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

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)

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!

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

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!

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!

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

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

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!

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

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.