While I read that many were underwhelmed by Juno, the blizzard of 2015, its leavings occupied my attention for most of yesterday. Our house must be the point where all the snow in the neighborhood collects.
Having shoveled out yesterday, this morning, I woke early and went down to the brewery, crunching through the foot-thick layer of white till my feet were numb with cold. Mike and Other Mike were already hard at work on our new New York Saison, a beer brewed from locally grown and sourced ingredients. Everything in this beer is 100% New York.
While the Mikes worked on that, I busied myself with kegging Sixty-Seven, a Saison Brune, which Secret Engine will be releasing in craft beer establishments across Brooklyn and Manhattan. The beer is named after the address where Mike Mare developed the recipe.
Coming up this weekend is our annual (fifth? sixth?) Long Island Nano Cask Fest. We will start pouring at 1 pm. “Nano” here refers to nanobrewery. We are trying to limit participation in this festival to true Long Island nanobreweries and there’s quite a few now. Given the number of breweries we are able to be more selective this year and hopefully in years to come there will be some kind of friendly, but heated competition to get a beer selected for inclusion in this small festival.
Our focus has always been on the small and the local. Which is why we are trying to brew with mostly New York grown and sourced ingredients. Still, the economic incentive is small since locally grown grain and hops are way more expensive than the industrially produced variety. You could say that we are subsidizing these all-local beers (taking a loss), but our collective brewing project isn’t (and never has been) a capitalist venture. People and the joy of living are more important than any amount of money.
We hope you are able to join us this Saturday for a wonderful little festival. Details are on our web site.
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