On Saturday morning, after some pancakes and bacon whilst watching the football, Tom and I went to the Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg. At the weekends they do free tours so we thought we'd go along and see what it was like.
The building's quite small in the middle of the more industrial looking area of Williamsburg, but behind those big red doors they're brewing an awful lot of beer.We got there for about 1pm when the first tour was supposed to start, there was already quite a queue forming so we got ourselves a pint of their Summer Ale while we waited. Then the small crowd of people were herded into the keg room...
To say it was a 'tour' is pushing it a bit, it was a bit of informal chat by the kegs, but it was very interesting hearing where they make their ales, how many bottles they make (they're expanding this year and will going from 12,000 to 100,000 bottles a week - is that right Tom, I can't quite remember?). It was also funny to hear that they sell Brooklyn Lager all over the world, but they've not managed to break into the West Coast market yet!
After the 20 minute talk, we heading back out into the indoor beer gardeny bit with our beer tokens and tried some of their other beers - we had another Summer Ale and a Buzz Bomb (8%!). I think quite a few people go there and treat it like a pub, on each table by the bar is a pizza menu for a local takeaway place - so people go along, buy their beers with their tokens and order a pizza. It's a very relaxed feeling, very Brooklynish.
It was a lovely way to start the afternoon - next stop Brooklyn Bowl.
Yes, that's right - they want to increase to 100,000 and expand their current brewery. It was great to see where the beer we'd first tasted in Brooklyn last year is made... and how odd to think we can drink it in a small bar in Chapel Allerton, but not on the west coast of USA?
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