Brooklyn Soda Works

Get your bottles! Cocktail recipes!

2011-12-12T08:25:00.000-05:00

For a limited time this holiday season, you can get your hands on some of our bottles of apple & ginger soda at the Brooklyn Flea (now indoors at One Hanson Place in Fort Greene on Saturdays and Sundays). We also wanted to take the opportunity to hand out some of our favorite (and simple) cocktail recipes for using the apple & ginger carbonated juices with.

Apple Ginger Dark n’ Stormy
2oz rum
6oz apple & ginger soda
about 1/2 oz lime juice
Combine in tall glass with ice. Stir.
Garnish with wedge of lime.

Bourbon with Apple Ginger soda
2oz bourbon
4 oz apple & ginger
dash of angostura bitters
Stir. Serve in short glass.

Beer Table drinks

2011-11-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

We had a lot of fun coming up with the drinks for the Beer Table tasting event. The final menu for the evening:
- Citra Hops Soda with pink peppercorn foam
- Pineapple with sage & ginger ice cubes
- salted plum soda with Thai basil
- Honeycrisp apple with cranberry ice cubes
- spiced ginger soda with coconut pandan foam and a cinnamon garnish
- and a warm dessert to cap it it : hot almond milk

Thanks again to everyone who came out for the event!

Beer Table Tasting Event: Nov 7th 7-9pm

2011-10-31T11:52:00.000-04:00

We are very proud to announce our first ever tasting event on Nov 7th which will be held at Beer Table, one of our favorite beer bars and the host of a monthly homebrewer's night.

Not just content with our 40+ flavors that we have dispensed at various markets and events, we have been working hard on foams, gels, flavored ice cubes and garnishes (don't forget, one of us is a chemist). This tasting represents some of our wackiest ideas, all of which we are trying out for the first time. Reserve your ticket by emailing: info@beertable.com (tickets are $35)

Tasting Menu

- Citra hops & honey soda, with a

pink peppercorn foam head

- Salted plum soda with Thai basil

- Fresh pressed Honeycrisp apple soda with cranberry ice cubes

- Spiced ginger soda with coconut pandan foam

- Warm almond milk dessert

ART/IS/AN/EATING tasting event - Nov 3rd at Brooklyn Arts Council

2011-10-26T10:45:00.000-04:00

ART/IS/AN/EATING

In conjunction with co-founder Caroline Mak's site specific installation at Brooklyn Arts Council, BAC Gallery and Mak invite you to a tasting of food made by fellow artists & food makers on Nov 3rd, 6:30pm to 8:30pm at BAC Gallery, 111 Front St.

Making art and making food have always been interrelated disciplines. For artist Caroline Mak, co-founder of Brooklyn Soda Works, whose site-specific installation Chain Reaction is now on-view in BAC Gallery, both the acts of creating food and art have an element of futility. The practice of making is long and labor intensive, all for the creation of objects that are consumed (or not at all) in the space of seconds by a ravenous yet sometimes indifferent public. Why then, are some people drawn to both these careers? In this tasting event, curated by the artist, a sampling of food items by a variety of these makers (some of whom may be better known to the general public by their work in food) will be open to the public. Rather than focusing on artists who use food as a medium, there will be a range of artists some of whom may not consider their trades particularly related, to those whose work in the food world sprung naturally from their experiences in the art world. Whatever the reason, and however you may or may not see the hand of the artist present in these edibles, it promises to be an evening of deliciousness.

TASTING MENU/PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Ginger syrup by Morris Kitchen. Kari Morris studied painting at California College of the Arts and has worked organizing art fairs, and continues to develop recipes for Morris Kitchen.

Eleanor Whitney & Tracy Candido of Eat Art NYC will create mini-zines mapping the connection between two works of art and two dishes. Tracy has extensive experience organizing exhibitions and public programs and is also the Director of the Community Cooking Club, a collaborative cooking and eating event. Eleanor is a Brooklyn-based arts administrator and educator, musician and writer, as well as a museum educator who has worked at the Brooklyn Museum and Rubin Museum.

Honey and maple syrup from Peter Nadin’s farm, Old Field Farm. Peter is a renowned artist who has exhibited his work worldwide, including a recent show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. Old Field Farm in the Catskills consists of 150 acres with a wild bee pasture.

Kombucha from Rich Awn of Mombucha. Rich creates small hand crafted batches of kombucha using recipes handed down from his grandmother. Rich is also a performance artist and jester, and can be seen and heard, inserting himself into various mainstream media outlets.

Chocolates by Nathan Hodges of Raaka Chocolate. Nathan is an accomplished song writer and lead singer for the band Tall Stranger.

Cookies from Amelia Coulter of Sugarbuilt. Amelia Coulter is a trained sculptor and is the founder of Sugarbuilt. She creates edible lush cookies that reference art & architecture as well as regionally specific traditions & objects.

Salsa by Matt Burns of The Brooklyn Salsa Company. Matt is a classically trained actor who works in film, television and theater.

Soda by Caroline Mak of Brooklyn Soda Works. Brooklyn Soda Works was formed by an artist and a chemist in 2010. Fresh seasonal fruits and herbs are used to create flavor combinations such as Concord grape & fennel; and strawberry, hops & pink peppercorn. Their love of making things by hand and of experimentation are key components of the company.

Channing Daughters grape blend

2011-10-06T11:10:00.000-04:00

One of our favorite things to do at the end of summer is to head out to Montauk and camp on the beach, hitting up the wineries and beaches after the summer Hampton's crowds have all gone home. We were lucky enough to bump into Channing Daughters Winemaker Christopher Tracy at the tasting room when we were there, and he very generously gave us a crate of beautiful grapes from their vineyard - muscat, sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio... Of course we couldn't resist trying to make our version of a white grape soda. The result is pretty fascinating - light, a bit funky with so many of the characteristics of the grapes coming through. It will only be available this coming Saturday at Smorgasburg!

Hong Kong 'silk-stocking' milk tea - Part 1

2011-08-29T09:42:00.000-04:00

I'm in Hong Kong for the next week and am embarking on some research for the soon to be launched winter project of Brooklyn Soda Works. Hint - it will involve a giant tea bag that resembles an overstretched silk stocking.

'Silk stocking' style milk tea is a uniquely Hong Kong phenomenon; influenced by British colonial tea habits - it is a black tea sweetened with sugar and served with evaporated milk, it is available at all hours of the day at 'cha-chaan tengs' (Chinese diners that serve inexpensive Hong Kong style western dishes). It's much more than a simple cup of milk tea though; it has a uniquely fine and smooth texture that is due to the cloth that the tea is strained through repeatedly and the quality of the milk that is added. The reference to hoisery is due to the appearance of the cloth bag after a long period of use and the strong black tea has stained the fabric - supposedly the customers of one of the cha-chaan tengs started referring to it as 'silk stocking tea' and over time, the name stuck.

I've decided this is the year that I will try to make my own. It's a tough project though - it has involved a lot of caffeine and a few attempts to get grumpy old men to reveal their tea secrets. Each tea house has their own secret blend of tea leaves and every year there is a competition to crown the best silk-stocking tea maker. My first stop was to one of usual tea stops, Lan Fong Yuen. Perched on the edge of the market in Central, it was established fifty years ago as a 'dai pai dong' (an outdoor food stall). It's moved indoors but retains a tiny outdoor shack where the tea is made. Lan Fong Yuen has become a staple on the foodie tourist circuit, and its walls are lined with numerous food magazine reviews (if you go, try the pork bun and their French toast as well as their tea).

Their tea is strained 8 times through the large cloth bag and their tea is a secret blend of six different types of tea leaves. They do not use the usual 'Black & White' brand of evaporated milk that other cha-chaan-tengs commonly use, but another brand. The resultant tea is an stiff aromatic tea that manages to not be bitter and is well balanced with the evaporated milk and sugar, with a good silky texture.
The next day I went with my sister to Wanchai, a fascinating older district in Hong Kong Island and meandered through their large outdoor market that sprawls across several blocks in search of two well regarded cha-chaan-tengs (unfortunately because the tea is several times stronger than what you might commonly get in a standard coffee shop, you can only really have one or two cups a day). We settled on Tak Yu (17-18 Kwong Ming Street) a well kept quiet airy cha-chaan tengs tucked away on a quiet street in an up-and coming area where boutiques have started moving in. The staff are friendly and the older gentleman who was manning the tea shack was happy to chat a bit. They use Black & White evaporated milk, which is creamier and denser than some of the other brands. His tea was one of the best I’ve had - very smooth without compromising any of the intensity from the blend of black teas.

The other cha-chaan-teng that is considered a must-try in Wanchai is Kum Foong (or Golden Phoenix). I’ll be making a trip back over in a couple of days.

You'll notice the distinct fabric tea-bag and metal hoop that used - this is as integral to preparing the tea as the actual tea leaves and milk are. I asked the gentleman at Tak Yu cha-chaan-teng in Wanchai (see the photo above) where he got his, and he replied that their were made by hand years ago. The fabric I'm assuming is replaced regularly and a lot of traditional places still make sew theirs by hand. However if you don't feel like soldering your own hoop and sewing your own cotton bags, you can head over to Reclamation Street in Yau Mai Tei area of Kowloon where the street is lined with kitchen supply stores for commercial kitchens and restaurants.

There I picked up a couple of hoops and cotton bags, as well as a steel tea pot to attempt to make my own version.

Yau Ma Tei and the surrounding areas in Kowloon are filled with old historic streets and corners. One place in particular has become a fixture - Mido Cafe. It is a 3 story cafe that dates back to 1950 and lots of its original fixtures still remain from an old cashier to the menu on the wall and the clocks.

