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Overview

Okay, to be perfectly honest, visiting the Brooklyn Brewery was not exactly an earthshaking experience. I took a long ride on the subway expecting an interesting and entertaining tour followed by at least a short period or beer-filled enjoyment, but alas, this was not to be.

The Trek

I jumped on the subway around 3:00pm and after braving the enormously unreliable L Line, I arrived in Williamsburg a bare 10 minutes before the last tour was scheduled to start. Speeding past the lackadaisical hipsters that clogged the streets near the Bedford station stop, I made my way into a slightly shadier part of town reaching the brewery doors just in time to catch the tour.

The Tour

Unfortunately, as it turns out, the “tour” is really not much more than a view of the brewery’s single brewing room and a difficult to hear history lesson with some beer brewing basics mixed in. I’ll save you the trouble of making the trek over to Williamsburg and just give you the distilled version: A couple of guys decided to quit their day jobs to make beer. Despite naming their company the Brooklyn Brewery, they started out brewing and bottling their beer in upstate New York where they still have most of their operation. They ultimately bought and refurbished the old factory building in Williamsburg that we were then standing in, where they now make about a third of their beer.

The Beer

Now as I had mentioned, I expected to get some beer out of this trip, but after getting out of the lackluster tour, I didn’t have the heart to wait in the gargantuan line that spanned almost the entire length of the building, just to get one or two cold ones before the place closed down at 6:00. The brewery itself is apparently a popular spot, as the bar area was quite crowded even before the tour let out, but I wasn’t going to lose another hour of my life on line to find out why. Incidentally, I did manage to get a free beer due to a case of mistaken identity (someone thought I was part of a private party) and the beer was, as I had expected quite excellent. Just not two-hours-in-the-subway -and-one-hour-in-line excellent. Oh, and incase you were wondering, they make their beer with 100% unfiltered New York City tap water. Well, whatever it is that they do to their beer, it’s working.

The Bottom Line

The tour didn’t cost me anything aside from the time it took to get there, but it also wasn’t really worth that trip in the first place, and the bar was the same story. I’d have to say that unless you’re a diehard fan of the Brooklyn Brewery’s collection of delicious beverages and desperately need to make the pilgrimage to justify your beer worshipping existence, you’re probably better off sitting this one out. If you really want to learn more about the brewery and its fruits, save yourself the trip, buy a couple of six packs of your favorite variety (there are eight, all quite good) and read everything you ever wanted to know about them on the official website.

My next event will be the postponed but not forgotten Wayne Krantz, playing live at 55 Bar this Thursday. I think this is gonna be a pretty good one, so keep watching for new updates and I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 5:55 pm and is filed under Bars and Clubs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.