Results tagged “brooklynbrewery”

If you've been looking for the silver lining in the recession, here it is: Thanks to plummeting industrial real estate values, the Brooklyn Brewery will be able to stay in Brooklyn. Just last summer, the Williamsburg-based lager-makers feared they couldn't afford to stay in their increasingly costly neighborhood when their lease expired, but dwindling property values and receding interest from non-manufacturing interests allowed the Brewery to sign a 15-year lease.

Thanks, Government! Last week the state gave Brooklyn Brewery a grant for $800,000 to help their $6.5MM expansion through Williamsburg. They money will go towards converting 13,500 square feet of vacant distribution space into a fermentation facility, and upping their production from 8,000 to 50,000 barrels a year. Brooklyn Brewery Founder Steve Hindy tells the Post “Support like this is vital to growing manufacturing jobs in New York City. These funds will enable us to complete a six-fold capacity expansion, adding 15 full-time jobs with benefits, and further expanding the Brewery’s green initiatives.”

A heaping plate of bacon washed down with a frosty mug of beer is the perfect start to any day, but why can't scientists unite those two divine tastes into a single swallow? True, there is a German beer called Rauchbier, which means "smoked beer" and reportedly tastes like bacon, but it's not literally made with cured pig flesh. But at long last, Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver has heard the call of drunken gluttons and is developing a beer made with a special malt smoked in the same room with bacon made by "the legendary" Allan Benton. Oliver tells the Times, "It’s almost terrifying how much the malt smells like bacon." His ingenious plan involves infusing a brown ale with the flavor of Benton’s bacon fat through a technique known as "fat washing." The bacon-fat-infused ale is aged in bourbon barrels, and one historic day (t.b.d.) he will blend it with the bacon-smoked malt. And Oliver promises this to a world hushed with anticipation: "Either this will be the most amazingly disgusting thing you’ve ever tasted in your life. Or I shall rule the earth."

Consider the unusual conditions underscoring the opening of the new Red Hook bar/restaurant Fort Defiance and it becomes clear that something unusual is going on: Owner (and writer) St. John Frizell’s general contractor is the Argentine artist Rafael Bueno and the place is essentially being put together by Frizell’s friends from the neighborhood, notably including Barry O'Meara from Bait and Tackle—another, potentially rival bar located just down the street.

Late last year it was announced that the city dumped plans to redevelop the Red Hook waterfront. Now the Brooklyn Eagle is reporting that the "Economic Development Corporation (EDC) is returning to Red Hook’s Atlantic Basin with a symbolic hat in hand, but also with a new development plan that is ready to be executed." The new plan is allegedly less glamorous, but one key business that could rise from the ashes of the old is (appropriately) Phoenix Beverages—a major beer distributor of Heineken, Guinness and Smirnoff Ice! It looks like it would be housed at Pier 11, and NYMag points out that under the new plan they'll be joined in the neighborhood American Stevedoring, "a docking facility for harbor-operated boats, a cultural institution, and a green space." Sadly, this means that "there is no space for Brooklyn Brewery, which hoped to move to Pier 7."

Brooklyn Brewery found themselves in an unlikely battle recently against the Trappist monks of Belgium. Who, apparently, you do NOT mess with. CityRoom reports that BB owner Steve Hindy started making a refermented ale called Brooklyn Local 1, which borrowed a method from the monks. But the problem was in the design of the bottle he used for it: "an amber bottle design featuring a double embossed ring at the base of the neck. It was not unlike the single-ringed bottle used by the Westmalle Abbey in Belgium and by the New Belgium Brewing Company of Fort Collins, Colo." First his friend Kim Jordan, owner of the New Belgium, warned him of her "protracted negotiations with the monks of Westmalle on the use of a ringed bottle in the United States...She told him it was her duty under the partnership to defend the trademark." Hindy soon backed down, took a loss of $60K and noted of the monks: “God is on their side." However, it looks like the press images that got out there still include the old design. Developing... like dark clouds of a wrathful God.