It has a great corner spot with a nice view over the public square in front of the temple - the day we were there, a youth group was practicing a dragon dance for the upcoming Mid Autumn Festival (usually in mid to late September). While I wasn't blown away by their milk tea (there was some sedimentation at the bottom) it's a really nice place to hang out for an hour.

iced milk tea for a hot summer's day

Before I even wanted to start making my own blend of tea, I wanted to try one more place - Bing Kee in the Tai Hang neighborhood of Hong Kong Island, conveniently very close to where I live. Tai Hang has experienced a renaissance of sorts - it has always been a close knit quiet residential area with charming older residential buildings and narrow streets but in the past two years a large number of small restaurants, bars and coffee shops have moved in. Bing Kee (on Ormsby Street) is a small outdoors cafe (a 'dai pai dong') that has been around way before any of the artisanal cake shops.

it's another tea-shack! But as well as churning out cups of tea you can also get Hong Kong breakfast staples such as instant noodles with ham & egg.

Note the intensity of the color! A very pleasing cup of tea - great strong tea taste without any bitterness but I think I would have appreciated a bit more of a smooth milky texture.

Anyway, I still have a few places I want to try. I'm still working on my recipe and my technique but will post another blog post in a few days with my results. Stay tuned....

A day in the life of a Smorgasburg-er

2011-07-15T11:38:00.001-04:00

Our talented Smorgasburg market lady, Nikki Brovold, is the contributor to today's blog post. Go say hi to her and Mary-Hannah this Saturday! And check out our new flavors, red currant & shiso, plus the crowd favorite grapefruit, honey & jalapeno, or the refreshing cucumber, lime + sea salt.

Life at Smorgusburg is good. We’ve been slinging Brooklyn Soda Works there for a few months now and the crowds are digging it. But again, what’s not to love about the great flavors coming out of the taps? Taps - that’s right, have tap, will travel to a gravel lot on the Williamsburg water front and sell artisanal soda every weekend at a food festival called Smorgasburg.

Some of our fav sodas as of late: classic Apple-Ginger, Root Beer, Rhubarb Thai Basil and Raspberry Shiso. Not to be a dick to the other flavors, but you don’t go through life without establishing a few preferences. A few observations:

The apple-ginger is a crowd pleaser, delicious, simple and great for a hangover. The market does start at 10 am. Not everyone is an adventurous food soul, and that’s okay, we won’t judge. This is the flavor we point them to - Apple Ginger is the gateway soda.

Okay, riddle me this - why do men of a certain age LOVE Root Beer? Sure, they’re attracted to the BkSW booth because they see taps (and my super-cute market-mate Marry Hannah) and think they’re getting a beer. Crest-fallen attitudes quickly escalate when it’s made clear Root Beer is available. These Root Beer ‘aficionados’ - call friends over to sample, generously insist on buying for everyone, tell stories of climbing birch trees as a boys to gnaw on the bark, because it tasted like our heroic soda. Root Beer has a distinct fan base.

So, am I allowed to say this? David Byrne loves our Rhubarb Thai Basil. Our flavors rotate week to week, and I had to disappoint the pop legend one Saturday morning after he ordered it by name. He settled for a glass of Grapefruit Honey Jalapeno. It’s hard being David Byrne, sometimes.

Some of our flavors have foam issues. Real issues. We’ve arm-chair-chemist concluded all berry based sodas are foam prone. The Raspberry Shiso soda last week was no different. It had a lovely pink hue, with a pearlescent green on the top. Never mind it took a solid four and a half minutes to get one decent 12 ounce poor, EVERYBODY wanted the pink foam. Little girls loved it, women were intrigued by the exotic shiso herb and once again, men thought they were getting a beer. We all had a good time. Our customers deserve credit for their patience, they all understood that if waiting a few extra minutes for local, artisanal soda was the problem, it still was a really good day.

You can contact Nikki via twitter @nikkibrovold. Make sure to tell her about any additional David Byrne sightings.

Drinks for your July 4th bbq!

2011-06-29T17:29:00.000-04:00

If we were particularly market-savvy we would probably have figured out that we could have done a red/ white/ blue combo for this weekend. But instead, we went with what would be the most thirst quenching and what we would want to drink if we were going to a bbq (instead of working...)

So, while not red, it is sort of orangey: Grapefruit, jalapeno & honey. Bring a growler and we'll fill it up! It goes great with tequila too (we've been enjoying Centinela Tequila Reposado at home recently, available at Greene Grape in Fort Greene)

And we got a batch of really nice blueberries this week from Hector at Jersey Farm Produce. You can find him at Tribeca on Wednesdays and Smorgasburg on Saturday.

We'll be pairing it with mint this Saturday at Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg (we are taking Sunday off so we are only selling on Saturday July 2nd). We haven't tried doing a cocktail with this one yet, so if any one has any ideas, let us know.

In addition, we'll also have root beer and apple + ginger available.

Strawberry, hops & pink peppercorn! More rhubarb!

2011-06-02T15:29:00.000-04:00

It's that time of the year - the first strawberries are making their way up north from south jersey to New York greenmarkets. We did a strawberry, balsamic & black pepper last weekend that went over wonderfully well, so it's time for the more adventurous strawberry, hops & pink peppercorn!

Our strawberries are from a stand over at Smorgasburg; Hector at New Jersey Farm Produce has come through with four flats of gorgeous strawberries each week. The hops are an interesting new American variety called Bravo (thanks to the Brooklyn Home Brew people for their help) - it's used as a bittering hop variety, and has a nice burst of citrus aroma.

So our flavors this week and where you can find them:
Saturday Brooklyn Flea
-Rhubarb & Thai basil (this sold out last year by 2:30pm!)
-Apple & ginger

Smorgasburg (on Saturday in Williamsburg) AND Sunday Flea:
-Strawberry hops & pink peppercorn
- Rhubarb & Thai basil
- Apple Ginger
- Root Beer

Smorgasburg this Saturday! plus foraged spruce shoots!

2011-05-18T22:47:00.000-04:00

We're happy to announce that we will be part of Smorgasburg this Saturday (this in addition to our usual booth at the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene). Run by the Brooklyn Flea people, this market will be only focused on food, both prepared & cooked food as well as farmers from the Greenmarket. Come by our booth this Saturday on North 6th between Kent & the East River. Check out this nice article in the New York Times that has a full list of vendors.

(our foraged spruce shoots!)

We will have four flavors for this Saturday and will have our spiffy new draft system in place. One of these flavors is our experimental foraged spruce shoot soda - made entirely from foraged spruce shoots from New Jersey, and flavored with Liberty hops with just a touch of ginger and molasses to balance it out.

In addition - it's rhubarb season! We've been using this wonderful green rhubarb that is a bit earthier and funkier than the usual red rhubarb from Phillips Farm in south NJ. Come by to get your taste of rhubarb & star anise.

Tomorrow - New Museum's StreetFest!

2011-05-06T07:46:00.000-04:00

We're very excited to be a part of the New Museum's first ever StreetFest this Saturday May 7th (part of their Festival of Ideas for a New City).

We'll be debuting our new flavor with a kick: black pepper, indian preserved plums & cardamom.

Come by this Saturday from 11am to 7pm and say hi. Our booth is located on the Bowery, right above Stanton Street.

Help us design our flag! Open call for flag design!

2011-04-28T22:10:00.001-04:00

We've doubled our presence at markets this spring and will be doing more and more outdoor events & markets this year but it's always a challenge trying to create a space that is uniquely yours, as well as being highly visible in a busy market, when everything has to be able to be easily set-up, taken down, as well as fitting into a Toyota Camry. So we're putting out an open call for a flag design.

flag for the Isle of Man

the pirate Blackbeard's flag

the flag of the Benin Empire

Guidelines:

The flag should be highly visible from a distance away
Imagery should relate to us and/ our product somehow, however abstractly
If you have text, include any fonts you used
If you're using any Pantone or web colors, make note of it somewhere
The final size of the flag will be roughly 2-3 ft x 1-2 ft (this is a very rough estimate) but this does NOT mean the flag design has to be rectangular. We are very flexible and are happy to consider flag designs for anything from triangles to hexagons.
Include your preferred dimensions for the flag
Ideally the final design should be a vector image, but don't worry if it's not - a high res jpg is fine. You can create the flag design any way you like (even a scanned sketch is okay).
File size should not exceed 8MB
Include your contact info and send to brooklynsodaworks@gmail.com
Deadline is June 1st, 2011

What you get from this:

Our eternal gratitude
We'll fly your flag proudly as many chances as we get. We are at the Brooklyn Flea every Saturday and Sunday, as well as a number of other outdoor events throughout the year.
Free soda at all our outdoor markets for the entire year (if you live outside of NYC we'll do our best to ship you a comparable prize)
A customized growler for you to use to fill up our fizzy beverage with
A profile in our June newsletter and on our blog

Our one year anniversary! Spring season starts!

2011-03-31T22:49:00.000-04:00

It may not feel like spring yet, but we'll be outdoors at the Brooklyn Flea both Saturday and Sundays this spring. The Saturday Flea is back at its outdoors location in Fort Greene on Lafayette & Vanderbilt; the Sunday location is in its brand new Williamsburg spot, on north 6th & Kent avenue.

And hooray! we made it one year! thanks to everyone who has supported us, from our beginnings as a Kickstarter campaign to our still very humble kitchen which we have been slowly breaking in.

Our one year anniversary flavor available this weekend: Salted lemon & ginger. Some of you may remember an older post from last year where I experimented with salted lemons in Hong Kong. We decided to salt our own lemons this winter, and after 6 weeks they're ready to face the world. Come by with a growler and we'll fill it up for you.

And we'll have our crowd favorite, apple & ginger, as well as our root beer on tap.

