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.

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

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

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

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!)

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!

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...

Plum and Raspberry flavors for Saturday!

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

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)