down, ordered a stout and a pair of beer pretzels and discovered I could steady my cellphone in the menu stand. Setting the camera to focus on the furling Old Glory, I set to live streaming, hopefully until dark obscured the red, white and blue from my eye".

My friend Michael Belts chimed in after a few minutes. "Is that flag at half mast"? I wanted to answer him, not leave him hanging. On my last birthday, he brought an Indian buffet from Curry Kitchen to where I was teaching the day of my birthday. We enjoyed a picnic lunch of tandoori chicken, Indian pickles and rice pudding on a picnic table at a park by Marquette School. A really good man I met through the arts council, I knew he would understand as I kept filming. To talk or text would spoil the artistic effect. As one of the quietest and most talented architects I know, I knew he would understand.

My server charmed me with her quickness and friendly smile, so when she set a pint on the wobbly iron table, I only smiled as the cell phone tumbled from its perch and fell two stories to the grass, all of the gyrations caught on film. How could she have known. Luckily, the Otterbox case kept the phone alive.

I found the phone safe in the grass, shut off live streaming and finally made an answer.

"Mike, yes, and I was so happy to be in touch with you. I knew you would understand I was live streaming the transition from day into night and couldn't reply using the phone I had perched on a table. In the end, the table rocked and I couldn't catch the cell phone before it plummeted to the grass two stories below. The hostess had noticed that the American flag had been hung from a derrick on a barge floating on the Hudson. This is the way American flags were hung at 9-11. I wish your family and you a...

Copying my post from over at Yelp. TL; DR Exceptionally good time when we came in for 90's Trivia Friday night. It was packed and yet everyone was in a good mood, service was great, the place is huge but still super clean and fun!

Wow! I'm spoiled since I have Brown's' (not sure how to apostrophize that, sorry grammar cops) Hoosick Falls right in my backyard but I can safely say I'll be putting the Troy location into the rotation. Had a great experience Friday night and if it was that good on a busy night, well, I have no reservations about coming any day of the week.

A friend of mine noticed some Instagram posts that this Brown's was hosting a 90's trivia night and threw it in our massive group-text. Six of us ended up making the trip. We arrived around 6:30 and were seated quickly upstairs. Our server was super nice (I can't remember her name but she wasn't supposed to work that night but offered to because she had a 90s-inspired onesie she wanted to wear and is a second-grade teacher) and attentive. She answered menu questions, dealt with a few substitutions and was a fun addition to our crew the whole night.

Everyone ate something different: a beyond burger, the chicken sandwich, smokehouse club, salmon blt, buffalo chicken wrap and I had the loaded spiedies which, I promise you, are three meals (and I'm not, in any sense of the word, small). Everything was really hot and fresh and delicious and the presentation was great.

I was mostly drinking seltzers last night (designated driver) but my friends ran through the beers and loved the ones we don't have access to locally. I got a Joann at one point (it was the lowest ABV of the IPAs) it was also fresh and delicious. I get really weird about places that don't clean their tap lines. Brown's is not one of those places.

In addition to our server we had two other runners who were bringing drinks. It was crazy: we didn't have to wait once (but would have been happy to).

Event registration started at 7 and we were able to easily register our team and got a fun little goodie bag. There were five rounds of five questions each plus a tie-breaker. The rounds were

1 - 90's movies 2 - 90's sports 3 - 90's music (we lost on the tiebreaker!) 4 - 90's television 5 - 90's everyting

Because they have speakers throughout we were able to play upstairs and most people got the hint pretty quickly that if they weren't playing trivia it was appreciated if they kept it down. Weirdly, they did (I've never seen this during another trivia night where people are dining).

This was a special, annual trivia shindig but they do music trivia the first Thursday of the month and we will definitely be back for that! Shoutout to Brown's for a great night out -- we rarely leave Bennington but this...

The food was fantastic. But the service... oh my god... I witnessed the most heartwarming and friendly service I have seen in my entire life.

So here's how it went. At the end of the meal, I had left my retainer in a napkin by the side of the table. After about 10 minutes from leaving the restaurant, I realized this and quickly went back. I went to the front desk area where the manager happened to be seating people and told him my predicament.

He then immediately threw on some gloves and began digging through the trash for me. And the entire he wouldn't stop apologizing as though it was his fault (it wasn't in the slightest). After searching for a bit he took the trash, went to a different room and really began digging in. A couple other employees joined in and the others asked what was going on. Everyone was sharing stories about how people they knew had also lost retainers in the past and it was super wonderful. He searched the entire bag and just could not find it.

So I told him to let me and my friend try because he had work to do and it was unfair for us to make him do it. He really didn't want to because he wanted to find it so that we wouldn't be uncomfortable. But he let us and we began digging through it again. No luck. So we took off our gloves, threw them out and washed our hands, really disappointed in not finding it. But then I saw another trash can in a different area of the diner and asked whether it could be in there. They said probably not but you can take a look. So we took the trash bag out, set it down and within 20 seconds of searching found it.

All the employees and other people who helped out were actually cheering and screaming and hugging me and each other because they were so happy that we had found it.

I absolutely cannot express how grateful I am towards the workers in this fine establishment and am definitely going back there soon. The staff absolutely wants to assure that you are having an enjoyable time at their restaurant and I 110% recommend dining here.

Thank you so much to the manager, Jay, and all the other staff members for your help and heartwarming kindness. Turned a potentially horrible night into a fantastic one that I will...