Rabbit rabbit and happy October, everybody! We may not be fully back to the frenzied cacophony of our pre-COVID lives yet, but at least Halloween is decidedly back on this year — not only is the Village Parade happening again, but more importantly so is my favorite annual event, the Great Pupkin dog costume contest in Fort Greene Park. There are lots of “returning to some semblance of a social life” developments afoot: museums, restaurants, bars, theaters, and concert venues are blazing ahead full steam, and…
Meet The Artist: Clara Kirkpatrick
If you’ve been to our Tasting Room recently, you’ve probably seen our incredible new mural from Clara Kirkpatrick, also known as @doodle-deli: View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Brooklyn Brewery (@brooklynbrewery) We recently added a new Tasting Room storage section with some clean walls, and figured it would be a great spot to show off a vision of our home borough. Clara’s bright colors, layered worlds, and personal knowledge of the neighborhood were a perfect fit. She said: “As someone who spent several years living in the Brooklyn Brewery neighborhood, I wanted to create a mural that felt authentic to the neighborhood. I want the experience of walking by this …
Brooklyn Brewery House Rules: Social Media & Our Community
Our home borough of Brooklyn is all about celebrating differences. Brooklyn Brewery strives to create spaces, in person and online, that are safe, accessible, inclusive and respectful. We want every person, whatever their background or identity, to feel safe to be themselves in those spaces. We expect that everyone in both our physical and digital spaces upholds the same welcoming values. Disrespectful, discriminatory, or threatening behavior will not be tolerated. If you feel that your personal biases …
Your September Culture Calendar
Labor Day has come and gone and here we are in back-to-school mode, a phenomenon that seems to persist no matter how long you’ve been out of school or how uncertain we are about when life will actually get back to normal around here. I was on vacation for the past 2 weeks and studiously avoiding the news, but between the reports from Afghanistan, the storm in Louisiana, the fires in Tahoe, the flooding in Brooklyn, the rising COVID death …
Linda Loves Bingo! And Our Tasting Room
Big news, drag Bingo fans: Linda Loves Bingo! is taking over our Tasting Room each month for the rest of 2021! $10 at the door gets you a beer and a Bingo card and starts a night full of laughter, incredible drag, and unbelievable prizes every round, including a Brooklyn Brewery Grand Prize. Bingo queen Linda Simpson keeps the games rolling and the stakes high throughout the night, and our Tasting Room bar staff is there for your beers of victory …
What it’s like going back to the movies at 3 beloved Brooklyn cinemas
Going to the movies is like visual Xanax for me; I love the experience almost as much as I love the movies themselves—phone off, world off, sipping a Diet Coke the size of my head, air-conditioning at goosebump levels, in front of a giant screen. There was a lot of heartbreak in 2020, a lot of things more tragic than not being about to pay $15 to view a blockbuster. But I just missed having movie theaters as a place to escape it. Now that cinemas are back open again, however, it’s important to recognize that not all of them are open in the same way. With movie theaters as with people, each one is at a different stage in …
Celebrating Pride With The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative
Welcome to Pride Month 2021! Pride Month is a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and recognize the fight for equality around the world. Pride doesn’t stop with June— it is a year-round commitment to the joy and the work of the LGBTQ+ rights movement. We are proud partners with The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative (SIGBI). SIGBI is a non-profit charitable organization committed to eliminating the social intolerance impacting LGBTQ+ people everywhere. Inspired by the movement born from the Stonewall Inn Uprising of 1969, they support grassroots organizations through awareness campaigns, educational programming, fundraising and…
Beer? Art? Both: Introducing Brooklyn Brewery Pulp Art Hazy IPA
Our brand new masterpiece Brooklyn Pulp Art Hazy IPA is popping up on shelves and in fridges across the country, adding a tropically hoppy splash of color to our year-round lineup. Just as the Pop Art movement created big, bold art for everyone to enjoy, Pulp Art is a hazy IPA for all. This delicious blur between beer and art delivers bright notes of pineapple juice, ripe mango, and tangerine pulp from Citra, Strata, and Simcoe hops, with a refreshingly smooth finish to welcome everyone from haze aficionados to tropical hop newcomers. Pulp Art was developed by Brewmaster Garrett Oliver and his brewing team to bring some haze to our delicious IPA range, including our world-traveling East IPA to our …
What to do this week(end): Feb. 26-March 4
