5 of Brooklyn’s Food Influencers Talk About the State of Brooklyn Food
Erica Shea and Stephen Valand: Brooklyn Brew Shop
You’re not TOO many years past legal drinking age. How/when/why did you become passionate about beer?
We really weren’t obsessed with beer until we started making it back in 2007. Stephen liked craft beer, and would always try the thing he hadn’t had on the menu. When we started brewing I thought I didn’t like beer at all. I had found my dad’s old brewing equipment and because I loved kitchen experiments (and apparently was a cheap girlfriend) I slapped a bow on it and gave it to Stephen as a present. From the first batch I was hooked; it turns out I had just never had good beer before (a red cup in college is not the best introduction!) From that first batch we were obsessed. We had made beer, it was delicious, it was alcohol and we couldn’t wait to show everyone else that they could do it too.
How did the idea for Brooklyn Brew Shop come about?
Our equipment was 20+ years old and we had initially headed to the Bowery kitchen supply stores thinking we could just swing through and pick up the few pieces that needed updating but couldn’t find anything we needed. When we started brewing there wasn’t a single place in NYC to buy beer making supplies, which was pretty shocking seeing New York has a billion of seemingly everything else. And after our first batch we kind of understood why there weren’t any shops; making beer was hard, it was messy, it required a large kitchen and roommates that wouldn’t mind you mucking it up, the grain was heavy, the kettles were heavy, the left over grain was heavy. When our friends tried the beer we made they immediately wanted to do it too, until they saw the pile of equipment and quickly switched back to just wanting to drink our batches. Erica couldn’t do a solo batch, or brew in her tiny Lower East Side apartment so we got to work figuring out a way to scale it down, make making beer feel more like cooking and something that you could do even in a tiny apartment kitchen.
Why should people invest the time and effort in making their own beers at home?
When you make your own beer, every batch is unique. Brewing gives you an understanding of what exactly goes into a beer and how tweaking one ingredient or adding another can lead to something completely new and entirely your own. Personally, we get bored pretty easily, and making our own beer means our fridge is always stocked with bottles of something new–and something we could never pick up at the bodega.
What are some of your favorite Brooklyn-born beers, and why?
Hop Showers from Other Half Brewing out of the farthest reaches of Carroll Gardens off of Hamilton Avenue is a fantastic beer. It’s super fresh and aromatic and akin to dancing in a hop field.
What’s your go-to Brooklyn bar?
We love TØRST in Greenpoint for its always amazing selection of far-flung and often-tart beers and St. Gambrinus Beer Bar on Atlantic when we’re looking for mid-day relaxing in a quiet backyard. Plus their lard bread is pretty tasty.