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.

– Steve Hindy, Founder & President

Garrett’s been in the UK for the past week, brought there by the Imbibe Festival which celebrates the obvious. Apparently, while there he’s been hanging out with Britain’s most famous beer advocate, Pete Brown again. If you’ve never read him before, Pete has a great way with words and a really nice perspective on the wonders of beer. In this blog post he says kind things about Mr Oliver and gives a play by play of a recent beer and cheese pairing.  See below the photo for Brown’s commentary on Garrett’s pairings.

BRILLAT SAVARIN WITH BROOKLYN LOCAL 1

Brillat Savarin is to my mind the best ever writer on food, famous for his aphorisms, my favourite of which is “A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.”  I don’t much care for the cheese that was named after him though.  It’s like eating solidified cream.  I hate cream.  It’s too cloying and sickly and I don’t understand why everyone thinks it’s a treat.

The beer though is something I’d be perfectly happy to receive as a birthday present.  And I mean a ‘proper’ present.  It’s recognizable as a Belgian Saison in style but it’s smoother, more elegant.  You want to say ‘dumbed down’ but that would be completely inaccurate.  Yes, it’s more accessible than some of the funkier farmyard Saisons, but the cheesy, musty, sweet and sour, spicy flavour journey of a Saison is all present and correct.

This is a match where the beer comes out best.  The cheese helps push its tartness to the fore, a brief spike of flavour emerging slowly and elegantly, like the spine of a humpback whale cresting the ocean surface before, submerging again.

On the other hand,  the cheese just tastes even creamier, which I could really do without.

HEREFORD HOP WITH BROOKLYN LAGER

The Brooklyn beer you can get fairly easily in the UK was the first they brewed, and is a faithful recreation of what beer used to be like in New York a hundred years ago, prompting Garrett to exclaim that the current craft beer boom is not a fad or a trend, but a return to normality after a the late twentieth century’s obsession with plastic and standardization.

I realize that we spend too much time thinking about beer in terms of ‘hoppy’ or ‘malty’.  Brooklyn lager is neither, or rather, both.  It’s toffee in a very expensive designer label suit that makes it shine and sparkle.

The cheese is sticky and cloying and glutinous in a good way, sweet and salty and slightly acidic.  Together I don’t find much alchemy – both are nice separately and nice together, but with nothing much added.

OSSAU IRATY WITH BROOKLYN BROWN ALE

This is an interesting one.  Ossau Iraty is made from sheep’s milk and has an aroma of lanolin or ‘wool fat’, the smell you get off a wet woollen jumper and, once it’s been pointed out, the sweet smell you get from roast lamb.

The beer is all about chocolate and caramel, with a slight grassiness towards the end.

Together, they are in total harmony – beer and cheese blend into each other around an axis of sweet caramel.  Just lovely.

SOME OTHER CHEESE WITH BROOKLYN DARK MATTER

This one wasn’t on the menu and I’m starting to lose track.  Dark Matter is an 8% version of the brown ale that’s been aged for four months in bourbon and wine barrels to give it a strong American oak character.  To me it smells initially of nail varnish, but that’s a smell I’ve always liked.  On the second whiff I can isolate the coconut that Garrett’s talking about, and then you can get the strong vanilla essence behind it, a hint of sherry, and then a faint molasses character on the tongue.

I hardly notice the cheese.  I’m all wrapped up in the beer, and the match doesn’t change much about it.

MONTGOMERY’S CHEDDAR WITH BROOKLYN EAST INDIA PALE ALE

IPA with strong mature cheddar has always been my favourite match of any beer with any food, and this one doesn’t disappoint. The dry saltiness of the cheese ands the fruitiness of the beer just body barge each other, exploding in a carnival of colour and partying on your tongue.  Weirdly, Garrett compares it to a forceful physical dance, like a tango, just after I’ve written in my notebook that they’re slam-dancing.  I just don’t have his class.

