I was excited to learn that two of my favorite things, New York City and gum, have a bit of shared history. Here's the short version:
In 1869, General Santa Anna, eleven-time former President of Mexico, was exiled in Staten Island, staying with Thomas Adams, a former photographer he had met decades before.
Santa Anna thought chicle could be mixed with rubber to make cheaper tires and suggested it ...
We've all read Brooklyn Based's excellently thorough guides to coffices--coffee shops that are particularly good for working--but maybe you like something a little stronger with your free wifi.
I know I do, so here's a short list of my favorite bars for working all around Brooklyn, or at least the parts of Brooklyn where I spend all my time. Of course, more research is needed, so look out for updat...
I've been on a fermenting rice kick recently (which you'll only see the results of when the experiments are all done), and this morning came across Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture. Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture follows the adventures of Tadayasu Sawaki, a first-year college student at an agricultural university.
What a boring dude, right? Totally wrong! He can see microorganisms. Whether it's fo...
The other night, I was sitting in on Tim's Beekeeping 101 class when he mentioned that prior to 1622 or so, there weren't any honey bees in North America. Yeah, that's right.
Europeans brought them upon emigrating, and though they hit the East Coast early, it took over 200 years for them to get all the way to California. One colonist, John Eliot, even says that Native Americans referred to honeybees as the "...
We're kicking off a new bar room lecture series all about food, and you're all invited to our very first one on Tuesday, January 31st. Welcome to Masters of Social Gastronomy! That's MSG, of course.
Each month, Sarah Lohman of Four Pounds Flour and Jonathan Soma of the Brooklyn Brainery will take on a curious food topic and break down the history, science, and stories behind it.
This month's topic is STRANGE ...
I just returned from the frozen outdoors after today's Lower East Side Street Art tour, taking in some of the city's most interesting and illegal art.
Lia, our awesome guide, showed us a million stickers, tags, wheatpaste posters and murals, and I've done my best to remember a few of them are so you can tour at your own leisure.
One thing to remember--beside the fact that these works can fade into the ci...
Last night I sat in on our Sour Beer class. You might've had a lambic before, or seen them sitting around at a bodega around you - fancy half-wine-looking contraptions full of corks and wire and a comparatively hefty price tag. Although there are a ton of types of sour beer, lambics are probably the most easily found.
Preface: Sour beer is a traditionally Belgian brew made in an unsterile environment, which lets a...
My favorite fact from last night's Coffee: Comparative Brewing Methods wasn't about brewing methods at all, but about the coffee beans themselves: Coffee is seasonal. Just like anything you pick up at the farmers market waxes and wanes over the year, coffee beans are the same way.
Let's take Guatemalan coffee as an example. It's harvested between December and March, but there's about a 3-month lag between har...
Long ago, we started a teacher wish list to find folks to lead classes on some of our most requested subjects. It usually languishes, un-updated, over on the teaching page, but today is a big day, as I've filled it full of new suggestions. Hooray!
If anything on the list below intrigues you, just fill out this handy little form, or shoot us an email at info@brooklynbrainery.com. You can read up on all the sp...
This isn't a Brainery event, but I know you guys are super interested in NYC history, so it must be brought to your attention!
Ben Feldman, one of our favorite people around here, is giving a free talk at Green-Wood Cemetery on Saturday, January 14th. He'll cover the process of digging up interesting history--what tools and resources are out there--and how to go about doing it yourself. After the talk, there's a t...