New York Times profile!

2011-03-07T14:38:00.001-05:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks of attempting to repair the kitchen floor, trying to figure out how to patch cement and working out what type of steam kettle to buy. It was such a wonderful surprise to see this profile on us come out this past Sunday by the NY Times Business reporter, Natasha Singer. Thanks for everyone's support this past year. We can't believe its been almost one whole year of fizzy beverage madness.

We're hiring! Part time kitchen and market help wanted

2011-02-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

We're hiring! Please pass along to anyone who may be interested.

Brooklyn Soda Works, a young beverage company focusing on carbonating fresh fruit juice and creating unconventional flavors (we sometimes develop a new flavor a week), is looking to hire its first employees. We seek motivated, reliable individuals to help both in the kitchen AND/ OR for markets. This is the perfect opportunity to grow with a small company working from the ground up.

About Brooklyn Soda Works;

Formed in early 2010 by an artist and a chemist, we focus on carbonating fresh juice - never using syrups - to make sodas. We have adventurous palates and more interested in investigating herb & spices, pairing them with fruit, rather than trying to recreate syrupy overly sweet sodas. We primarily sell at weekly markets fresh from the keg and also work with select restaurants such as Blue Hill Manhattan & Palo Santo. We are building out a kitchen and expanding this spring so this is the perfect opportunity for a motivated, ambitious individual to contribute to every aspect of a new food business.

You will be working in close collaboration with the co-founders Caroline and Antonio and there will be opportunities to have a bigger role in the company as it grows. You will also be regularly interacting with lots of great food people. Our current account list is small but it includes great restaurants like Blue Hill and great bars like Beer Table. 2011 is already shaping up to be a year where we expand into many more high-end restaurants. You will also quickly become an expert on local fruit- meeting many local farmers and learning who has the best stuff and when. Nothing beats actually being a part of the burgeoning NYC food scene by working the markets where we've had the pleasure to work next to many great vendors big and small from Porchetta, Good Fork, Red Hook Lobster Pound and Mast Brothers to a constantly refreshing list of up and coming companies like ourselves.

2 main responsibilities (please indicate which you think you are best suited for)

-making soda (chopping and juicing fruit, kitchen prep, cleaning and boiling/extracting spices, kegging and carbonating, some bottling)

Requirements: basic kitchen skills, an interest in developing flavors, ability to lift a 50lb keg of soda, reliable

AND / OR

-selling soda at markets (Saturdays in Fort Greene, Sundays in williamsburg from 10am - 5pm, some one-off markets)

Requirements: personable, reliable, an interest in interacting with customers explaining the product and how its made. Able to lift some heavy equipment, and assisting with setting up and dismantling equipment.

Additional opportunities for motivated individuals include:

-flavor development- suggesting, making and testing new flavors, improving existing flavor ideas

-ingredient sourcing, interacting with local farmers, possibly even foraging/picking in spring/fall

-accounting/scheduling

-delivering soda bottles and kegs to our regular accounts, setting up new accounts, delivering samples to press, restaurants etc

-working events and collaborations with other food vendors/trucks, restaurants, bars. (New Museum event, making mix drinks with the soda for parties, etc)

-kitchen design/organization (we're in the middle of building out our new kitchen)

Start date: early/ mid March 2011

If this sounds good to you please reply and come meet us! Let us know whether you are more interested in retail work at the markets or kitchen work (or both) . Email us : brooklynsodaworks@gmail.com

Time: 10-15 hours a week.

Tasty edibles from the past month (part 1)

2011-01-30T12:38:00.000-05:00

This will not be a soda-related post. There will be no mention of carbon dioxide, bubbles nor spice extraction techniques. Just a list of some of the things we enjoyed eating the most the past few weeks in Thailand (where Antonio went scuba diving for the first time; we saw a giant manta ray and we practiced chest-thumping one another 25 meters underwater).

We started in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Antonio found a very useful food blog, Eating Asia, to assist our food adventures. Top of the list was the khao soi (egg noodles in a broth of coconut milk curry sauce, usually with a meat - Chiang Mai's signature noodle dish) we had at Khao Soi Lam Duan. Lam Duan also makes a great sausage - packed with spices and lemongrass...yum.

We also like trawling night markets for various snacks - I have a soft spot for these little Thai crepes (kanom buang thai) made fresh in front of you...

We also came across a small Burmese restaurant in the young, hip neighborhood of Nimmenhaemin. It's easy to miss - just a small food stall across from soi 13 - and decor-wise nothing to write home about, but wow, their tea leaf salad was like nothing I'd ever tried. Made from fermented tea leaves it's slightly smokey, with acidity & sharpness from the tomatoes & onions.

And finally a dessert of epic proportions... it's honey toast! From the ice cream chain I-Berry (they make flavors ranging from green mango to sticky rice) comes the decadent mini-loaf of toasted bread, stuffed with ice cream, then drizzled with honey.

Coming soon to Beer Table - dried lemon, juniper & hops soda!

2010-12-26T08:29:00.000-05:00

Last week we dropped off a keg of apple & ginger carbonated juice with the good folks at Beer Table (in Park Slope) who now have a dedicated soda draft line. It seemed to go over well which made us very happy. This week Antonio has been hard at work finalizing the recipe for a more experimental bitter soda - a dried lemon, juniper & hops soda - which we think will go great with the range of beer that Beer Table has.

The dried lemons we picked up from our favorite spice store in Manhattan, Dual Speciality Store in the East Village. These are lemons or limes that have been dried in the sun until they are hard, dry and nearly black. Apparently they are used in some middle eastern cuisines. We had been eyeing them for months, wondering what they tasted like (delicious tart, lemony, earthy funk!) and finally decided to pick some up and try some recipes. Juniper berries (not really a berry, but the female seed cone produced by some species of juniper trees) are used in northern European cuisines, and are one of the predominant flavors in gin. Hops of course are used in beer, we used chinook hops, a very bitter and very aromatic variety used in American style IPA's. So, while these components are from very different places, they have overlapping but still complementary flavor profiles that make for a nice mix- the tartness and earthiness of the lemons seems to pair really well with the piney aromatics of the juniper berries and the bitter, citrousy notes of the chinook hops. There is also a touch of raw honey to balance things out, though the soda is not at all sweet.

.

Look for this flavor at Beer Table sometime early January, and stop by now to try some apple ginger and some great beer.

Happy Holidays! A little cranberry magic to spice up your meals

2010-12-23T03:24:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays! I'm writing from Hong Kong where I'm awaiting the arrival of the other half who has been slogging away in the lab and the kitchen making a couple of kegs in time for the Christmas / New Year's week at Beer Table. Go Tony!

It's only another couple of days till Christmas and if you're getting sick of the egg nog, here's a recipe that should spice things up. This recipe was first seen in Nona Brooklyn's Food & Drinks Picks for the Holidays, collected by Rebecca Lando of Working Class Foodies - check out the guide for other delicious ideas from other Brooklyn food peeps, such as Danielle from Brooklyn Home Brew and Liz from Liddabit Sweets.

Spiced Cranberry Soda

(makes one liter)

half pound cranberries
1 cinnamon stick
10 cloves
2 balls allspice (feel free to experiment with other spices such as nutmeg)
1/4 cup sugar

1. Bring 700ml water to boil in pot. Add in cinnamon.
2. Clean cranberries. Add to water.
3. Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Add in clove and allspice. Cut heat. Leave everything in pot for 5 minutes.
5. Strain and filter.
6. Pour into a carbonating device such as a ISI soda siphon. Add in cold water. Carbonate (if you don't own a soda siphon, you can simply add seltzer water to the juice to get a fizzy beverage, or this cranberry juice is also a great mixer for use with vodka).

A successful party! Brooklyn Soda Works at Beer Table!

2010-12-14T08:00:00.002-05:00

It was great to see a number of you at our party with SCRATCHbread last week - and congratulations to SCRATCHbread for making their goal on Kickstarter. We served up lemon, thyme & green peppercorn soda (paired with gin) and spiced apple cider with bourbon, while Matt & his team made up a delicious batch of fondue - perfect for a freezing cold evening. Thanks again to Red Jacket Orchard and The Manhattan Cocktail Classic for kindly donating the apples and booze!

We still have a couple of things up our sleeve for the last part of 2010. We're happy to announce that Beer Table in Park Slope will soon be carrying our soda. We'll be starting off with a keg of apple & ginger soda this coming weekend to celebrating the new draft system that Justin from Beer Table has installed, and hopefully after that we'll be dropping off fun new flavors with them on a regular basis.

We're incredibly excited about working with Justin and Tricia - their bar has been the location of a number of our 'work meetings' and they also host a monthly home-brewer's meet-up where we've tried out test batches of root beer on unwitting home-brewers. They have one of the most eclectic and interesting beer selections in New York, and their space is always wonderfully welcoming and intimate. Plus its one of the few places I get to eat a malt gelato after drinking a beer that smells like engine oil.

Also happening this weekend (December 18th from 3-5pm) is a demo that I'll be doing in Pantry Magic in Hong Kong (where I'll be for the rest of December). I'll be demonstrating how to make your own spiced cranberry soda, as well as a lemongrass & lime soda, and a salty lemon & ginger soda.

Brooklyn Soda Works & SCRATCHbread invite you to a holiday party & fundraiser!

2010-12-01T20:20:00.000-05:00

You're invited!
To celebrate the end of our successful first season and our upcoming partnership with SCRATCHbread, we're co-hosting a fizzy fondue extravaganza & fundraiser.

We'll be making:

- gin cocktails with our lemon, thyme & green peppercorn soda

- bourbon spiced apple cider with cider from Red Jacket Orchards

SCRATCHbread will be slinging fondue featuring their delicious breads and Granny Smith apples from Red Jacket Orchards.