Happy Friday friends, and congrats on being able to go outside in reasonable comfort again! For that reason alone, and even in spite of rainy forecasts for the weekend and unsettling news about the new virus variants spreading in the city, things feel a little more upbeat around here these days, don’t you think? I think I’ve read thousands of articles about people cleaning out their closets or upgrading their apartments during this extended period at home with a mix of annoyance, jealousy, and awe, but last weekend I finally tackled mine (only took a year!) and it does feel freer to be living in marginally less clutter. That said…
What to do this week(end): Feb. 19-26
So, it looks like the month of February is hell bent on February-ing it up as much as possible this year, huh? Sure, why not? We’ve all been getting off easy around here lately; it’s as good a time as any to throw some new challenges into the mix! A spike in crimes targeting Asian Americans, more cockroaches in our apartments, weather making it impossible to get exercise or see anyone, and feeling more and more like we actually live in a third-world …
What to do this week(end): Feb. 12-18
Greetings, snow babies, and happy almost-weekend to you all! This one is a long weekend for many of us, with Valentine’s Day and the Lunar New Year thrown in for good measure, so hopefully there will be enough going on to shake us all out of this twin state of pandemic exhaustion and winter blues that feels palpable everywhere these days. That special brand of stir crazy finally led me and my sister to get off our bums and head out to Bushwick to try the much-lauded burger from Robertas’ offshoot Burgie’s, which we devoured in the car and declared 1000% worth the trip before…
February Culture Calendar: There’s actually a lot to do!
February made a dramatic entrance this year, dumping feet of snow across the East Coast and somehow managing to make the once simple notion of leaving one’s apartment feel even less safe and comfortable than it already did. After nearly a year of strict pandemic protocol adherence and midway through a winter that won’t go down without a fight, never have I felt more thirsty for entertainment and some connection to creativity and the world beyond my (very, very narrow) immediate sphere. Last week …
All Hops, No Distractions: Meet Our Non-Alcoholic Brooklyn Special Effects IPA
Good news, IPA lovers: our non-alcoholic Brooklyn Special Effects IPA is here to bring you all of the bold, bright hop notes you love, without the buzz to slow you down. We’re big IPA fans, like many craft beer drinkers around the world. The wide world of IPAs brings us flavors and aromas from tropical fruit to sharp lemon rind, finishing everywhere from pillowy-soft to enticingly bitter. With Special Effects IPA, we’re taking all the…
What to do this week(end): Jan. 15-21
Just two weeks into 2021 and it already feels like we might have another dud on our hands, doesn’t it? Yes, we’re just days away from competent people replacing the morally bankrupt, underachieving sycophants that comprise the Trump administration, and the vaccine rollout finally seems to be picking up steam, but man, nothing like white supremacist cultists staging a violent insurrection to drive home the point that a new calendar year is not going to be the cure-all elixir some of us may have naively hoped for. In …
Seven podcasts to escape pandemic winter
As we hunker down into winter and contemplate the months ahead, it’s time to take stock of your supplies. You probably don’t need a case of toilet paper or 20 pounds of dried beans. You do want a plan to stave off cabin fever by keeping your brain busy. Escapism is your friend right now, especially in the form of a story that is just so absorbing that it transports you to a place where Covid doesn’t exist. Here are seven excellent podcasts—several of which have a sci-fi theme, to ensure a complete escape from reality. The Habitat As the pandemic drags on and on, you may be looking for tips for indoor living. There is no better place to learn how…
Special Effects, Explained: Brewmaster Garrett Oliver & CEO Eric Ottaway Talk Non-Alcoholic
Our new non-alcoholic Brooklyn Special Effects IPA is officially shipping across the United States, joining its predecessor Special Effects Hoppy Amber as a delicious new member of our year-round non-alcoholic lineup. We’re incredibly excited to share this new brew with the world, but we also know there’s plenty of questions surrounding the world of non-alcoholic beer. We decided to catch up with our Brewmaster Garrett Oliver and CEO Eric Ottaway for the fast facts and FAQs on non-alcoholic (NA) and alcohol-free beverages (AF/AFB), our Special Effects line, and more. Brooklyn Brewery: How did we get here? What in particular …
Your October Culture Calendar