The Brooklyn Brewery is facing a dilemma. The NY Times explains the company has come up against the expensive real estate market:

[Brooklyn Brewery President Steve] Hindy and his partners are willing to spend $15 million for a bigger brewery that would employ at least twice as many workers as he has now and would have a beer garden where customers could sample his growing roster of specialty brews. But after four years of searching and two failed bids to be included in redevelopment projects in Red Hook and Carroll Gardens, they have not found a suitable building in the borough at a feasible price.

Continue reading "Hard for Brooklyn Brewery to Find a New Brooklyn Home"

With Brooklyn being stamped on everything these days, it makes sense that the owners of Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn Industries and Brooklyn Wine got together last week for a discussion on the branding of the borough. The NY Times reported back yesterday, declaring that Williamsburg is popular well outside its zip code, in Japan, and Chicago seems to be filled with fans as well. Brooklyn Brewery owner Steve Hindy stated: “We sell beer in Chicago, and Chicago people are not too enamored of New York. They really have, almost as bad as Boston, this inferiority complex about New York. But for some reason, they don’t blame Brooklyn.” Brooklyn Industries even opened a shop in the Windy City.

       

Saturday's thunderstorm ended just in time for Brooklyn Pigfest benefiting the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. Beer, BBQ and bluegrass were promised and that's exactly what was delivered, along with an impromptu game of "tip cup".

As reported in the Times last month, the cheese is a side project of Lunetta sous chef Betsy Devine and curd cohort Rachel Mark. The duo makes the ricotta with milk supplied from Hudson Valley Fresh, a non-profit collective of upstate farmers. Salvatore Ricotta is served at Lunetta’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations, but it can also be purchased retail at Saxelby Cheesemongers (seen here), Marlow & Sons, and Stinky Brooklyn.

Ah, there's nothing like the having a local team in a championship game. That's when the mayor breaks out the big guns and bets items of food against the mayor of an opposing team's city. Mayor Bloomberg announced a friendly wager today with Green Bay Mayor James Schmitt, as the Giants and the Packers face off Sunday in the NFC Championship game.

The bicyclist who died while riding on the Manhattan Bridge Friday night was identified as 27-year-old Brooklyn resident Sam Hindy. Hindy's father Stephen, a former Middle East correspondent for the AP and Newsday reporter who later co-founded the Brooklyn Brewery, said, "We're just devastated. This is the worst thing that could happen to any parent. It's any parent's worst nightmare." Sam Hindy and a friend were riding back from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the upper...

BENEFIT: Tonight catch a special performance by Alanis Morissette, while rubbing elbows with Matt Dillon...all for a good cause! The inaugural fundraising benefit for the Adrienne Shelly Foundation will be held this evening, and you can get in with a ticket from $150 to...well, $10,000 bucks. You'll be supporting the late Shelly's foundation which "supports the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors through a series of scholarships and grants." 6pm // Skirball Center...

The experts at the Italian Wine Merchants can show you how to build up your wine collection beyond those bottles that were left over from your last party. During the course of the afternoon, you'll taste eight Italian wines including vintage Barolo, Brunello, Super-Tuscans, and more while sampling assorted antipasti. $125 per person. Reservations required and can be made online or by calling 212-473-2323 x106. 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Italian Wine Merchants, 108 East 16th Street.

It's time for the Shake Shack's annual Shacktoberfest celebration, which starts Friday and runs through October 14th. If you can stand the lines, you can enjoy "special Shacktoberfest offerings" as well as the regular menu:

A selection of Usinger's brats and sausages – Andouille with red pepper relish, Stuttgarter Knackwurst with cranberry horseradish relish and Italian sausage with pumpkin mostarda.

Continue reading "Shacktoberfest is Upon Us"

Celebrate the extension of the vendors' permit through the end of their season in October and add on extra festivities for Mexican and Central American Independence Day. Caesar Fuentes, the organizing force behind the vendors, promises that "the food vendors committee will host a livelier than usual weekend event - more soccer games, pinatas, music, and a 2 day art exhibit featuring photographs taken by the food vendors." Sounds good to us.