When: December 7th, 5-9pm

Where: 1069 Bedford Ave (at Lexington)

$10 at the door gets you fondue or a drink (all proceeds go towards SCRATCHbread's Kickstarter campaign)

Wallpaper* article! And news about our kitchen

2010-11-17T18:54:00.000-05:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Even though we're not at our Flea spot we've continued doing private events and working on expanding our operation. Part of our plan involves having a more permanent kitchen location and we're happy to announce that next year we'll be sharing SCRATCHbread's kitchen space in Bed-Stuy. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of trying one of Matt's insane sticky chai buns or addictive focaccia's, you can pick up their baked goods at a number of different markets and locations as well as support their Kickstarter campaign. They've been great neighbors at the Flea and we look forward to sharing their space with them!

In addition we were happy to see our bottles featured beautifully in the December issue of Wallpaper* magazine.

This Saturday=our last Flea on the season. And more root beer adventures

2010-10-27T22:05:00.001-04:00

This Saturday October 30 will be the last Flea appearance for us this season. It's nearly Halloween, it's getting chilly, plus it's time for us to focus on building out our kitchen space and expanding properly.

Come over this Saturday to enjoy our hot spiced apple cider! It won't be carbonated but like everything else we do, its made from fruit we've juiced and spiced ourselves. We'll also have the popular cranberry & cinnamon soda. There's a good chance I'll show up as a porcupine too (it's Halloween!).

In other news, we've been continuing to work hard on our root beer recipe. We picked some fresh wintergreen from a hike in North Lake in the Catskills last weekend, so these may make an appearance in a new batch soon.

We have grand plans for winter, including building out a space in Scratchbread's Kitchen (who are launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for their community-oriented store in Bed Stuy) and working on new flavors (quince! pineapple & wasabi!) as well as continuing to do individual events. Stay tuned.

NY Daily News profile - and cranberries! Earl Grey! More apples!

2010-10-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Okay... we admit it, we couldn't find any local cranberries from a happy local farmer. Apparently Ocean Spray buy up every ounce of cranberries grown in New Jersey. There are no cranberries to be found in your local green market despite the fact that its cranberry season.

But - they're great, they're good for you, and they remind Tony of making pies and crumbles for Thanksgiving. So we made a spiced cranberry soda. it's like the insides of the perfect fall crumble but made into a bubble beverage.

Plus we'll have the slightly weird but very lovable, Earl Grey soda. This time we're brewed it with some lavender (my sister has been encouraging us to try lavender for a while and I found some great fresh ones from Stokes Farm).

And as always, since its apple season and people can't seem to get enough of the apple & ginger, we're bringing it back for another week.

Thanks to NY Daily news for this nice profile on us!

Please note that we will NOT be at the Flea next week (october 23rd). We will be there Oct 30 (in costume???) and that will probably be our last day at the Flea this year. Yes its true. The cold weather is approaching and no one wants to drink cold bubbly drinks outdoors when its 40F. But we'll be doing random other events all winter, so stay tuned.

Apples and more apples! our new chai-spiced apple fizzy juice

2010-10-07T09:08:00.001-04:00

After an absence of two weeks (one to go to Montauk, and the other to participate in Harvest Fest at Stone Barns) we're back at the Flea this weekend.

(our booth at Stone Barns)

We're looking forward to debuting a new flavor: chai-spiced apple! We'll be using Empire and Macoun apples for the chai-spiced flavor. In addition we'll have Golden Supreme apple and ginger, plus some more sorrel soda for you hibiscus lovers out there.

The chai-spiced apple carbonated juice won't have any actual tea in, but we're using the spices that are commonly associated with chai - cardamom, star anise, clove and cinnamon.

Our dates for October:
October 9th - we'll be at the Flea with the above mentioned flavors
October 16th - at the Flea.. hopefully with a pear flavor?
October 23rd - it's Antonio's birthday so we're taking a break to go hike in the Catskills
October 30th - turn up to the Flea in a costume from an obscure television show and you get a discount. Guess my costume and what television show its from and the fizzy beverage is on us.

Concord grapes, and the first apples. Plus our fall schedule

2010-09-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

Fall has begun, and we're starting to see the start of the apple season. This week we have our first batch of apple soda, in addition to a concord grape flavour (paired with fennel seed).

The grapes are sweet & tart - full of flavour. They were a hit last week so we're bringing them back for a second week.

In addition we'll have Golden Supreme apples (from Red Jacket Orchard) with ginger, and we are debuting our root beer! Tony's been working really hard on balancing out all the spices and herbs so let us know what you think.

Our fall schedule:
September 18 (Saturday): our usual spot at the Brooklyn Flea
September 25 (Saturday): no Flea for us. we're taking a short camping trip to Montauk and stopping by a bunch of farms and vineyards along the way
October 2 (Saturday): no Flea again. We'll be at the Stone Barns Harvest Fest from 10am - 3pm. We've never been to Stone Barns so we're pretty excited about this (especially as there is a pie bake off taking place....)

Thai fruits - tamarind, galangal and green mango

2010-09-14T09:49:00.000-04:00

I'm back from my trip home to Hong Kong, but I thought I'd write about the last batch of soda I did while home.

I went to lunch a few days before I left in Kowloon City (the home of the now demolished infamous Kowloon Walled City, featured in movies ranging from the Van Damm vehicle, Blood Sport to Jackie Chan's Crime Story). This former industrial area is now a cosy residential district that has a number of Thai restaurants and grocery stores. The Thai fruit and vegetables in the small grocery stores often can't be found in regular markets elsewhere in Hong Kong so I took the opportunity to pick up some fruit for experimenting.

Tamarind and galangal:

Tamarind fruit is a sort of legume, with a hard shell with 6-12 pods. The flesh is juicy and quite sour but as the fruit matures the flesh becomes sweeter. Its grown in areas around the tropics from south Asia to Mexico and can be found in everything from agua frescas to jams.

Galangal is a root, related to ginger but tastes very different, originating in Indonesia, and is used commonly in S.E Asian cooking.

I bought a small bag of tamarind pulp (the exterior pod had been removed) and soaked it in sugar water over night. I then poured it through a fine filter to get the sweetened tamarind juice.

Grated galangal was added to the tamarind juice, then additional water added (tamarind packs a serious kick so it needs to be diluted) before carbonating in my trusty ISI soda siphon.

(yet another thirst-quenching drink that my sister is enjoying!)

Green mango and chili

I also picked up a couple of green, unripe mangoes - tart, crispy and refreshing, they're common in Thai salads, very different from the sweet, succulent flesh of ripe yellow mangoes.

I diced a small Thai chili, cooked it in sugar water solution for about 15 minutes, then added it to the juice of two green mangos. One chili pepper gave it just the right amount of a kick in the back of your throat.

Japanese inspired beverages - shiso, limes and water melon

2010-09-07T04:38:00.004-04:00

I recently got back from a short holiday to Kyoto and Osaka with my family. It was the end of peach season there but I was still lucky enough to have one of their incredibly delectable, juicy and very expensive peaches. Unfortunately they're very hard to ship so I wasn't able to bring one back to Hong Kong.

I did discover the joys of the simple Japanese lime. Smaller and thinner skinned than a Mexican or even a Thai lime, the flavor is quite distinct. Shiso is also a very familiar sight in the markets there - a member of the mint family, its leaves are large and relatively round. I decided to try making a simple shiso & lime carbonated juice, cold-steeping the shiso leaves in the sweetened lime juice, then carbonating.

The result was a very satisfying and fragrant drink - perfect for the hot summer weather.

I thought I'd give a watermelon drink a go, especially since watermelons are plentiful right now (and they're small miniaturized versions too for easy storage).

Half of this watermelon was juiced, then the shiso was muddled and cold-steeped in the juice overnight, before being sweetened with bit of simple syrup.

My satisfied sister, Sarah (otherwise known as our PR help, Lulu).

Hong Kong carbonated juices (guavas, rose apples and starfruit!)

2010-09-03T00:09:00.000-04:00

I'm posting from Hong Kong this week (Tony will still be doing the Flea this coming Saturday with West Indies inspired flavours). I grew up eating a variety of fruit that I often still don't know the English names for, and often miss the tropical fruits. In addition, Hong Kong has plentiful juice stands and delicious fruit based drinks that help the population of 7 million beat the long summer heat.

First up: Guava and black pepper! Tony was amazed to discover last winter when he visited that the guavas in S.E. Asia taste radically different from what he grew up eating. They're smaller and have a more delicate, less earthy taste. I bought some local guavas that are even smaller than the Thai guavas, and smelled absolutely amazing.

They were put through the juicer, cold steeped with black pepper then carbonated, resulting in a light refreshing drink with a nice, very slight pepper-tingle at the end.

Next up: starfruit and rose apple. Starfruit come into season early autumn, so I was a tad early but they were starting to show up at the markets. Beautiful and crisp tasting.

Best way to eat them is to slice off the outer rind on the 'points' of the star, then slice the fruit into cross sections.

The flavor is so light and crisp that I didn't want to distract from it too much with a spice or herb, so started thinking about other fruits that it would go well with.

One of Tony's favourite discoveries this past January in Hong Kong was the rose apple.
Rose apples have a superb crunch and texture to them, but very little tartness. I thought I'd pair the two - even though they're both quite light in taste their flavour profiles are different enough to make a complex juice.

Unfortunately most of these fruits are quite expensive in the US, so I doubt I'll be able to scale them up when I'm back in New York, but on a small scale, they were a fun experiment.

