Serendipity. Just two days after my recent move to Brooklyn, I happened to meet the publicist for Brooklyn Brewery while walking home one night. Two weeks later, I scored an interview with famed brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, at the brewery’s headquarters, only one block away from my new pad in Williamsburg.
Our meeting started on the right note, when Oliver thoughtfully chose three bottles of beer for me to taste — all in 750-ml bottles, made in a process similar to the second-bottle fermentation in champagne making. Oliver explained that, in beer jargon, this method is called “full-bottle conditioning.” Just as with champagne, refermentation in larger bottles is often superior. Plus, it makes for good presentation and encourages sharing. Oliver added playfully, “Why should champagne get all the fun?”
I proceeded to tell Oliver I had recently brought a bottle of Fantôme’s farmhouse ale to a Twitter wine dinner. He became very animated. “That beer is totally outside of its style. It bears little resemblance to other Saisons, and is therefore fairly unique. It’s like saying you had a rosé by Lopez,” he explained. I couldn’t believe it: that’s exactly what we had that night — the Fantôme and a 98 Lopez rosé! Wow, I thought, the beer man knows his wine.
Located in, well, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Brewery use wind power to get 100% of the electricity, making them the first New York City company to switch to 100% renewable energy. This saves the atmosphere from 335,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 1,500 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and 500 pounds of nitrogen oxide that would otherwise be emitted. They also pay local farmers to pick up all their spent grain, the husks that are left over after brewing, that they can feed to their livestock.
Farm City Fair
September 12, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
The Invisible Dog Art Center and on Bergen Street, Brooklyn
The fair is a wild, new take on the traditional county fair, a daylong celebration of art and food grown in Brooklyn! Festivities engage all the senses: hear live music performed by local Bang on a Can marching band Asphalt Orchestra; taste delicacies prepared by local chefs inspired by ingredients from Brooklyn farms; view specially commissioned work exploring the culture of agriculture by local artists; get a feel for materials needed to produce your own food in workshops by Brooklyn Food Coalition; participate in a blue ribbon competition hosted by GreenThumb; and browse a marketplace with some of Brooklyn’s small-batch artisanal food purveyors, curated by Greenpoint Food Market. Cap it off with The Food Experiments’ live cooking competition — Brooklyn Roots — featuring savory samples and refreshing drinks from Brooklyn Brewery, Six Points Brewery, Red Hook Wines, Brooklyn Oenology, Kings County Distillery, and others.
Participants include:
Asphalt Orchestra, Brooklyn-based, 12-piece, next-generation, avant-garde marching band, will open the event on Bergen Street and in the neighborhood between 11 a.m. and noon. Andrew Casner, compost painter, demonstrates his acclaimed, agrarian work — the community process of developing a viable compost with an acid-etched canvas underneath created as a natural by-product. Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy, a Brooklyn-based artist, presents Ça pousse! (It’s growing!), human-form sculptures made from material such as wheatgrass that change as they grow. Miwa Koizumi, Brooklyn-based ice cream maker of “NY Flavors,” will create a geographically inspired new ice cream flavor based on Bergen Street and the festival. Tattfoo Tan, the vibrant urban farming visionary artist, launches his new bike-based S.O.S Mobile Classroom as the next installment in his two-year-long public art project titled S.O.S. (Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship.). Wylie Dufresne, renowned chef of wd-50, creates a new downloadable recipe based on reimagining local ingredients, to be sampled at the fair. Christina Kelly, Brooklyn-based artist meditates on loss and possibility, growing blue corn in monumental street planters in a public art project called Maize Field, located where Lenape Indians planted in the 1600s.
Brooklyn Brewery happily supports the creative writing center, 826NYC. 826NYC happily enjoys BINGO with beer. If you don’t know 826NYC is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around our belief that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. With this in mind we provide drop-in tutoring, field trips, after-school workshops, in-schools tutoring, help for English language learners, and assistance with student publications. All of our free programs are challenging and enjoyable, and ultimately strengthen each student’s power to express ideas effectively, creatively, confidently, and in his or her individual voice.
Oh, it’s also a superhero supply store. So if you need a cape or a bucket of gravity now you know where to go.
It’s another hot one here in The city. The New York Times, meanwhile, continues to do innovative things on the web. See here a terrific reader submitted slideshow, covering all of New York City’s varied waterfront.
*A limited amount of tickets will be available for purchase at the door. Online ticketing has been halted, though.
ALSO, don’t even worry about the rain. The boathouse has ample indoor space for everyone to enjoy Detonation, Sorachi Ace, Local 1 & 2 and other tasty things. There are also giant chipmunks and a human-sized bird’s nest to hang out in. So it’s really a no-brainer.
Celebrate the arrival of our newest beer, Detonation Ale, in style at The Boathouse in Prospect Park. Here’s what you need to know. Tickets are $20 and include a first taste of Detonation plus some other Brewery favorites, real good food from Ovenly, meatstuffs from The Meathook and dumplings from The Dump School. All ticket proceeds benefit The Prospect Park Alliance.
Like The Brooklyn Brewery, Slideluck Potshow was born in New York City and now travels freely around the US and throughout the world. And we’re happy to support her as she does so. For those who don’t k now, Slideluck Potshow is a non-profit organization devoted to building and strengthening community around food and art. Slideluck Potshow sponsors exhibitions of artistic works, each produced in an entertaining slideshow format, designed to showcase works created by novice, undiscovered, and established artists.
Thanks to Edible and Jimmy Carbone for putting on another terrific evening of the finest suds and grub. Go here for an Examiner slideshow by Clay Williams.
Frieda Lim recently invited press and public to her incredible rooftop vegetable garden. Lim grows beets, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes and a host of herbs using a technique called “sub-irrigation agriculture.” The plants grow from a shallow tray of earth that is nourished by water wicking through a plastic tube from a plastic tub below. The veggies are delicious, and they were even better when paired with Brooklyn Lager and Pilsner, donated by The Brooklyn Brewery. “Sub-irrigation is a way for anyone to have a fresh box of vegetables for a $20 investment,” said Lim. Pictured above are Lim, at right, and from left, Barbara Kariya, Ellen Foote and Sabine Hrechdakian. Also attending was Rachel Wharton of Edible Brooklyn magazine.
Burgers, Bridges and Beer steps just a little bit outside of their comfort zone and covers our chocolate and beer pairing, held in Vosges SoHo store last week. See for yourself.
Brooklyn Brewery happily supports these and many other charities, community groups and arts organizations. Find out how to get product donations from Brooklyn Brewery here.
