The Brooklyn Brewery just introduced a new beer to its ever-changing array of offerings: Mary's Maple Porter, a tasty and potent (7.5% alcohol by volume) dark ale made with real maple syrup from upstate New York. The beer is named for the brewery's "quality control" supervisor Mary Wiles, who owns 500 acres of maple trees on property in Onondaga. 50 gallons of her Cedarvale Maple Syrup go into each batch, and while the beer doesn't taste sweet, you can definitely taste maple, as well as caramel, chocolate, and coffee flavors from the brewery's blend of roasted malts. Here's a video starring Brooklyn Brewery's brewmaster Garrett Oliver, who has some background for the beer nerds: more ›

Senator Charles Schumer, everyone's favorite press conference convener and rainmaker, really loves NY State's beers, starting an "I Love NY Brew" campaign. So it makes sense that his Super Bowl bet with New England Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) involved six NY craft beers. Now that the Giants have proven victorious, Shaheen will be buying NY beer for the whole Senate! more ›

Last night, Gothamist toasted the new year at the Museum of the City of New York. The museum stayed open past operating hours so Gothamist readers, friends and staffers were able to enjoy exhibitions including The Greatest Grid and Cecil Beaton: The New York Years. more ›

The exhaustive Oxford Companion To Wine has long been a must-have compendium for oenophiles, who turn to it for detailed explanations on absolutely everything remotely related to vino. Now the wine companion has a companion: The Oxford Companion to Beer, a thick and thorough A-to-Z collection of beer info, with more than 1,100 entries written by the world's most prominent beer experts. The ringleader of this massive undertaking is Garrett Oliver, who edited the book and wrote a number of its entries. Oliver, who serves as the acclaimed Brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, recently spoke with us about all things beer. more ›

In this age of Bloomberg's smokeless bars, have you ever woken up after a night of drinking and thought to yourself "geez, I wish I smelled more like a bar?" Well, have we got good news for you! Earlier this week the Brooklyn Brewery began selling...wait for it...Beer Soap. Because beer perfume wasn't enough? more ›

Brooklyn Brewery, the Williamsburg-based beer purveyor that has been faulted by some for producing a majority of its product in Utica, has significantly expanded its local facilities. The new space, located next door to its existing complex on North 11th Street, makes the brewery 14 times larger, and will now enable the company to produce most of its beer in Brooklyn. The facility also features a new brewing system that will make the finished product "tastier," according to brewmaster Garrett Oliver, who tells the Brooklyn Paper that some of the draught-only seasonal ales he formerly produced in small batches will now be widely distributed in bottles, thus causing and solving even more of life's problems. more ›

Craft Beer Week—which actually lasts nine days, but who's counting, or has the ability to count during Craft Beer Week?—kicks off Friday, and this one promises to be the biggest, craftiest week of all! For starters, over 100 beer destinations and 30 restaurants across the five boroughs are honoring the Craft Beer Week "passport," which costs $10 and entitles the bearer to one special beer for $3.And then there are the myriad special events. more ›

A thug in Williamsburg was incited to violence when a man brushed up against his car earlier this month. Dominck Auricchio, a 49-year-old from Manhattan, got out of his car near the Brooklyn Brewery and yelled to his 30-year-old victim, "I'm going to kill you!" reports the Post's police blotter. As he was screaming he punched the man in the face. Worst of all, he was wearing a metal ring! After the beating, which took place on North 11th Street near Wythe Avenue at 9:55 p.m., he fled in his vehicle, but police tracked him down and arrested him on charges of assault Thursday. His victim was taken to the hospital where he required 11 stitches for a cut on his face. New York: Still the #1 city for meathead road rage! more ›

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. more ›

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.” more ›

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." more ›

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. more ›

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." more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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". more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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... more ›

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... more ›

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. more ›