One that I think we can replicate on a larger scale is salty lemon and ginger. Salty lemonade pops again regularly on the menus of cha-chaan-tengs, Hong Kong diners, and its made using preserved salty lemons put into 7-Up or Sprite. I thought I'd do a Brooklyn Soda Works version using salty lemons I picked up from a small market stall in one of the outdoor markets, hand made by a friendly woman who's name and location of the stall I've forgotten...

The lemons aren't overly salty - roughly a quarter of a lemon per serving, so I used 4 quarter wedges for a liter, boiling it in water for ten minutes, then added in the raw ginger juice.

The result: tart, refreshing and not too salty.

That's it from me in Hong Kong. And if you're in Brooklyn this Labor Day weekend, go check out Tony's lovingly created Caribbean inspired drinks on Saturday!

Labor Day Weekend = Caribbean soda time!

2010-08-31T21:52:00.004-04:00

In honor of the West Indies day parade, we'll be bringing strictly island flavors for all the Caribbean people! (or any and all island dwelling, or island loving people) The West Indies = the islands in the Caribbean. The name derives from Columbus, who thought he was on the west side of India when he arrived. The history of the region is fascinating and tumultuous, heavily shaped by colonialism and the slave trade, but that's a whole other topic for another time, we're here to talk about fruit! Caroline is from Hong Kong and I'm half Puerto Rican (a part of the West Indies of course). Both are tropical islands that love their fruit, so tropical flavors are especially fun for us. Please come out and taste!

The flavors at the Brooklyn Flea this Saturday will be-

Sorrel

Ginger and Lime

Cherimoya (sweetsop)

more about the flavors after the page break...
Sorrel is the name the Jamaicans, and most other Caribbean people, give to the drink made from the flowers of the roselle hibiscus plant (if you're into botany, the flavorful parts are technically the red calyxes made of the sepals, more than the actual small white petals that we normally think of as the flower).

It's usually just called hibiscus in English. In Mexico it's used in one of the most popular aguas frescas and is called flor de Jamaica. Hibiscus has a bright red color and a slightly sour, tannic taste- almost like a mix of mild cranberry and tea. Jamaicans make their sorrel drink with ginger and sometimes cinnamon (and frequently a shot of rum) especially around christmas. In Trinidad and Tobago cinnamon and clove are added more often than ginger. Many more kinds of regional variations exist. Sorrel is also popular in Africa, Mali and Senegal especially, where it's called bissop and is sometimes made with mint and/or ginger (try abistro on Carlton ave near Myrtle for an excellent example). Brooklyn Soda Works sorrel soda is made with lots of hibiscus and a touch of ginger, cinnamon and raw cane sugar.

Ginger should certainly need no introduction to anyone familiar with brooklyn soda works, we put it in everything! Here it's done simple, island-style with lime and raw cane sugar. Be warned though- we'll be making it to the proper West Indies level of spiciness!

Sweetsop is a catch-all name that refers to some of the smaller, sweeter members of the annona family of fruits. It gets complicated as there are lots of varieties of annona with many, many names (chirimoya, sweetsop, anón, sugar-apple, ata, custard apple, pawpaw, anona corazón to name a few). To simplify things you can group them into 3 broad categories- the big, green, spiky one (most commonly called soursop or guanábana), the green, roundish, pinecone-looking ones (sugar apple or sweetsop or sometimes custard apple), and our flavor this week- the greenish/yellowish, scaly, heart-shaped ones (chirimoya or sometimes sweetsop).

The name sweetsop is a reference to the most popular (at least in PR and Jamaica) annona fruit- soursop (guanábana en español). Soursop is definitely still sweet but it has a slight acidity even when ripe. Sweetsop or chirimoya is a bit sweeter and has a lighter, more candy-like flavor and smell. I would have liked to do a soursop flavor, but they are very difficult to find in the US since they are soft and fragile and difficult to import. They are also most definitely a tropical fruit, and even though some people have been successful growing mini soursop trees in the southern-most parts of Florida, they apparently can't be commercially cultivated anywhere in the US. June or September are your best chance to find them here, as those are the 2 peaks of the season in the Caribbean. Just be prepared to shell out as much as $6-$10 per fruit, which isn't that bad since they are so delicious and can weigh up to a kilogram. The flavor, like most of the other annona fruits, is kinda like a banana/pineapple mix with a bit of passion fruit. They can be up to 12 inches in diameter and weigh over a kilogram. It's very popular in PR to eat plain but especially as an ice cream flavor and in batidos or licuados (frothy milk and fruit pulp drinks). It's also candied and used in all kinds of gummies and sweets. This week's soda is made from chirimoya, which comes from the andes so it's not the most appropriate member of the annona family to use, but it was the only one I could get my hands on this week. They are definitely found in the Caribbean, in fact my father just reminded me that my grandparents have a tree on their property in Puerto Rico (along with multiple mango, pomegranate, cashew, coconut and grapefruit trees and some hammocks... and it's about 20 yards from the beach... all of which I try really hard not to think about when I'm trudging knee deep through grey/brown snow in nyc) anyways, the ones I'm using came from Chile. They were just juiced and carbonated, no sugar or anything else added, they're perfectly delicious just on their own.

Plum and Raspberry flavors for Saturday!

2010-08-27T08:27:00.000-04:00

The flavors this week will be-
Vanier Plum with a hint of Rosemary
Raspberry and Ginger

Both the plums and the rasperries are from red jacket orchards and both were excellent but the fall raspberries in particular were fantastic, pick some up if you see them at any farm markets!

The back of the car after my early morning farm market run.

Plums & blackberries for this Saturday. And a Pie in the Park benefit on Sunday

2010-08-13T14:12:00.000-04:00

It's become hard to figure out what fruit to use - everything looks so great at the greenmarkets.
This week we've decided to go for yellow plums from Red Jacket, and have paired it up with our beloved ginger.

So succulent and juicy...

And blackberries are in season too - we get ours from Phillips Farm in south NJ. We'll be debuting our blackberry cream soda this Friday.

In other news, I attempted a sweet corn and basil soda last week. Corn was everywhere when I was in N. Carolina and its just starting to come into season up here. Still need to figure out how to balance out the flavors, but hopefully a sweetcorn flavor will make its appearance at some point. Sweetcorn is used frequently in south-east Asian desserts, often in conjunction with coconut or tapioca. Check out this recipe for ice kacang, a Malaysian shaved ice dessert.

This week we can be found at our usual spot at the Brooklyn Flea (right next to Porchetta and Good Batch). In addition our yellow plum & ginger will be available at the worthy Pie in the Park event in Prospect Park, organized by Lauren Cucinotta. All proceeds will go towards our other Flea neighbors, Scratchbread who are running their own Kickstarter campaign to secure their own retail space (keeping our fingers crossed as their retail location is a couple of blocks from our apartment)

Dates and events for August

2010-08-06T09:07:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post to say we will not be at the Flea this Saturday (August 7th) but we will be back in force for the rest of August, including selling at L Magazine's Summerscreen in Williamsburg on Wed August 11th for their screening of Point Break!

Ranked #1! thanks Adam Platt. And we will be at the Flea this Saturday

2010-07-27T11:15:00.001-04:00

It's been an exciting week - we found out that the chief restaurant critic for New York magazine ranked us #1 in his taste test of eight local New York soda's!

And yes, we will be there this coming Saturday (july 31st) with the watermelon, tarragon and lemon flavor, and another one that we're still cooking up.

So thanks again to everyone who's supported us through our mad-cap adventure. What started as an attempt to brew ginger beer last winter has become quite a project, and we're constantly amazed at the response we've received!

2 new flavors: red currant & cardamom, plus a Thai inspired one!

2010-07-23T14:00:00.001-04:00

Sorry for all the regulars who looked for our booth last Saturday at the Flea; we were taking a break in Asheville North Carolina, eating up some grits and enjoying rafting down the Nolichucky River.

Tony's back this week with two new flavors:
- Red currant and cardamom
- Lime, cilantro, mint and chile (inspired by our favorite Thai restaurant, Sripraphai in Queens)

And to clarify, this July we are only at the Flea every other week, so we will not be there next week. We hope to be back in force later on in summer.

One more thing, if you're in Asheville and want to check out a great local restaurant, try Early Girl Eatery for brunch (see photo above!) and the tasting menu at Table is a good deal for dinner.

Watermelon flavors and according to Time Out we're a rising star!

2010-07-14T14:26:00.001-04:00

Posting remotely right now (I'm in North Carolina, the furthest south I've ever been and enjoying peach season).

Tony's been a busy cooking up new flavors, including watermelon, cilantro, jalapeno and lime (our apologies to all the cilantro haters out there, but too bad, we love the stuff); and a watermelon tarragon and lemon which he ended up taking to the Flea and the very successful Rooftop films & Kickstarter evening last week. It looks like its going to be a scorcher of a summer, so here's to more mouth watering beverages.

And thanks to Rachel Wharton from Time Out and Edible Brooklyn for naming us one of the Rising Stars of the food markets in NY! http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/restaurants-bars/87146/food-markets-rising-stars

Our first how-to video by Working Class Foodies

2010-06-30T13:43:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Rebecca and Kit at Working Class Foodies for this fun DIY video on how to make your own cherry & Thai basil soda.

It was my first time being on camera and trying to fumble around the kitchen at the same time!

Earl Grey! Raspberry season!

2010-06-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

We've decided to try a caffeinated tea soda. I grew up drinking tea, and Earl Grey has been a favorite of mine for a long time. Unfortunately we can't replicate the experience of a milky Earl Grey, but thought it a fizzy Earl Grey would be a good experiment, especially for those early morning Brooklyn Flea visitors!

And its raspberry season - these tart little berries are everywhere in the farmer's markets. We picked some up yesterday, along with some mint, and will be debuting raspberry & mint tomorrow too.

