The Blind Tiger is back, and the brew’s as unusual and enticing as ever.

No blasphemy intended, but an old friend recently rose from the dead.

An old beer friend is what I mean—the Blind Tiger Ale House, which, for a decade, had carried on as one of New York City’s preeminent bars dedicated to serving handcrafted American beer. But in late December 2005, the Blind Tiger, a shamelessly cramped and scruffy dive at West 10th and Hudson streets in the heart of Greenwich Village, lost its lease to (what else?) a Starbucks, and that seemed to be that.

Of course, there are a million bars in Manhattan, so what’s the loss of one of them?

Well, to beer geeks, the Tiger was special. It was among only a dozen or so bars in the City that Never Sleeps that carried a prodigious and ever-changing selection of craft brews (also called microbrews, in the old parlance). New York may be on the cutting edge of finance, art, and highbrow eateries, but as a beer town, it’s way behind the urban curve.

Consider that in microbrew-crazed precincts like Seattle and Portland, Oregon, you can probably find a dozen craft-beer bars within a few blocks of one another. In Portland, craft brew represents 40 to 50 percent of all beer sold. In the five boroughs of New York, craft beer has about only 4.5 percent penetration. So the closing of the Tiger was indeed a blow, especially to the downtown hip-beer crowd, but also to the hordes of beer travelers from out of town who made the Tiger a regular stop on East Coast beer pilgrimages.

The world was righted, however, on April 2, when the Tiger had its grand reopening about five blocks away, at 281 Bleecker Street, in a space that was not terribly bigger than the one it had left. But this place had definitely been spruced up; it sported a small outdoor dining space covered by a jaunty blue awning, and its oaken floors, beams, and bar were lifted from a demolished 19th-century farmhouse. (The Tiger also opened a restaurant serving fancy sandwiches.)

All very well and good, but the burning question that night was, What about the beer?

I knew right away the Tiger hadn’t lost its experimental verve when I glanced at the chalkboard menu above the bar and saw a new beer by one of my favorite craft brewers, Dogfish Head of Milton, Delaware. Called Black & Blue, it turned out to be a Belgian-style golden ale fermented with blueberries and blackberries. It seemed as good a way as any to initiate my reentry, so I ordered one.

The brew arrived in a 12-ounce stem glass, and it was beautiful—tawny with a hint of the deep blue sea (a color you might get if you mixed gold and navy Easter-egg dye). The berries were present in the flavor, all right, but their taste was more subtle than profound. I was thinking, before I tasted it, that this might be a dessert beer. But though there was a hint of sweetness, I found the Black & Blue to be on the dry side.

I learned later that the name is a bit of a double entendre. Since the ale contains 10 percent alcohol by volume (Budweiser, by comparison, has 5 percent A.B.V.), a couple of pints of Black & Blue could leave you black-and-blue in the morning.

Next, I chose the brew that was the talk of the room (at least for the moment): Captain Lawrence Smoked Porter—it isn’t every day you get to sample a smoked porter.

For starters, porters are rare. The medium-bodied, medium-dark ale is essentially the original stout, or dark ale. (A version of Guinness, at one point, was called Extra Superior Porter.) Porter originated in 18th-century London and was England’s most popular beer for decades. But porter fell out of favor in the early 20th century and has all but disappeared from the British beer landscape. Some American craft brewers, however, have taken to reinvigorating the form.

Smoked beer is another beverage reclaimed from the beermaking past. It is called rauchbier in Germany, where it originated. Before the industrial revolution, barley, the grain that gives beer its backbone and color, was readied for the mash tank by drying it over an open fire stoked by wood or bales of dried peat, which imparted a smoky flavor. So back then, your beer often came smoked whether you wanted it that way or not.

Today, that step of the malting process is mostly done in gas-fired kilns, which impart no flavor. If you want to try smoked beers, you have look for them.

I hadn’t heard of Captain Lawrence, but Katie, the bartender, explained that it’s a relatively new brewery in upstate New York. (Research revealed that it was founded in early 2006 in Pleasantville, about 35 miles north of Manhattan.) A hallmark of the old Tiger was its restless search for new brewers making inventive beers that could be added to its menu, so the presence of Captain Lawrence was a good omen.

When the beer came, I wasn’t disappointed. It was richly dark, with complex aromas ranging from espresso to subtle hickory smoke. It had a trace of sweetness (a bit of licorice, perhaps?), but the overarching flavor was that of a medium-bodied, well-balanced stout with a hint of chocolate and smoke as the spice. This was a beer that would go well with something fresh off the wood-fired grill—steak or chicken.

Since the Captain Lawrence Smoked Porter also came in a 12-ounce glass, I was relieved to learn that for $3, you could get a 4-ounce sample of most beers on the Tiger’s menu. (Successful beer hunting requires pacing.) ...

In the pleasurable two hours I spent at the Tiger, I sampled a few other beers and need not review them all. The greater point is that whether you’re a seasoned craft-beer hunter or a neophyte trying to explore the universe that lies beyond Corona, the Blind Tiger, with more than 30 beers on tap and many more in bottles, is a well-stocked port of call along the increasingly interesting river of beer that runs through America.