Life

Craft beer: Don’t dodge Brooklyn

Hey, y'all – that's me in the Brooklyn Brewery
Hey, y'all – that's me in the Brooklyn Brewery Hey, y'all – that's me in the Brooklyn Brewery

WHEN did useful tips become 'hacks'? I guess it was around about the same time that terms like renovation and redevelopment made way for 'gentrification'.

Of course a once rundown area getting a lick of paint and a bit of a clean-up isn’t always termed gentrification, it's more the tastes that said clean-up serve which depend on that label.

The New York borough of Brooklyn has been held up as a postcard of gentrification and it certainly oozes a certain hipster chic but my reason for crossing the East River was to visit the Brooklyn Brewery, a building which predates that dreaded 'g' word.

It's certainly a far cry from the unrelenting post-neon (it's all monster-size high definition screens now) assault on the senses that is Times Square and the Midtown area of Manhattan. A subway from there can leave you just a few blocks from the brewery and a walk down Bedford Avenue gives you a glimpse of some of the cool bars which prop up area's hip reputation.

The brewery itself is located in a warehouse-style facility in the Williamsburg neighbourhood. The way in is through a large red metal door and you are immediately greeted with four imposing fermentation tanks, reminiscent of the sky scrapers crammed into the island on the west side of the water.

Tours have to be booked on weekdays (it's a bit more free and easy at the weekend) and the brewery doesn’t open until 6pm, so I was 'only here for the beer'. Our time was limited further due to a private function that evening, so I quickly picked up a few tokens (you need these to buy beer) and headed to the bar in what is enticingly called The Tasting Room.

After perusing a menu which showed a wide range of beers far beyond the signature Brooklyn Lager, I plumped for a Sorachi Ace Saison, which was fresh and funky and a great accompaniment to a game of cornhole (basically chucking a bean bag into a hole on a wooden board) with my ever-patient non-beer-drinking wife.

Once downed, the next sup was a Bel Air Sour which was fruity, tart and refreshing and by this stage I was really starting to feel at home amidst the wooden picnic tables and whitewashed brick walls. Sadly though, it was time to slide back through the big red metal door into a chilly Brooklyn evening.