In the mean time, please note that we will only be the Flea every other Saturday this coming July. I'm heading to North Carolina for a residency for a month, so Tony will be working mostly by himself for the whole month. However, in addition to the Flea, we will be participating in 2 events:

July 15th at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

and on July 9th, Rooftop Films with Kickstarter have paired up to present a series of films funded by Kickstarter.

new flavors: salty plum, thai basil & lime; plus strawberry & green peppercorn

2010-06-11T16:03:00.000-04:00

back from a very productive and tasty trip to Montreal! Dinner at Au Pied de Cochon was wonderful, and we very shyly gave the sous chef our maple bacon soda!

2 new flavors this week: the first (salty plum, thai basil and lime) we'll name after our friends Van and his brother Don. It's the Vu Brothers soda! We made it for them on their birthday, inspired by a Vietnamese drink that uses salty plums. Yes, it sounds slightly odd, but trust us, the combination of salty and sweet is the perfect way to quence your thirst.

the second is a variation on a strawberry one we did two weeks ago. This time we're using green peppercorns for an extra kick. Strawberries are from Philips Farm in south Jersey.

And the third flavor: the regular, cucumber, lime and sea salt. See you guys at the Flea!

Road trip to Montreal with maple bacon soda - no Flea this week

2010-06-03T08:57:00.000-04:00

We're taking our first mini vacation in a long time and driving up to Montreal for the music festival Mutek, which is coincidentally the same weekend as their Beer Festival! We have reservations for Au Pied de Cochon, and are very excited to take a break for 4 days.

And equally important is the cargo we'll be taking up with us! One liter of our experimental maple bacon soda. We tried this a few month ago and decided it'd be fun (or foolish) to take a bottle up with us to try impress Au Pied de Cochon. It's currently carbonating in our fridge. (Just to recap, in order to extract bacon water you have to cook the bacon in water, then take this fatty bacon-water and add it to a gelatin mixture, freeze it in an ice cube tray, then as the bacon-gelatin mixture melts, the fat is left behind leaving a clear fat-free bacon liquid which you can then add maple syrup to)

This does mean that we won't be at the Flea this weekend, but our bottles will still be available at Blue Hill and Palo Santo.

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

2010-05-28T10:33:00.001-04:00

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?

2010-05-25T10:37:00.002-04:00

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

2010-05-11T10:01:00.000-04:00

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!

2010-05-07T13:59:00.000-04:00

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

2010-05-01T18:32:00.000-04:00

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!

Flavors for Saturday! Our tote bag! and nice nod from Sara Jenkins of Porchetta

2010-04-30T20:24:00.000-04:00

We're doing a repeat of the basic flavors of last week, except we're switching out the Empire apples for Jonagold apples, and upped the ginger level in the apple and ginger.

So:
Apple and ginger (Jonagold apples from Red Jacket Orchard)
Cucumber, lime & sea salt
Lemon & thyme

Also, thanks to Sara Jenkins (chef of Porchetta the wonderful pork sandwich shop in the East Village) for mentioning us in her NY Magazine Grub Street profile of what she was eating last week:
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/04/porchetta_chef_sara_jenkins.html
Her diet looks pretty great - nice to know we're in good company!

Also, our tote bags have arrived - we'll take some with us to the booth tomorrow. Use it to put your finds from the Flea in:

Homemade: Brooklyn Event tonight! and a bit of press from Inc.com

2010-04-28T09:16:00.000-04:00

Made a spiced ginger beer for tonight's event with Homemade: Brooklyn. We'll be selling ginger beer during the Kong Magazine's reading event.

Location: 522 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg

Also, a nice little write up about how Kickstarter helped up achieve our start up costs on Inc.com:

http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/04/using-kickstarter-for-business.html

Flavors for Saturday! And flip-top bottles to take home soda!

2010-04-23T12:02:00.000-04:00

New flavors this week:
- lemon, thyme and green peppercorn
It's amazing how different thyme from different places can look. The thyme on the above left is from the Union Square Farmer's market, and the one on the right is from a farmers market in NJ. It seems like the one on the left is younger and lighter tasting (the leaves are bigger), while the bunch on the right has smaller denser leaves.
- Apple with ginger (Empire apples from Red Jacket Orchards in the Fingerlakes Region of NY). We know its not apple season, but we saw the heap of gorgeous Empire apples at the Farmers Market and we couldn't resist. We had made a green apple & ginger soda before, just using Granny Smith apples, and the result was very tart and refreshing but we wanted to try a different apple this time. Empire apples are a small red apple, that's a good balance between sweet and tart.

And our returning flavor of: cucumber, lime and sea salt!

Plus we'll have some flip-top bottles for sale that we'll fill up for you at the Brooklyn Flea with your soda of choice. A number of people have been asking about taking our carbonated beverages home, and we want to encourage people to bring their own containers and bottles so providing people with flip-top bottles seems to be a good solution. Let us know what you think!

On another note, we bought a Blichmann beer gun for more efficient bottling from Brooklyn Home Brew (which have been so great resource - they have a wonderful selection of equipment, hops and anything else you'd need for home brewing).

Round 2! and how you can help earthquake relief efforts in Western China

2010-04-16T15:51:00.000-04:00

Was going to make a cream soda for Saturday, but I'm not totally satisfied with my recipe yet... my sister Sarah gave me some helpful tips regarding vanilla beans so hopefully we'll have it down by next week.

In the meantime, since it's been a busy week with Tony away in Mississippi until yesterday, we decided we'd repeat the flavours we did last week - with a couple of major differences:
1. no peeling of the ginger. it's a gargantuan task when it's 10lbs of ginger root
2. no peeling of cucumber - we've been curious whether the skin on the cucumber will add more foam to the soda, and if there will be a noticeable change in taste.

And there was a serious earthquake in Qinghai province, in western China 3 days ago. It's a very remote, mountainous and poor region of China, and while the scope of the damage was nowhere near close to the huge one that rocked Sichuan province in 2008, this nonetheless has affected a population of people that is still in relief supplies and aid, with the death toll over 1000 as of today.

10% of sales on Saturday will be donated to the earthquake relief effort. I'm still deciding which organization to give money to, but it will probably be Red Cross or Mercy Corps. Google has a very convenient link to relief organizations working in the area if you wish to contribute.

Photos from first day of Flea! And a bit of press from Offmanhattan and Dirty Hands NY

2010-04-15T15:33:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay! Here are photos from our first day at the Flea:

happy & colourful customers

After running around all morning lugging around heavy kegs and coolers, we finally got our booth set up around 10:30am (must remember to get a good hand truck this week)

Wonderful roving band that appeared from seemingly nowhere

this is what happens with the dregs of the soda from the bottom of the keg - we drink it. from our measuring cup apparently.

And thanks to Chermelle from Offmanhattan.com for stopping by and taking a couple of photos for her photo essay on the Flea (you can see her story here)

Special thanks to Liza from dirtyhandsny.com, a multimedia project that focuses on creative, DIY New Yorkers, for profiling us. Her photo-essay which covers all steps from our experiments in the kitchen to our tasting party with friends, is up here: http://dirtyhandsny.com/2010/04/15/brooklyn-soda-works/

Success!

2010-04-12T11:23:00.001-04:00

Our first Saturday at the Brooklyn Flea was a wonderful success! The weather was breezy but sunny, and the turnout was great. I guess people were thirsty because we completely sold out of 5 kegs by 4pm!

More photos to come later...

Debuting at the Flea- our 3 flavors

2010-04-09T21:32:00.000-04:00

Insanely busy past couple of days! Was at the Palo Santo kitchen preparing the sodas till 4am last night, and just finished carbonating them. And I just finished making my blackboard sign in the shape of a bottle.

Our 3 flavours we will be debuting at the Brooklyn Flea tomorrow, in the outdoor location at Fort Greene:

- lemon ginger beer

- grapefruit, jalapeno & honey

- cucumber, lime & sea salt

Looking forward to meeting some of our fellow food vendors, including People's Pops who checked out our ginger beer as a potential flavor for use in their rhubarb ginger-beer pop.

Crossing our fingers for a sunny Saturday!

A chat with Eleanor from 2 Cooks In the Kitchen

2010-04-07T16:13:00.000-04:00

Eleanor, a fellow food lover, who I met while working at the Brooklyn Museum, has posted a wonderful profile of us on her blog, 2 Cooks In the Kitchen, a collaborative blog from a former vegan and a meat lover from different sides of the coast, and searching New York for various culinary resources.

thanks Eleanor!

Cream Soda attempt!

2010-04-01T18:11:00.000-04:00

Things have started to get busy here at the headquarters of Brooklyn Soda Works (meaning the kitchen of the apartment). We're gearing up for our debut at the Brooklyn Flea in 9 days, trying to work out last minute technical glitches and ordering the last of our supplies, as well as trying to determine our starting lineup for flavors!

However that doesn't mean we haven't stopped working on new flavors and trying out new ingredients. I attempted a cream soda the other night. I have very fond memories of downing Schweppes cream sodas during summers in Hong Kong. The history of cream soda and its different variations across the globe can be read here. The main ingredient is vanilla, so I boiled up 2 vanilla beans for 45 minutes in 1L of water, let it cool, then added zest of half a lemon and 1tsp of lemon juice (for acidity).
The result!

It was a tad too lemony even with only 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, but wonderfully refreshing nonetheless with a great vanilla aroma that I admit was not present in my beloved Schweppes cream sodas of my childhood.

Our first bit of press! NY Times food blog

2010-03-23T16:35:00.006-04:00

Eric from the Brooklyn Flea sent this little bit of press over last night - woo hoo! Thanks for mentioning us! And we're in such delectable company too (Porchetta has ridiculously delicious pork sandwiches; Good Fork is one of our favorite Brooklyn restaurants)

Photos from the tasting party and lots of root beer floats!

