Brooklyn Brewing Company - Brooklyn Brown Ale

The Brooklyn Brown Ale has been recognized nationally for its complex and delicious flavor. Made exclusively with American ingredients, it took the Bronze at the Great American Beer Festival in the Strong Ale category in 1991 as well as the Gold in 1992 when entered in the American Brown Ale category. It's brewed with a combination of two-row pale, crystal, chocolate and black malts to attain a complex creamy texture. You should note that Brooklyn Brown is more heavily hopped than its well-known British forbears. Look for a complex, full flavor that is described by beer guru Michael Jackson as, "brew that is closer to Newcastle than London, but bigger than either." He gives it three stars in his Pocket Guide to Beer and we know you're going to like it too!

In 1987, journalist Steve Hindy and banker Tom Potter quit their jobs and established the Brooklyn Brewery. Their initial goal was simply to bring good beer back to New York. They commissioned a fourth generation German brewer based in America to design Brooklyn Lager, their first beer. To find a recipe, brewer William Moeller consulted the notebooks of his grandfather, who had brewed beer in Brooklyn at the turn of the century.

It was hard going at first for the two. They made a test batch of beer in their Brooklyn basement, only to find that most distributors were controlled by the big breweries and uninterested in small, local brands. They bought a van and began distributing their own beer, however, hard-boiled New York tavern owners were skeptical about a full-flavored beer that cost as much as the leading imports and was unadvertised.

Slowly but surely, the lager caught on and soon they were distributing more than a dozen microbrews. With that success, Hindy and Potter opened a new microbrewery three years ago, some 20 years after the last of the great Brooklyn breweries closed up shop. The new 25-barrel brewery is one of the largest in the East. The stainless steel brewhouse is set in an 1860's steel foundry in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn - a mecca for artists and filmmakers such as Spike Lee. The Brooklyn Brewery's 50,000 square-foot brewing facility includes a tasting room, a 300-person party room, and a gallery for local artists.

Stephen Hindy, president and co-founder of Brooklyn Brewery, spent his earlier years working as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press. Hindy says he learned homebrewing from American diplomats stuck in bone-dry Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Hindy covered the Iran-Iraq war, the hostage crisis in Iran, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He was sitting behind Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat when he was assassinated in Cairo.

Hindy, a 1971 graduate of Cornell University, is also a pioneer in the pairing of food and beer in New York, collaborating with some of New York's best chefs at Windows on the World, Tropica, and The Culinary Institute of New York. He is a former director of the American Institute of Wine & Food and the Fund for the Borough of Brooklyn. He has chaired the AIWF's American beer and food tastings, and with the Fund he founded NY Beerfest, the annual International Beer and Food Tasting under the Brooklyn Bridge.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (718) 486-7422 or check out their web site at www.brooklynbrewery.com.