Strawberry, hops & pink peppercorn! And an article on CHOW.com

It's strawberry season in south Jersey!  The crop this year seems to be quite big - I picked up 2 flats of strawberries from Cherry Lane farm (they have a stand at Union Square farmer's market).

And Tony has wanted to try out a hops soda for months now, so here we go. We picked up fresh local hops from Brooklyn Kitchn (Chinook hops) and steeped them with ground up pink peppercorn to extract the floral notes without too much of the bitter flavors. We'll be debuting this at the Flea this Saturday, so come by and check it out.

And in other news, thanks to Roxanne the associate editor at CHOW.com for including us in her article on how food entrepreneurs are using platforms like kickstarter.com to start businesses. We've mentioned this a several times before, but we really couldn't have done this without the help of people who pledged to us on Kickstarter.  It's a great platform and we encourage anyone with an idea to use it.
The story can be read here: http://www.chow.com/stories/12176?tag=main_body;feature_story

Rhubarb & Thai Basil - and a potential love story?

A few days late, but last weekend was ridiculously busy! We sold out of 6 kegs by 3:45pm.  I'm sure a lot of it had to do with being featured in DailyCandy's weekend guide:

http://www.dailycandy.com/new-york/article/83424/NYC-Events-and-Diversions

And our rhubarb & thai basil turned out really well - despite my worries about how people would react to such an unexpected combination.  By the way, there are several types of Thai basil... the one below is just one of 3 or 4 that is commonly used in Thai cuisine.  The basil below is the basil that is usually found in Vietnamese pho, and has purple stems with a distinct licorice-y taste. 

One of the most interesting parts of working the Flea is meeting the people who want to try our slightly odd-ball beverages.  Our friends mentioned it would be fun to post some of the stories that we hear, and I thought I'd start with one that particularly tickled me.  

We received a greater number of customers than usual even though we bought 6 kegs which would normally last us till 4:30pm, but this week we were out at 3:45pm.  We were starting to clean up when a young man ran up to us, requesting rhubarb & thai basil soda. We told him apologetically that that was the first to sell out. 

"What?? You mean there's nothing left? Not even one cup? You can't turn the kegs upside down?"

This was definitely on the far end of the distraught customer-spectrum. 

"Sorry man... we were ridiculously busy today."

"It's for this girl I'm trying to get with! She told me she specifically wanted rhubarb and thai basil! What do I do now?  I really like this girl!"

We checked our lines, and nope, we were most definitely out of everything.  

"How about apple & ginger? We dropped off a case of apple and ginger at Palo Santo last night - you can buy one there for her.  And plus there they'll be in bottles, which is probably better than surprising a girl with a cup of warm flat soda."

"awww, but she specifically requested rhubarb and thai basil!"

So now we're curious - how will this story end? 

Brooklyn Soda Works available soon in a couple more places

We've been talking with Ben in Bierkraft in Park Slope (he very incredibly helpful with directing us towards the correct equipment to start up with), and hopefully in a few weeks he'll be done with his renovation of the interior space and will have a couple of extra lines for kegs.  One of these lines will be used for our cucumber, lime & sea salt!

This is great news - we're big fans of what they do (they have over 1000 varieties of bottled beer and have several taps where they'll refill a growler for you, as well as having great sandwiches).  And I guess since they're in Park Slope which has a high number of toddlers and pregnant ladies... beer doesn't work for everyone...

Also, in other very exciting news - we're doing a trial run this week with Blue Hill restaurant in the West Village for our Apple and Ginger.  We met their Chef de Cuisine, Trevor, a few weeks ago at the Flea.  Since then, he's been really patient with our questions and has been great to work with.  We're keeping our fingers crossed...

Rhubarb time!

It's spring and that means rhubarb

And since it's almost mother's day, I thought I'd say hi to my mum in Hong Kong and dedicate this post to her!
My mum, who normally doesn't have a sweet tooth, is quite a fan of rhubarb crumble, a traditional English dessert (she lived in the UK for years and had me there before we moved back to Hong Kong).  In America's north east they make their appearance in late April and hang about all through summer.

We've been playing around with various rhubarb combinations... we tried rhubarb with ginger and cardamom, but the fragrance of the cardamom didn't quite come through, so the other day we decided to go with star anise, which worked much better.

Unfortunately the weather for this Saturday looks very unstable so we're not sure if we'll be at the Flea (stay tuned for an update), but either way, there'll a rhubarb & ginger soda on the menu soon. I've been talking to Lisa at Phillips Farms in NJ and we're using their rhubarb (which despite not being the traditional red color, is incredibly flavorful).

Sold out! Go get your apple ginger at Palo Santo

Successful day - very tired, but it was worth it. We sold out of 6 kegs by 3:30pm.

But we're about to deliver 12 bottles over to Palo Santo in Park Slope.  Go get 'em!