Brooklyn Brewery
#1 Brewers Row
79 North 11th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
tel: (718) 486-7422
fax: (718) 486-7440 web: www.brooklynbrewery.com
Brewmaster: Garrett Oliver
About the brewery
I first heard about the Brooklyn Brewery when I was living in Florida. The owner of the local homebrew shop spoke highly of it, but since we couldn't actually purchase the beer in Florida, I didn't taste any Brooklyn beers until I moved to Long Island.
Quick Reviews
Location
Touring the Brooklyn Brewery with Brewmaster Garrett Oliver
Near the end of April I attended an American Homebrewers Association (AHA) membership rally
hosted by the Brooklyn Brewery. One of activities at the rally was a
tour of the Brooklyn Brewery by brewmaster Garrett Oliver.
The tour consisted of standing in the one big room where all the brewing takes place and listening to Garrett Oliver tell about how operations are conducted at the Brooklyn Brewery. At first I was surprised that Brooklyn Brewery could produce so much beer in such a small brewery, but Mr Oliver explained that only about 25% of the Brooklyn brewed beer was actually produced in Brooklyn. The bulk of the production takes place as F.X. Matt Brewery in Utica, New York. Mr Oliver supervises the brewing at both locations.
At the Brooklyn location, they brew nine batches of beer per week: two batches a day Monday through Thursday, and one batch on Friday morning. Mr Oliver explained how their brewing system works and also explained the absence of the almost ubiquitous grain silo which marks just about every brewpub or microbrewery I've been to. These silos hold what's called the brewery's base malt---the malted barley that makes up the bulk of the grains used to make the brewery's beers. Many breweries use the same base malt for all of their beers. Changes in color and taste are introduced with the addition of specialty grains and hops (and sometimes different yeasts). Mr Oliver doesn't believe in using the same base malt for all of his beers. Each of the Brooklyn beers has its own character and thus its own malt profile.
Mr Oliver said, "Don't you just hate it when you go to a brewpub and you start sampling the beers and they all taste the same?" The essential character of a beer comes from the malt, so beers made from the same base malt will have a similar taste whether they are a pale ale or a stout. "I want all my beers to have their own flavor and character," said Mr Oliver. "So I buy all my grain in bags. It's more expensive to buy in bags, but that's the only way to achieve what I want with my beers." Mr Oliver speaks like a true artist---a liquid artist who combines grain, hops, and yeast with Brooklyn tap water to create drinkable masterpieces like his Belgian strong golden called Fortitude, his Smoked Porter, and the 2005 Saison (the beer that I started the night with).
AHA Membership Rally at the Brooklyn Brewery (April 2006)
The whole idea behind an American Homebrewers Association (AHA) membership
rally is to get new members to join the organization. Even though I
try to pass myself off as a beer evangelist I was unable to convince any
new potential members to take the two hour trek from where I live on Long
Island into Brooklyn on a cold and rainy night.
I arrived right at seven o'clock just as the rally was officially starting. I expected to see long lines of people clamoring to get inside the brewery or at least a packed, standing-room-only tasting room, but instead found myself with about ten other people, half of which were people I knew, members of the Long Island brewers club, Brewers East End Revival.
A guy in a Brooklyn Brewery jacket and blue jeans called us to order. "I'd like to tell you a little bit about the AHA," he said. Then he introduced himself as Steve Hindy, one of the founders of the Brooklyn Brewery and coauthor of the recently released book, Beer School (authored together with Tom Potter). Mr Hindy then started to explain how the AHA came to be and why professional regional and microbrewers are so keen on fostering a healthy homebrewing community. "I started out as a homebrewer," he said. But it's more than just nostalgia or sentimental camaraderie, homebrewers make up a loyal customer base for craft brewed beer.
After grabbing a second round of Brooklyn Brewery beers
from the bar Mr Hindy directed us past the entrance to the other side of
the brewery where Garrett Oliver, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery,
would give us a "tour." I was surprised when I got to the other side of
the brewery and found a single (but very large) room full of stainless
fermentation vessels and a three tank mashing, lautering, and boiling
system that Garrett Oliver used as a dais from which to address us
homebrewers. I did a quick head count and was encouraged to see that
there were almost forty of us now.
After the tour we meandered back to the tasting hall to replenish our pint glasses and eat some pizza. There was also a raffle where about half the people who attended the rally won AHA paraphernalia like t-shirts, pins, pint glasses, etc. Mr Hindy threw in two copies of his book and two copies of Garrett Oliver's book, The Brewmaster's Table. The last prize to be raffled off was a copy of Mr Oliver's book. I leaned over to the guy next to me who was wearing the AHA baseball cap he had just won and I said, "I never win anything." The bartender called out the final number, "89!" Hey, that was my number. I happily exchanged the little red ticket for Mr Oliver's thick beer and food pairing guide.
AHA Membership Rally at the Brooklyn Brewery: Some Observations and Suggestions
A few weeks ago, I went to an AHA, that's American
Homebrewers Association, membership rally at the Brooklyn Brewery. The
event started at 7 pm and went until 10.
Almost everyone hung around until "closing" at 10 pm. We sat together at the long benches in the Brooklyn Brewery's tasting hall introducing ourselves to each other, talking about brewing, and drinking Garrett Oliver's beer (Garrett Oliver is the brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery and author of the book, The Brewmaster's Table).
I was really pleased to see so many female brewers. The woman sitting next to me had been brewing beer in her Manhattan studio apartment for a little over a year. She had been brewing with malt extract and was wondering if she could do all-grain brewing in her apartment. Now that's true enthusiasm. (Try boiling six gallons of beer wort on your stove sometime and you'll see what I mean. I use a big outdoor cooker burner; you know, one of those jet engine looking things that the Cajuns use to boil crawfish down in Louisiana and it still takes a good hour to get the brewing liquor to a boil.)
By ten o'clock I had swapped a number of stories with fellow brewers and given out (and received) a number of brewing suggestions. Not all of us were veteran brewers though. More than a handful of the people attending the rally had never brewed beer at all before and they were there to see what brewing beer was all about. I mentioned to one of these brewers-to-be that the best way to get started was to brew with someone who knew what they were doing. I told him about how I had showed a number of my friends back in Florida how to brew beer. He wanted to know if I would help him get started. "Sure, no problem," I said, but we got distracted and never exchanged contact information. (So, Bill, if you are reading this post, send me an email and we'll hook up for a brew sometime.)
Which brings me to the only suggestion I have for the AHA concerning these membership rallies. The AHA should really take steps to help connect people. A lot of people showed up to the rally wanting information on how to brew. Connect the wannabes with the veterans. The local brewing clubs are excellent resources for information about brewing and organizing actual brewing demonstrations. So at future AHA membership rallies, I think there should be a live brewing demonstration and "business" cards for the attendees so that some serious beer networking can take place.
A version of this article was published on The Spirit World on May 30, 2006 as "AHA Membership Rally at the Brooklyn Brewery."