COLSTON-BASSET STILTON WITH BROOKLYN CHOCOLATE STOUT

This pairing was born by accident.  Garrett was at an event where he’d asked for either a barley wine to match with Stilton (which is another awesome match) or chocolate stout with truffles.  He turned up to find chocolate stout and Stilton, panicked, tried it, and found it worked wonderfully.

The dark chocolate character in the stout comes from chocolate malt only – no actual chocolate – and develops with a hint of sherry, followed by an inky Shiraz character on the palate with some bitter coffee grounds mixed in.

The Stilton is lovely.  “People who don’t like Stilton… well… they’re just bad people,” says Garrett.  “I’m serious.  If you don’t like Stilton you can’t come to my house.  You can’t pet my dog.”

The match is an elegant marriage which makes me think of high tea with a maiden aunt in a stately home.  Don’t ask me why.

UPDATE! There must be something in the air because The Old Grey Lady also published a recipe for beer can chicken this week. I like the recipe below from L Magazine, though.

Steve Hindy, Brooklyn Brewery founder & president, actually told me that this was one of his favorite recipes. L Magazine provides a colorful step by step guide to preparing a delicious whole chicken with a can of Brooklyn Lager firmly positioned in its largest orifice.

By Brett Stetka for  L Magazine

My wife and I debated the point all weekend: Is the cavity in a chicken the neck opening or the butt? Turns out it’s the butt. Once that was settled we procured a fresh chicken from Marlow and Daughters, fired up the grill and lodged a can of beer in its ass. Hence: Beer Ass Chicken. Or as it’s more often known, Beer Can Chicken.

I felt a certain evolutionary guilt about sticking a metal can up a fellow creature’s exit hole, and wished things had turned out differently in the neck vs. ass debate. But what’s done is done, and the incredibly moist and tender result eased my conscience.

My recipe is a modified version of Pat Neely’s, of Memphis barbecue and Food Network fame. Because yes, I have a thing for cooking shows with painfully canned banter (we all have our embarrassing vices: Conklin has golf; I have the Down Home With the Neelys [Ed.—I also count Down Home With the Neelys as a vice, for what it's worth.]). But do the Neelys use dark brown sugar and ground mustard? No they don’t, because doing so would be too extreme for the Food Network. Ok, it’s actually not that extreme, but I needed to make this recipe my own, and the brown sugar gives the chicken a nice charred and crispy caramelized crust. So without further ado, go make a Beer Ass Chicken this weekend:

INGREDIENTS:

For the rub:

Keep in mind these are rough estimates.

-1 tablespoons smoked paprika (careful – stuff’s powerfully smoky)

-2 tablespoons salt

-2 tablespoons onion powder

-1 tablespoon dark brown sugar (go easy here, otherwise the sugar can burn)

-1 tablespoon garlic powder

-1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

-1 tablespoon ground mustard

-1 tablespoon cumin

-2 teaspoons dried thyme

-2 teaspoons dried oregano

-2 teaspoons black pepper

For the Chicken:

-1 4 pound chicken, give or take a pound

-Vegetable oil

-1 12-ounce can of beer*

*A note on the beer: I like to use a medium-bodied lager with some malty sweetness to it for extra flavor; something like Brooklyn Lager, which does come in cans if you look hard enough. In reality it probably doesn’t matter what you use since the beer is mainly just a water source to help steam the chicken and keep it moist. But beer is more fun than soda, so you know, stick with beer.

Click here for directions and photos.

For the past couple months, awesome daily menu generator NoTakeOut.com has been running a beer pairing recipe contest. The idea was this: create a full menu that compliments the flavor profile of the wildly popular Brooklyn Summer Ale (Summer sales are up 50% everybody! Let’s hear it for the sales persons!).

Lots of delightful entries were received. Several Asian items included. In the end our Brewmaster, Garrett Oliver, decided to go with, drum roll please…Nadine Mesch of Mt. Healthy, Ohio! (Yes, there is a place called Mt. Healthy. I guess if there’s a Death Valley it’s only fair.)