EVENT: If you haven't taken a trip back to the Summer of Love yet, head over to the Whitney tonight for the exhibit and enjoy their Whitney Live event. DJ Scientific and Dana Leong will be providing the tunes.

A fact for you: the average American lives within ten miles of a craft brewery.

MUSIC: You know summer is just around the corner when the Seaport Music Festival has their first show of the season. Tonight Animal Collective, Danielson and XXXChange (Spank Rock) will all be on Pier 17 for a FREE show! Come, drink, listen.

THEATER: Breedingground Theater Company continues their three week Spring Fever Festival of work by self-producing artists. (We suggest perusing the full lineup on the company’s website, though we caution that it's quite an eyesore.) Nevertheless, one that happily caught our eye is Chess’d, about a ninja and a man in a white tux playing a game of life-sized chess. The game escalates into a no-holds-barred life-or-death struggle, which reviewer Daniel Kelly declares “hilarious from start to finish.” Another possibility is the heady Simulacra: a modern myth, which concerns “an amnesiac TV junky running a freakish temperature and channel surfing a crumbling reality on a quest to recover her identity.” (We’ve been there!) According to reviewer Mark DeFrancis, the show “takes everything from MySpace to the Greek gods and somehow manages to fuse them into a sleek, frenetic production about self-identity, materialism, and mass media.” - John Del Signore

With March Madness behind us and baseball upon us (Mets' home opener in progress!), a smoothing transition between basketball and baseball is necessary: like beer bracketology. The Washington Post conducted a tournament of head-to-head, single elimination, blind taste tastings over four weeks, in order to distinguish one beer above all other contestants as an MVB.

- Hungry for a late night snack in Williamsburg? The tamale girl to the rescue, and on rollerskates, no less!

THEATER: Pieces of Paradise is a benefit presentation of four lost plays by Tennessee Williams which were discovered in a trunk in 2000 and never produced in New York. The proceeds will benefit a legal fund for 13th Street Repertory (founded in 1972), which is struggling for survival against - you guessed it - real estate developers. It’s fitting that these plays should be chosen for the benefit, as Tennessee himself visited the theater when his play Outcry was produced and declared “that the future of the American theater lay in the small theaters of off-off-Broadway.” Martin Denton calls the four short works a “wonderful evening of undiscovered Williams.” in his rave review. (A final performance will take place on Sunday.) - John Del Signore

"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed - Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, 'It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver.'" - Deep Thought, Jack Handy

READING: Get a drink at the Half King tonight in some good company - Anthony Bourdain will be there with Bill Buford, to celebrate Buford's new book, Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras

READING: The wonderful Paragraph, a downtown writers' haven, is hosting a roof deck reading, which is a pretty sweet way to get a good view and some good stories at the same time. The reading, which features Mohammed Naseeu Ali (), will actually be held on the roof deck at Clay, the spa next door to Paragraph on 14th street. Wine and cheese at Paragraph will follow the reading. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras

The weather forecast, which predicted rain, might have scared some people off, but we were going to the Brooklyn Brewery's Sixth Annual Pigfest come rain or shine. Luckily, we had sunshine galore, so we were able to sample some amazing barbecue without trying to juggle an umbrella along with our ribs, chicken, pulled pork and beer.

Rain or shine, there will be cold beer, live music, and Niman Ranch pork and chicken slow-cooked by the Waterfront Alehouse's own Sam Barbieri, Steve Harkavy, Bon Soir Caterers' Jeff Reilly, and Rob Richter of Big Island Barbeque. Proceeds from this year's event go to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. Beer and Food are included with admission. Advance tickets $75. At the door $85. 1PM-6PM at the Tobacco Warehouse in Brooklyn Bridge Park (corner of Water and Dock Sts., DUMBO).

- Police are gearing up for possible fights as people are on Satmar Grande Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum deathwatch

- You know how you weren't worried about the home invasion robberies that seem to happen way too often in Long Island? Well, there might be a Brooklyn crew behind them