Plow to Plate Presents: Brewed in Brooklyn

Writer/Director John Weber’s 2013 documentary, Brewed in Brooklyn, was inspired by the Brewed in Brooklyn walking tour from which it takes its name.  While the real life tour of old breweries in Bushwick and Williamsburg takes three and a half hours, Weber’s cinematic tour through the borough’s interwoven economic, cultural and social history is a mere 50 minutes.  Several of the film’s docents are actual tour guides for Urban Oyster Tours.  Other experts include Steve Hindy, one of the founders of Brooklyn Brewery, Walter Liebman, Chairman of Rheingold Brewing Company and a direct descendant of the company’s German-Jewish founders, Will Anderson, the author of Breweries of Brooklyn and seven other books on beer and breweriana, Celeste Yarnall, the last “Miss Rheingold” (1964), and a handful of present day craft microbrewers.

Weber’s tour begins in the early-19th century, when Brooklyn was not just a borough, but its own city.  At that time most brewers were German immigrants who brought with them their traditional lager and wheat beer recipes, as well as their know-how.  Breweries were local, serving the surrounding community, whose fresh, pure water came from the Ridgewood Reservoir, built in Queens on the border of Brooklyn in the 1850s.  By the 1880s Brooklyn hosted 35 breweries with annual revenues of 8 million dollars and by the turn of the 20th century there were as many as 50 breweries in Brooklyn - now the fourth largest City in the United States - more than any other place in America.  A 12 block section of Bushwick, called Old Brewers’ Row, contained 12 breweries - one on literally every street corner.    The most famous of these brands were Schaefer, Piels, and Rhinegold – a beer that was created for the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, which quickly became the company’s top seller and signature product for years to come.  Beer was big business employing thousands with a living wage but Brooklyn’s heyday as the brewing capital of the world did not last for long. 

Though three of the top ten brewers in the United States hailed from Brooklyn as late as the 1950s, Prohibition (1920-1933) forced the closure of most of the earlier, regional breweries and those that survived the teetotaler era were severely weakened.  By mid-century certain other factors were at play that further eroded Brooklyn’s preeminence as the beer capital of the United States.  There was stiff competition with larger Midwestern breweries that could produce beer more cheaply to a growing market.  And advances in refrigeration, pasteurization, bottling and canning, and shipping and transportation favored the Midwestern breweries due to larger economies of scale.  Meanwhile television and magazine advertising furthered the idea of superior “national” beers over local ones, helping to shape Americans’ growing preference for light pilsner beers (Coors, Miller, Budweiser, Molson, Old Milwaukee, Pabst, Blatz) over the stronger pre-Prohibition lagers and ales Brooklyn was known for. Finally, New York City’s deep economic crisis in the 1970s and the problems that came with it – high taxes, crime, dirty streets, and burning neighborhoods - was the death knell to a once proud industry.  The last of the great manufacturers, Rheingold, shut down its New York City plant in 1976 costing the city thousands of jobs and leaving Brooklyn without a single brewery.

Brewed in Brooklyn argues that Brooklyn’s economic, cultural, social, and beer history are inextricably tied. Beer’s nadir of plant closings and labor strikes coincided with the City’s near bankruptcy.  The arrival of Brooklyn Brewery in 1987 and the opening of its Williamsburg brewery in the site of a former matzo factory in 1996 heralded the borough’s renaissance, despite the fact that early on truck drivers refused to deliver to Bushwick because of crime. 

Now new beer venues arrive with surprising regularity.  Bergn, a Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg backed beer hall, is slated to open in Prospect Heights later this spring.  Covenhoven, named after a Crown Heights colonial era farm estate, just opened on Classon Avenue.  Dirck the Norseman, Greenwood’s long awaited brewpub opened in January.  Pickle Shack, a collaboration with Dogfish Head Brewery, debuted in Carroll Gardens last fall.  And Bed-Vyne Brew is a popular new bar in Bed-Stuy that opened last summer. 

This storied past and the present day revival is interwoven.  The Well, a popular Bushwick music venue and beer garden was once The Hittleman Brewery.  The old Rheingold plant is slated for rezoning for condos.  Brooklyn Brewery’s famous, simple logo evokes the old Brooklyn Dodgers.  Yesterday’s beer merchants, makers, innkeepers, and speakeasy workers are today’s artists, musicians, and 64 ounce growler toting home brewers.

Brewed in Brooklyn features footage of some vintage old beer commercials and film maker Weber even gets Walter Liebman to sing the classic Rheingold jingle.  Weber is a jovial host, a beer lover willing to imbibe on camera, who’s found a topic that he and his interview subjects are passionate about.  Brooklyn, like peanuts, clearly goes well with beer. 

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Brewed in Brooklyn: Tuesday, April 8th, 2014

Park Slope Food Coop – 2nd Floor

7:00 p.m.  Free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.