Congrats, Nadine. Your Summer Ale battered taco recipe clocked in on top! Check out the recipe here.  For your culinary savvy and application effort you will receive a Brooklyn Brewery gift pack, a NoTakeOut.com tote & apron, and lastly but certainly not leastly, a Togiharu Hammered Texture Damascus Gyutou 8.2” chefs knife from Korin (pictured below). Thanks Korin!

Also, be sure to check out the daily recipes from NoTakeOut.com. It’s pretty handy for busy folks who want to cook good meals without thinking about it. Thanks to everybody on the NoTakeOut.com for putting together this delicious contest.

Like we weren’t going to do it again.

Our great friends over at Queens County Farm Museum (an actual operating farm in New York City) are teaming up with Dickson’s Farmstand Meats, The Cleaver Co. and The Green Table to throw one damn fine pre-Fourth of July party. Dickson’s will be roasting a pig that’s been raised on Brooklyn Brewery spent grain for a bona fide Circle of Life vibe*. And of course Brooklyn Brewery will be pumping out the beer all night long.

It all goes down Friday July 2nd – Saturday July 3rd. Details from Queens County Farm below.

Queens Farm is excited to announce its second annual Pig Roast Campout!  It will be an outdoor feast, featuring Queens Farm pork and produce prepared by Jake Dickson and Gabe Ross of Dickson’s Farmstand Meats (www.dicksonsfarmstand.com), The Cleaver Co. and The Green Table (www.cleaverco.com).  We invite you to eat, drink, and enjoy live music and late-night DJ, and then sleep under the stars in our apple orchard (please bring your own tent and camping supplies).  Coffee and pastries will be served bright and early!

Get Tickets here.

For your chance to win a pair of tickets email info@brooklynbrewery.com with “Farm Life” in the subject field.

*we promise not to say “vibe” all weekend long

One of our favorite southern soul food joints in the world, Egg, is launching the first of a series of Farm Dinners on Thursday, June 24th. What in heckfire is a Farm Dinner? Well this is how Egg ’splains it:

This year, we’re beginning a series of farm dinners to showcase the produce we’re growing at our farm in Oak Hill, New York. We’ll host a dinner on the last Thursday of every month until the ground freezes over. Each dinner will feature the best vegetables and fruits we’ve got growing at the time. We’ll offer one seating and a fixed-price 3 or 4 course menu: all you have to do is make a reservation and show up.

The first dinner will be Thursday, June 24 at 7:00 p.m. and will use our lettuces, baby carrots and beets, and radishes, along with whatever else has sprung up by then. We’ll serve the vegetables along with local lamb. The price for this dinner will be $45, which includes flights of Brooklyn’s braggable big bottles: Brooklyn Local 1, Local 2, Sorachi Ace and, yep, Black Ops.
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Well that certainly got us excited. But we wanted to know more. So we started pestering them over email for the menu. They haven’t finalized it but here are some idears they’ve been tossing around:

-amuse (chilled soup/pickled baby vegetables w. creme fraiche…)
-Lamb Sausage (merguez) with spoonbread (souffle style) and vegetables (depend on the farm availability, but probably chard with pickled chard stems, or maybe radishes)
-farro and farm greens salad, sliced lamb loin (cold)
- small portion midcourse: herb and baby greens salad with pulled rib meat and (maybe) one lamb chop
- Lamb “Country Captain” (lowcountry curry-style ragu) over fried grits (imagine a grilled polenta cake) with greens
- maybe a palate-cleanser type thing…gooseberry seltzer? might not happen
- dessert: either a chocolate dessert with cherries or a berry crumble with cream
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For tickets email mail@pigandegg.com or call (718) 599-2443. Por que no?

TONIGHT, we’re teaming up with Edible for their competitive and delicious pub quiz, Edible Pursuit here at the brewery in July during Good Beer Month.

Here’s how Edible describes the beer, grub and prize filled evening:

“With fond memories of our first Edible Pursuit at Sheep Station still dancing in her head, Edible Brooklyn deputy editor Rachel Wharton—and recent James Beard Award winner—is hard at work assembling questions on Brooklyn beverage culture — plus beer, wine and spirits themselves — for wanna-be whizkids.

