5 Boroughs Brewery Beer Tour by Andre Goines

When starting this assignment my intentions at first was to go to a winery or vineyard since we talk about wine all the time in class; hence writing about one would make things less difficult for me. Since we are in New York City vineyards are scarce so I decided to go to Five Boroughs Brewery with my classmate Nafiysa Chapman. Nafiysa works at a bar that Five boroughs also distributes canned beer to ” Captain Dan’s”; she was already going to Five Boroughs Brewery for her assignment and she said I could tag along . The Brewery is located at 215 47th St, Brooklyn NY which is in sunset park and also a few stops away from City Tech on the R train; finding the place was essentially easy.

We arrived roughly around 4pm and entered the tap room which is in front of the brew house; and was greeted by Brian who is Brooklyn sales representative for Five Boroughs Brewery, he sells and promotes the beers that don’t sell in the tap room. The tap room inside looked like a tavern,very spacious, and has a lot of setting options for guest , after making these observations Brian explained that the tap room is also open four days a week Thursday to Sunday and operates as a bar; although for our tour and tasting the tap room was closed which I appreciated. Brian then escorted us counter where the beer on tap was located and proceeded with giving us a tasting of the 16 different beers they had available on tap.

Brian began the tasting by asking what beer did we liked to drink? I answered and said that I liked corona he then explained to us that Corona is a Adjunct lager which is a beer that is made of anything but wheat or barley for example Corona is brewed using corn and not wheat or barley. Barley is traditionally used for making most beers and is one of the main components; we were also told that Beer is made using four essential ingredients Water, Barley, Hops, & Yeast.

We ended up tasting most of the beers available on tap, the Beer that i personally enjoyed tasting the most would have to be the Honey lager beer. Brian explained that the honey used to brew this beer comes from the apiary and bee colony located at Industry city. The aroma of the beer smelled very gingery with a hint of honey which wasn’t too overwhelming; the taste of the beer was very light and smooth coming down the back of the throat, the honey hits the back of the palate but its not as much of a prominent taste . this is a beer that I would definitely buy if offered at an establishment.

As the tasting concluded we started to go on our tour of the brewhouse which was a few feet beyond the tap room. Right before you go deep into the brewhouse there’s a walk in refrigerator where a lot of there bulk yeast and hops are stored as well as kegs and beer that has to reach curtain temperatures; on the floor above are the offices where the CTO and accountants work. to the left of the Walk in refrigerator is a large tank and pipes to filter out the waste water after Fermentation takes place in the larger industrial fermentation tanks. As we continued the tour Brian explain the beer making process by first escorting us to where the barley is grounded together into a fine smaller pieces and releases the sugar content the machinery used to do this is called a Mill and we saw brewers adding barley as it was being mashed. Then we were escourted to the fermentation tanks and the tanks did range in size and were labeled by what beer was being made; these tanks were adjacent to the Mill on the left side of the brewery. Also there are pipes that the waste water comes out of the Fermentation tanks and is syphoned into the waste water tank I explained before; Brian explained that they pride themselves on managing the waste and making sure that nothing harmful is entering the environment due to the beer making process. on the right side of the brewhouse was the labeling, canning, and packaging station where there is a huge conveyer belt. I personally would of loved a demonstration of the labeling and packaging but at the time they were not labeling or packaging anything. The tour concluded with Brian showing us the rear of the brewhouse which was filled with wine barrels; when we asked what was the point of the barrels he explained that to make sour beers the beer could be fermented in the barrels for a more distinct taste; another observation we made was that they had a lot of cats and this is done to turn away any rodents or pest that will may enter the brewhouse through they’re garage opening which is also in the rear of the brewhouse.

The tour and tasted lasted about two and a half hours and overall my expectations of this tour was exceeded; I learned more than I expected and have a new appreciation for beer that I never thought I had; Me and Nafiysa both agreed that we would go again during the bar hours as customers.