Last Saturday, on April 27th, I visited the Brooklyn Brewery. I wasn’t as fortunate to have visited a vineyard during my break so I went with an alternative. Brooklyn Brewery is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. According to their website, on Saturdays, Brooklyn Brewery hosts free tours every half hour. The brewery only holds a certain number of people at a time so I waited in a very long line before being able to get in. I was able to attend a 4:30pm tour where the workers explain the brewing process of how beer is made.

The line outside to get into Brooklyn Brewery. It was nice out so it wasn’t too bad

Surprisingly, there weren’t too many locals on the tour. A lot of people on this tour were from out of the country: Japan, Brazil, Sweden . Our tour guide mentioned that Sweden is the second largest market in the beer industry; the five boroughs of New York, specifically Brooklyn being the largest. The first stop on the tour was the brew house, “where the magic happens”. In this brew house, they store their current brewing system as well as their old brewing system which isn’t operational because it works manually and it’s hard to work with it in the volume of beer they make daily. However, they do use it to store water.

These large vessels are the brewery current brewing system where beer is made

The four major ingredients used to make beer is hops, barley, yeast and water. Ninety to ninety five percent of beer is just water. One thing that makes their beer so special is that the water that they get here in New York City comes from the Catskill Mountains and gets a lot of natural filtration. They don’t have to do a ton of treatments to the water. Malt is the process of germinated cereal grains. Most beers tend to be made with malted barley. The barley is grinded up and put through these travel pipes where it meets hot water almost as if making tea. What this does is activates enzymes in the grains that cause it to break down and release its sugars. Once this is all done you drain the water from the mash which is now full of sugar from the grains. This sticky, sweet liquid is called wort. It’s basically unmade beer, sort of like how dough is unmade bread.

A sample of the malted barley was passed around so everyone could see

The wort is then boiled  while hops and other spices are added several times. According to Beeriety, hops are the small, green cone-like fruit of a vine plant. They provide bitterness to balance out all the sugar in the wort, provide flavor and also act a natural preservative. Hops are also responsible for the aromatics of beer.

Sample of hop pellets that were passed around

Once the wort is done boiling and is cooled, strained and filtered. It is then put in one of the large brewing vessels and yeast is added to it for fermenting. The second stop of the tour was to the packaging hall and fermentation room. The tour guide explains that their are two big families of yeast used to make beer and they are ale and lager yeast. Ale yeast ferments very quickly, usually one to two weeks and ferments at a warmer temperature than lager yeast. Ale beers leaves behind flavor associated with the ale yeast itself such as fruity flavors, spicy flavors, banana and clove, etc. Lager comes from the word “lagern” which means to store and it typically takes a longer time to ferment, usually four to six weeks at a cooler temperature and more cleanly not leaving behind any flavors. It tends to be crisper. Basically the yeast eats up all that sugar in the wort and spits out carbon dioxide and alcohol as waste products.

My tour guide was very knowledgeable on how beer is made despite only working at the brewery on the weekends for 3 months. However, she does make whiskey on the weekdays at another establishment and says you have to know how to make beer first before you know how to make whiskey

After the tour, we were directed towards the tasting room which wasn’t the typically tasting room I was expecting. It seems more like a lounge where people came in to buy beer and sat and hung out. Kids and pets were allowed in this area.

Tasting room is a huge open space where people try different beers

This is the menu of beers people chose from for tasting

Me at Brooklyn Brewery as I pose for a stranger to take my picture .. Until next time

References

How Beer is Made | Beeriety. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://blog.beeriety.com/2009/07/06/how-beer-is-made/

Brewery, B. (n.d.). Visiting The Tasting Room : Brooklyn Brewery. Retrieved from https://brooklynbrewery.com/visit/visiting-the-brooklyn-brewery#_ga=2.9866230.214292393.1556916543-965157385.1556916543

My Winery Analysis is about Red Hook Winery. The North Fork of Long Island is dominated by the sea, in every sense. The growing region is situated on a narrow “fork” of sea-level land that is sandwiched between the Great Peconic Bay on one side and by the wide Peconic Sound on the other. (https://www.redhookwinery.com/) 

This is where the cashier is and where to pay for your products

It was a little annoying to find Red Hook Winery because one, the roads were very bumpy and two, there was a warehouse that was so big and everything looked the same on Pier 41. The windows of the shop were I believe very tinted to the point you can’t see the inside. From the outside, the shop seems huge, but when you walk in it’s pretty small for a winery.

This is an outside view/look of Red Hook Winery

Red Hook winery has many grape varieties grown, such as Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, etc. (http://www.winethirtyflight.com/blog/2016/7/27/red-hook)

This is a tasting room inside Red Hook Winery

Red Hook Winery’s tasting rooms have a lot of wood and barrels around, seems like rooms to have great conversations and drink wonderful wines in. Your table to drink on is a barrel, which I liked because it’s different and creative than just a normal table.

This is some of the wines on sale for $25 in Red Hook Winery

Their prices weren’t so bad, they ranged from $25 to $60. Customers can also do a tasting of four selections for $18, 2 oz pours, of a party of 6 or more, and also you can receive a 10% off a single bottle with tasting.

This is some barrels with wine and the equipment used to make them

This is Red Hook Winery’s vineyard and grape vines

Red Hook Winery’s vineyard is huge and beautiful and it grows grapes, such as Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and many more.

The Winery has 3 winemakers that have different vinifications. One is Abe Schoener that prefers to make wine with limited control and interruption to the fermentation process. Another is Robert Foley, that is more traditional in his winemaking approaches, such as he tends to resemble Napa Valley reds and French whites and all of his wines are aged in old French oak barrels for an extended period of time. The last one is Christopher Nicholson, that allows the terroir to speak through the wine, and his goal is to interpret what a single property tastes like through the wine and his methodology varies based on the grape.

This is Me inside Red Hook Winery

The staff in Red Hook Winery were very friendly and greet you once you enter, sounded very knowledgable about wine and winemaking. A Yelp user named Ashley P. said “This is my absolute favorite local wine shop.” (https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/the-red-hook-winery-brooklyn?select=1nByNS6-LMHELVBXKYlQjw)

Reference List

The Red Hook Winery Website, https://www.redhookwinery.com/vineyards

• This is Red Hook Winery official website, which talks about the Winery’s Story, wines, vineyards, and Island Hope.

Jennings, K. (2016), Red Hook Winery showcases New York State viticulture in an urban on-water setting, http://www.winethirtyflight.com/blog/2016/7/27/red-hook

• This article is about how Red Hook Winery makes its wine, how to get to Red Hook Winery, and Red Hook Winery’s Tasting lineup,

Ashley P. (2014), The Red Hook Winery, https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/the-red-hook-winery-brooklyn?select=1nByNS6-LMHELVBXKYlQjw

• This is a Yelp review by Ashley P about her experience with Red Hook Winery