In this insanely wild ride of years, it’s cute to think that Halloween—not a deadly virus run amok, a cratering economy, or our entire democracy hanging by a thread—used to be the scariest thing about October. Obviously, things are very different this time around, and while I am excited to preview this month’s truly top-notch cultural events and opportunities happening around town (and streaming to you at home), I also want to urge everyone to set aside some time in the next 34 days to take some action to prevent another Trump term, which would be disastrous for innumerable reasons, …
Lighting Up B at K5 with Smile Neon and Masaya Nakayama
In February 2020, we opened the doors of B at K5, a subterranean haunt in a 1920’s-era cellar fueled by Brooklyn beer, tacos and creative chaos in Tokyo’s historic Nihonbashi neighborhood. With fresh-pressed tortillas, the latest IPAs, an incredible team, the occasional mosh pit and Tokyo’s finest selectors on the decks, we almost had it all. But B is a powerhouse – an electric transmitter emitting contagious frequencies of collaborative energy across Japan – and we needed a bat signal. To get the job done right we teamed up with Hidenobu Takahashi of Smile Neon, one …
The Worshipful Company of Brewers Part XXII: Evan MacCarthy
The Worshipful Company of Brewers is once again upon us. The charter of this sanctified league dictates that each member of the Brooklyn Brewery brewing team will design and create a batch of his or her own draft-only beer, to be served exclusively in the Tasting Room until the last drop has been squeezed from the taps. Beer #22: The True Wheel Style: American Extra Pale Ale ABV: 5.6% Notes: “West Coasty and a little toasty,” with a carefully balanced measure of malt character and old-school hops Availability: Friday, March 13 until it’s gone Brewer #22: Evan MacCarthy…
Sanitize Like A Brewer With Isopropyl Alcohol
Spray bottles of isopropyl are fixtures around our brewing and cellaring spaces, where they can be grabbed for a quick sanitizing spray. Brewing is all about keeping things clean, and these bottles are a key part of the continual work of keeping everything spotless. With Covid-19 putting pressure on supplies of hand sanitizer and soap, we wanted to pass along some tips on sanitizing your hands and surroundings with isopropyl alcohol. To start, make sure your isopropyl alcohol is 70% concentrated. Hand sanitizers above 60% are considered effective on Covid-19 and most pathogens, but for spray you’ll need to bump …
An almost normal summer weekend
A Carroll Gardens mural reminding us to spread love. Photo: Kate Hooker Hello BB and welcome to July! Sure, why the hell not? Seems totally normal that more than half of this berserk 2020 experiment is behind us already, right? If it’s otherwise difficult to wrap my head around this incomprehensible passage of time, the amount and caliber of the sustained fireworks activity happening in my hood on Saturday at least made it impossible to ignore that we have very much made it to the Fourth of July. The news of the infection spikes happening elsewhere in the country is obviously discouraging and scary, but I’m so relieved that my beloved New Yorkers are (so far, and for the most part) still being cautious and respectful …
Milton Glaser
Milton Glaser, the graphic design icon who created the Brooklyn Brewery logo and helped make Brooklyn an international brand, died yesterday in Manhattan on his 91st birthday. Milton was a mentor and a friend to me for 34 years. My wife Ellen and I and our daughter Lily shared many dinners with Milton and his wife Shirley over those years. My first meeting with Milton did not come easy. I had talked to more than 30 design firms looking for someone to help me develop an identity and logo for Brooklyn Eagle Brewery, an idea I had cooked up with my downstairs Brooklyn neighbor, Tom Potter. None of those firms had given me confidence they could do the job. Ellen suggested I call the best in …
10 Culture Essentials for a Pandemic July
When everything went off the rails in March, we at Brooklyn Based had a discussion about the continued viability of our monthly Culture Essentials feature during a time when it seemed there would be no events to preview. The thought was to give it shot for April, highlighting the smattering of virtual gatherings that crossed our radar alongside new TV, movie, and book releases, with the understanding that after that we’d probably table this column…
The one constant of this wild time
We’re all craving connection now, including us, so drop a line to let us know what beautiful things are catching your eye these days. Photo: Kate Hooker Well, ladies and gents, we are—incredibly—heading into week TEN of lockdown, and although things feel a tad less terrifying than they did at the onset of this thing, COVID’s frenetic emotional roller coaster continues apace. At this point, the lack of definitive answers to absolutely any of the millions of niggling questions that run through my mind on an endless loop every day feels like the ultimate crazymaker. What do these staggering unemployment numbers actually mean (other than just, obviously, “bad news”)? Are we all in denial about …