Vinegars At Beer Table Pantry N.Y.C.

Beer Table Pantry has a crush of vinegar

Justin Philips has a serious thing for vinegar.

Let your eyes drift from the growler-ready taps and rows of noteworthy beer bottles at Philips's new Beer Table Pantry in Grand Central and you'll find a selection of uncommon vinegars.

Steen's Louisiana Cane Vinegar ($6.50 for 12 oz.) is there, as is Noble Tonic's nutty sherry vinegar ($35 for 400 ml). There are also kits with vinegar mothers for making your own ($16), plus apple and honey Pok Pok Som drinking vinegars for swigging ($30 and $34.50 for 16 oz.).

The extensive lineup found us shaking up salads and adding a slug of acid to our cooking for days. Here, two of Philips's and our favorites, found exclusively at Beer Table Pantry:

Quay Street Brewing Company ($13 for 10 oz.) Jeff Knaggs ferments this golden pure malt vinegar at his Port Huron, Michigan, brewpub. Five gallon buckets of aged cream ale go through a secondary fermentation and then mature for up to 11 weeks on an upper kitchen shelf. The resulting pungent tartness brightens potatoes and adds zip to all manner of greens.

Gegenbauer Aventinus ($31 for 250 ml) Piquant as all get-out, this Austrian vinegar gets its kick from spending two years aging in a barrel and Schneider Aventinus ($6.50 pint)–the dark and spicy German wheat doppelbock from which it's fermented. Pick up a bottle of each half of this kicky mother-daughter pair.

Beer Table Pantry, Grand Central Terminal, Graybar Passage, 87 E. 42nd St. (at Park Ave.); 212-922-0008 or btpantry.com