If that’s you, mark your calendars to hit the fine tasting room of the Brooklyn Brewery on July 8th for our next Edible Pursuit, where your knowledge of potables will be put to the test with help from a panel of Brooklyn’s best drinksmen and women: St. John Frizell (owner of Fort Defiance, spirits writer, drinksman), Garrett Oliver (Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster and beer royalty), and one more to come.

Teams of six or less will compete for mounds of prizes—from bottles of limited-edition beers to cookbooks, lovely coasters made from Brooklyn slate, artisanal pickles, restaurant gift certificates and other edible desirables—while fortifying their neurons with tasty morsels from The Meat Hook and Brooklyn Brewery suds made right on the premises.”

WHEN: July 8, from 8 to 10 p.m.

WHERE: Brooklyn Brewery, 79 N. 11th Street at Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg

HOW MUCH: $20 to play (which also buys you two beers and a delicious sausage from the link-masters at The Meat Hook)

GET TICKETS: Here.

Read More

Guys check out this press release written by a real live publicist!

Back Forty Hosts Bacon and Beer Walk-Around Tasting with Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s and Christopher Basso of Brooklyn Brewery

Copy of “Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon”or Growler of Brooklyn Beer Included with Ticket Price

On Monday, June 28th, Back Forty will host a bacon and beer walk-around tasting to honor guest Ari Weinzweig, the co-owner of legendary Midwest culinary mecca, Zingerman’s, and the author of “Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon.” Ari will be joined by Brooklyn Brewery brewer Christopher Basso, who will pair five of his beers with five bacon-y dishes from Ari and Back Forty Chef de Cuisine Shanna Pacifico.

The dishes and brews will be served at stations throughout the restaurant. Bacons to be incorporated into the dishes include: Heritage, Benton’s, Edward’s, Real Canadian Bacon Co. Peameal, Arkansas Long Pepper, and Back Forty’s Own Maple-Glazed House Cure. To view the complete menu, click here, or see below. As a take-home gift, attendees can choose between a Back Forty growler filled with Brooklyn Brewery beer or a copy of Ari’s book.

Date: Monday, June 28th

Time and Reservations: Reservations, which must be made through Brown Paper Tickets, are available between 6:30 PM and 9 PM. Please note: while this is a walk-around event, entry reservation times are in place to ensure an even distribution of attendees throughout the evening.

Location: 190 Ave. B (at 12th St.)

Cost: $94 (includes five bacon dishes, five draft beers, all tax and gratuity, plus a growler of Brooklyn Brewery beer or a copy of Ari’s book,) get tickets right here.

Walk-Around Tasting Menu Crostini

Heritage Bacon, Beer Steamed Clams

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Bacon Side by Side

Benton’s and Edward’s Bacon,

Cherry Tomatoes, Salvatore’s Ricotta,

Herb Salad

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Bacon and Egg Sliders

Real Canadian Bacon Co. Peameal Bacon

Quail Egg, Green Olives, Parsley

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Pilau

Arkansas Long Pepper Bacon,

English Peas, Tokyo Turnips

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Pork Belly

Maple Glazed Back Forty Bacon,

Beluga Lentil Salad

Since the early days of 1988, The Brooklyn Brewery has striven to support the myriad of arts in New York City. When the brewery in Williamsburg opened up, we regularly hosted shows for neighborhood artists. Among many others, institutions like BAM, Brooklyn Museum and Dia Arts Foundation all receive financial and beer support from The Brewery. We are proud to support some of our favorite artists as Brooklyn Brewery’s distribution and the borough’s sphere of influence continue to grow throughout the country and the world.

One of our favorite homegrown art phenomenons is Casey Kelbaugh’s Slideluck Potshow. A combination photo exhibition and D.I.Y. feast, SLPS embodies so much of what Brooklyn Brewery values: community, collaboration, local arts and good, locally made food. We are thrilled to provide our beer for these art parties as they continue to grow and pop up around the globe. The most recent SLPS occurred in Washington D.C. to great acclaim. Check out the slideshow.

Find more photos like this on SLIDELUCK POTSHOW