Brooklyn Brewery

My uncle was in town this weekend, and Saturday was his birthday. To say he loves beer is an understatement, so we planned to take a tour of the Brooklyn Brewery. The brewery is located near the waterfront in Williamsburg, and was founded in 1988. The tours are free, but there was some initial drama involving tickets—we didn't know we needed them, or where to get them, and after waiting in two lines were told the tour was sold out until a kind employee took pity on us and let us join the one in progress.

The tour is short and a little uneventful—I can see why it's free—but the brewery has an interesting history and essentially brought brewing back to Brooklyn after the industry had all but disappeared from the borough. I've always been a fan of their Milton Glaser-designed logo (he still designs all of the labels) and the story of how it came to be is pretty great.

In addition to making/bottling a portion of the beer in Williamsburg (another portion is made upstate) there is a tasting room attached to the brewery where you can try out all the different varieties. It's actually pretty cheap, by New York standards (about $5/beer) and the ones we tried were all great. It was really crowded, but the line moved quickly—you can also take your beer with you on the tour, which I think should be standard for every tour I take from now on.