2010-03-21T22:42:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday Soda Tasting Day! We invited some friends over to help us taste our first soda scale up and to say thanks to everyone for the support we've received over the past few months, raising funds and putting up with our incessant soda and juicing talk.

The first few pulls of the taps resulted in very foamy soda spewing out and some sad attempts at stemming the foamy outbursts, but eventually we got it right (the lines in the jockey boxes must be as cold as possible!), and were soon serving up some 3 flavors of soda celebrating the beginning of spring!

Happy ginger beer drinker, Binh.

Our friend Adrienne had bought over ice cream for floats.

Step 1: pour root beer into large glass

Step 2: scoop in generous serving of ice cream

Step 3: Watch it foam!

Step 4: Do as David did, and slurp happily away

Give thumbs up (thanks to Opher's thumb)

Maria enjoying her root beer.

Our first scale up!

2010-03-21T20:22:00.000-04:00

Our first scale up and soda party was a success! It featured a lemon-ginger ale; cucumber, lime & sea salt, and a root beer. No terrible technical issues, no meltdowns and no sick guests. Weather was beautiful this whole week so it was a tad tough to be indoors all day Saturday peeling 8 pounds of ginger and juicing an insane amount of lemons & limes, but it was worth it.

The first thing we had to do was make the root beer on Friday night... the sheer amount of spices we used made the apartment smell quite wonderful (or as our roommate noted: "even the trash smells good!"). The photos below of the cardamom, star anise, juniper and vanilla don't quite do the aroma justice.

Saturday involved juicing piles of citrus fruits by hand (for some reason we don't own a citrus fruit juicer yet which means Tony and I had to juice the limes & lemons using forks.

Peeling the 20 cucumbers was much faster

and of course our Ruby 2000 (our little beast) just made quick work of everything, pumping out liters of wonderfully fragrant green liquid.

We spent Saturday evening carbonating the three kegs, attempting to shake all three kegs evenly and learning tricks from various homebrew sites for best carbonation. The 3 kegs then sat in our gigantic freezer over night.

Apple & ginger soda; and cucumber, lime & sea salt!

2010-03-14T18:11:00.000-04:00

This past rainy Saturday we had a visitor to our kitchen - Liza from Dirtyhandsny.com (a project through the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, about everything DIY in New York). We took the opportunity to try out two totally new flavors - apple & ginger; and a cucumber based soda. Also, this was our first time using our monster of a juicer - the Ruby 2000, which is now dominating one entire corner of our kitchen.

We juiced 5 green apples and a big chunk of ginger, to make about 900ml of liquid. No sugar was added (the apples were sweet enough and we wanted to keep the tart nature of the green apples present). The mixture was filtered and poured into our trusty soda siphons for carbonating.

The second soda we wanted to dry was inspired by the (hopefully) upcoming warm weather season. We're huge fans of cocktails using cucumber and gin, and thought we would try to make our own mixer. Again the Ruby 2000 made quick work of our 5 cucumbers, producing about 800ml of juice. We tried again to use mint, but haven't figured out how to extract a fresh mint flavor without using huge piles of mint. Even steeping mint in hot water didn't quite produce the effect we wanted - none of the really fresh mint flavor came through.

So it was improvisation time - we rummaged through our fridge and realized we had a whole bag of limes. We juiced 2 limes, then added the lime juice to the cucumber juice. The tartness of the limes is a great contrast to the mild, fresh cucumber juice.

Lime zest was added to our simple syrup (1/4 cup of sugar), which was then added to the juice to balance out the lime juice. A tiny pinch of sea salt was added to bring out the all the individual flavors.

Root beer time!

2010-03-07T20:35:00.000-05:00

The main ingredient in root beer was traditionally sassafras root, but the essential oil of sassfras was found to carcinogenic in mice in the 60's. Safrole, an oil extracted from sassafras is apparently also used in clandestine MDMA (ecstasy) synthesis. So no sassafras anymore. Most recipes I've seen seem to use sasparilla, but most of the root beers I've tasted taste much more like birch and vanilla. Based on earlier taste tests with different roots and spices, I'll start by trying-

hojasanta

birch

sasparilla

juniper

ginger

allspice

cinnamon

vanilla bean

nutmeg

lemon zest

This first batch was a good start! A bit of tweaking is still necessary, and I want to try using yucca or something else to replicate the thicker creaminess of my favorite root beers but the taste is already pretty close!

Caroline got back from enjoying the Animal Collective & Danny Perez performance piece at the Guggenheim just in time to taste the uncarbonated root beer liquid and Stephanie finally got to taste a bottle of our ginger beer.

Lemon, thyme & pink peppercorn soda

2010-03-06T19:44:00.001-05:00

Had an hour free before the commute into Newark, so decided I'd give my sister's suggestion of lemon & thyme soda a try.

8 sprigs of thyme boiled for 30 min, then the juice of 1 and a half lemons was added.
About 1/4 cups of white sugar was added, as well as the zest of the lemons
We debated how much lemon juice to add to make sure the more subtle taste of the thyme was not overwhelmed, eventually settling on about 7 tablespoons.
At the last minute we decided to see how the floral flavor of pink peppercorn would hold up - it ended up complementing the savory taste of the thyme and the acidity of the lemon very well.

And as a nice side note, our lemon & thyme soda makes a pretty kickass cocktail with Boomsa Genever (a gin aged in oak). Perfect Friday night drink.

A stamp?

2010-03-03T15:23:00.000-05:00

Been playing around with ideas for a logo and a stamp (we want a stamp! we want to stamp things!)
There's a great rubber stamp maker in the East Village (Casey Rubber Stamps) who we're going to take our design to.

Any suggestions? I know we can't legally bottle and sell yet, but drawing a cup wasn't very fun. And we do hope to one day be able to bottle our stuff to distribute at least within New York.

Cascade hops soda, with pink peppercorn & orange zest

2010-03-02T21:00:00.004-05:00

Hop Soda?!

We love beer over here at brooklyn soda works, especially good, crisp, hoppy american IPAs. Today we decided to try out a bitter soda made from hops. The idea was to combine the pine/grapefruit aroma and bitterness of fresh cascade hops with the fruity/herbal spice of pink peppercorn and some orange zest to round it out.

First try was just way too bitter- we used about 20 fresh Cascade hop flowers and boiled for about 30 min. Most of the great aroma of the hops was lost in the boil and a we got a whole lot of bitterness that overwhelmed the more delicate peppercorn and orange zest flavors.

Second try was much better- 2 tablespoons of pink peppercorns boiled in 1L of water for about 15 min, then the hot water was poured over 7 hop flowers and the zest of 1 orange. Let it sit until it cooled and then sweetened lightly with about 1/4 cup of sugar.

Yummmmm, tastes nothing like beer but should appeal to beer fans or anyone who likes hops or other bitter and floral tastes.

We made our goal on Kickstarter!

2010-02-26T17:43:00.002-05:00

A big thanks to everyone - we just surpassed our goal of $1500!!

We'll post a more detailed blog in a few days with some flavor ideas that we've been working on.

We're now on Twitter! And images of bottled samples

2010-02-26T10:57:00.004-05:00

Courtesy of our PR agency (or Caroline's sister, Sarah), we're now on Twitter!
https://twitter.com/BklynSodaWorks.

Also, just finished bottling a couple of samples... been playing around with different logo ideas (with help from our roommate, Stephanie).

A disclaimer is necessary here: we do not have a bottling license so we cannot send or sell bottled soda (yet...)

A big big thanks to all our supporters, and mix tape ideas please

2010-02-26T09:14:00.004-05:00

We've been completely blown away by the amount of support we've received. We never in a million years thought that we would reach over 2/3 of our goal on Kickstarter.com within 48 hours. A big thanks to everyone who pledged!!

I've been toying around with the idea of mix CD's as incentives. Each one will have a different flavor theme:

Maple Bacon - Smoky, Sweet, Sexy Soul.
A mix of soulful, funky, meaty cuts from the 60's til now. Bonus- guaranteed to include at least one Canadian.

Root Beer - Old-Timey American Goodness.
A collection of gospel tunes, sacred harp singing and plenty of good old banjo-pickin', fiddlin' bluegrass and blues.

Ginger Lemon - Spicy and Tart Summer Jams.
From sun-drenched indie-rock to Nuggets-era garage rock to cumbia, dancehall and Afrobeat, this mix will be the ultimate BBQ companion 2010!

Glögg - Norse Metal Madness!
If this one doesn't have you pretending your couch is a long boat and getting ready to row off into battle for Odin then you must be dead... or just not cut out to be a metalhead. Today is a fine day to die! See you in Valhalla...

Also, we don't have any German soda flavors (yet... please send ideas!) but we do have a killer Krautrock mix so you can choose that as well. It's a collection of rare 70's cuts from the best of the Krautrock B-team. No Faust, Can, Neu, Kraftwerk, Amon Düül, Cluster or Tangerine Dream here, just killer Teutonic Psychedelic Rock from some great lesser-known bands.

If you have any other music flavor pairing ideas, feel free to contact us. We'd love to hear from you.

A busy snow day (part 1) - roots & herbs

2010-02-25T11:59:00.002-05:00

Our UPS and Fed Ex delivery people have been making several stops at our apartment in the past 2 days. One of these packages contained several different organic herbs and roots. Pictured above, going clockwise, we have: nutmeg, burdock, dandelion root, sasparilla, birch bark, ojasanta and juniper berries.

We also received hops and vanilla beans.

Let the experiments in root beer making begin!

Brooklyn Soda Works is live on Kickstarter!

