We remember it like it was yesterday, but that’s because it pretty much was yesterday. Not long ago, Brooklyn was supposedly “Crooklyn”, a strange land where people spoke in tongues, cabs feared to tread, and you couldn’t get a decent piece of cheese. And BAM, the grandly-titled Brooklyn Academy of Music, seemed to stand as a silent sentinel, a remnant of a glorious past few seemed to remember.
Here at Brooklyn Brewery, we remember the real Brooklyn. We remember pioneering beer bars, wild Berlin-style raves at the Old Mustard Factory, the Liveri boys smoking the mozzarella in a little metal box every morning outside Joe’s Busy Corner, prosciutto sliced so thin you could read the newspaper through it, and jerk chicken that made your eyes water. BAM remembers our Brooklyn too, and helped transform it into a place everyone suddenly wants to be.
So, when BAM asked us to make a beer for their 150th anniversar y, we wanted to make them something really special. BAMBoozle features a large addition of wildflower honey from the New York family apiary Tremblay Farms – we pick up the honey from Alan Tremblay at the Greenmarket. Blended with golden malts, it is fermented to a dry complexity by our Belgian yeast strain, and then re-fermented in the bottle like Champagne. When the cork pops, the beer shows a shimmering effer vescence, a beautifully floral, honeyed nose, and a fresh light zing on the palate that belies its underlying strength. You have not had a beer like this, and neither have we. You can enjoy it now, but it will also age very nicely.
Like BAM and like Brooklyn, BAMBoozle is in a class of its own. Happy 150th to BAM, its colorful crown restored, the once and future king of the arts.
*This beer, like the creative quality of the borough of Brooklyn, is very rare.