2010-02-23T23:35:00.003-05:00

We've started a fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.com to raise funds for scaling up our sodas and selling them at the Brooklyn Flea! There are gifts offered at a variety of contribution levels ($10, $25 and $50) - everything from soda coupons, mix CD's by Tony themed by flavours, to a hand-printed card with one of our recipes.

Pass the word around!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1427166211/brooklyn-soda-works-artisanal-handmade-sodas-ma

And even if you aren't able to support us, kickstarter is a great platform to raise funds for your own project.

Maple syrup & bacon soda

2010-02-23T12:54:00.010-05:00

We're in the middle of phase 1 of our maple bacon & syrup experiment. We bought Ridgewood smoked bacon from Choice Greene, the fancy market one block away, and fried it up in a pan for about 15 minutes over medium heat. Water was then added, and we let it simmer for an hour.

The result is a fatty bacon liquid!

We added gelatin to the mixture, poured the mixture into ice cube trays and let it freeze over night.

The next day, we moved the bacon-gelatin ice cubes out of the freezer, and into the fridge, letting the ice cubes melt very slowly, collecting the fat-free bacon water, which after 48 hours was 125ml.

Next step - maple syrup!

35ml of maple syrup was added and the mixture diluted to 450ml. The mixture was a good balance between maple, bacon saltiness and sweetness.

Now we wait and carbonate.

Brooklyn Flea this coming spring and summer!

2010-02-20T10:20:00.009-05:00

Had a productive meeting with the Brooklyn Flea Market yesterday, and if all goes well, it looks like we'll be at Brooklyn Flea Market this coming spring and summer, hopefully every Saturday!

The Brooklyn Flea is a wonderfully-curated market that's one of our favorite places to check out new food stalls and snacks, and since its about 5 blocks away from our apartment has been a regular weekend stop ever since they opened. It's pretty wonderful to be in such tasty company, such as the Red Hook Food Vendors, Rick's Picks, Blue Marble Ice Cream and Asia Dog (Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice called the Flea 'the best food court in the city' - so the pressure is on!). For a full list of current participating vendors, click here.

Our CO2 tank and kegs are on the way... we just bought 2 new soda siphons to replace our old one... and Tony just bought a few pounds of vanilla beans and herbs to try making our own root beer!

Brooklyn Soda Works + Palo Santo?

2010-02-17T22:20:00.001-05:00

We've been talking to our friend Jacques, the chef/owner of Palo Santo in Park Slope about using his kitchen to do the prep work and kegging of our sodas if we get a space at the brooklyn flea. He's interested in the idea but we still have lots of details to work out. Still, very exciting since we now have a good way to legally produce the sodas in a licensed kitchen. Also Jacques is a successful restauranteur with lots of experience in the food world so it's nice to hear he thinks our soda venture is a good idea and wants to help.

Bierkraft Fieldtrip!

2010-02-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

Went over to Bierkraft today. It's one of the best beer shops in the city- a huge selection of obscure beers from the world over as well as great cheeses, meats, chocolates, and a super friendly, knowledgeable staff. We weren't there for beer though (OK, OK I did grab a few beers, it's impossible to resist), we were there to talk to to Ben about dispensing carbonated liquids. He's an experienced homebrewer and built the impressive counter-flow growler filling system that Bierkraft uses. He gave us some great tips for calculating carbonating pressures based on measuring specific gravity. He also recommended using a jockey box for foam-free outdoor dispensing. I'm browsing my McMaster Carr catalog now trying to figure out how to build one. We've got lots to think about now!

Happy Year of the Tiger! Lemongrass and lime soda

2010-02-14T12:53:00.000-05:00

While not a typical Valentine's Day nor Chinese New Year drink, February 14th seemed like an appropriate day to try out an idea I had for soda/ sparkling juice that would solve some of my frustrations about the strength of the lime juice overwhelming the taste of the mint in the mint-lime soda.

lemongrass lime soda

2 cups lemongrass boiled in 1.5 cups water

3/4 cups Demara sugar

5 tablespoons lime juice

zest of 2 limes

1/4 teaspoon salt

the lemongrass was boiled in 1.5 cups of sugar water for about 30 minutes along with the zest.

Lime juice was added, then salt was added to balance out the sweetness, and bring out the flavour of the lemongrass

The juice was then strained into our soda siphon, and carbonated

In honor of the Year of the Tiger, we're throwing around ideas about using salty plums.

And we just bought a jug of maple syrup for our maple syrup & bacon idea!

Brainstorming ideas

2010-02-12T17:28:00.003-05:00

The snowy days have been an excuse for us to do some brainstorming, both for flavours and for figuring out our technical set-up.

lemongrass & lime

maple syrup & bacon

grapefruit, jalapeno & honey

spicy chocolate

lemon & thyme

cucumber, mint & seasalt

apple spice

lavender

pear cardommon

strawberry rhubarb

blueberry

And of course, we want to include our very spicy ginger beer. Perhaps we'll have a range of spice levels? We had tried to brew our own ginger beer using yeast last year, and while it was quite rewarding, the alcohol level was hard to control.

spiced chocolate soda

2010-02-08T11:38:00.000-05:00

Made a chocolate soda today. We decided to make it as if we were doing a normal spiced hot chocolate (just with water instead of milk) and then remove all the fat and solids using a gelatin clarifying technique leaving us with a nice spiced chocolate water that could be carbonated.

I first learned about using gelatin to clarify broths from the ideas in food blog when I was trying to make a light clear bacon broth for a recipe with scallops and a bean puree a couple years ago. They had a great bacon broth recipe online, check it out here. The basic idea is the same as the old French technique of using egg white- the gelatin creates a 3D matrix that acts as a filter for all solids and fats. You add a bit of gelatin while the liquid is warm and then you freeze it and let it slowly melt in the fridge over a filter. This keeps the fat and gelatin solid and they trap all the other solids with them in the filter letting a crystal clear liquid drip down.

The chocolate water came out quite tasty! The method does need some tweaking though. 1st-recovery was low. I started with a liter of chocolate and only ended up with about 300 mL of chocolate water at the end. I think the gelatin ratio needs to be even lower because of the higher fat content of the chocolate vs. a meat broth. 2nd- not enough spice! The cinnamon, the clove and the hoja santa come through nicely but the chile spice is not really there. May need to use fresh chiles instead of dry or more of them or just lengthen the boiling time to extract more from the dry chile. Otherwise it's good- nice and clear and light but still very chocolatey! This is all probably too much work to scale up especially since we could just make a chocolate syrup and add carbonated water much easier, but it's fun to experiment!

The recipe:

226g (8oz) baking chocolate

1 dry gaujillo chile

2 dry ancho chile

1 tsp hoja santa

3 sticks cinnamon

1 tsp clove

1 L of water

attempting lime mint soda

2010-02-04T14:04:00.005-05:00

I decided to attempt a lime mint soda this morning. We had decided on a lemon mint soda the previous night, but I woke up and realized lemon just didn't feel as exciting as limes... and who doesn't love a mojito? especially in the dead of winter?

lime and mint soda

5 limes

zest of 2 limes

2.5 boxes of mint

roughly 3/4 cup of turbinado sugar

made simple syrup with sugar.

added in zest and heated over low heat

juiced limes

added mint; and muddled.

Mixture was then filtered resulting in about 280ml of very limey liquid.

Here's the problem now: despite adding in 2.5 boxes of mint, the lime taste seems somewhat overwhelming. And since I'm alone (this is my first attempt to make a soda without Tony) I have no one else's palate for corroboration.

I'm putting the limey soda in the fridge, eating a chocolate muffin to make myself feel better then I'm off to install some art.

tasting the fruits of our labor...

2010-01-28T09:49:00.000-05:00

We decided to be careful with carbonating this batch of soda and carbonate it twice, as the last soda we made (incredibly spicy ginger beer) while incredibly tasty and spicy enough to satisfy both our ginger-fiending palates, was not quite carbonated enough.

We carbonated it twice (once before going to bed, and once more in the morning) before trying it.

The results:

nice balance between the mild burn of the chille and the citrus flavor of the grapefruit - incredibly refreshing

perhaps still too foamy... and additional tasters are needed before we launch (we'll be actively recruiting tasters... any volunteers??)

grapefruit/ Thai chille/ honey soda

2010-01-25T09:28:00.001-05:00

It was a freezing cold January evening - what better project to chase away the cold than to make a new batch of soda?

ingredients:

3 thai (birds eye) chilles

2 large grapefruits

3 tablespoons of honey

Chilles were deseeded and chopped, then boiled with a 50ml of water with the zest of the grapefruit. We heated this on low heat for 20 minutes, then added in the honey

Grapefruits were juiced, and the cooled and filtered mixture of chile, zest and honey was added to the 500ml of juice.

We left this in the fridge to cool for a few hours (while we caught up on another episode of The Prisoner - the original British one, not the new remake)

Before retiring for the night, we carbonated it in our soda siphon, and left it in the fridge over night.... ooh the suspense!

ginger beer!

2009-11-02T18:20:00.004-05:00

Our first attempts at brewing our own ginger beer was interesting. Its quite easy to find recipes for brewing your own ginger beer using brewers yeast online.

We prefer our ginger beer much spicier than most of the commercially available ginger beer out there, (which is partly what drove us to start this project), so we added in a number of different spices and increased the amount of ginger by about 4 times.

We let ginger beer ferment for everything from 16 hours to 48 hours tasting along the way to determine the ideal alcohol concentration and residual sugar level. Then we did a test bottling by putting it in a plastic bottle and letting it sit at room temp until the bottle felt firm with CO2 and then putting it in the fridge.

Our friends and roommate were kind enough to be our guinea pigs!