Once every few weekends, Brooklyn beer writer Josh Bernstein — look for his book Brewed Awakening soon — leads a group of intrepid drinkers on a tour of New York City living rooms. It’s called a Homebrew Tour, as somehow Bernstein convinces a handful of city home brewers (usually three each trip) to let a crowd into their homes, where they serve us their susdy creations and usually offer snacks, too. One recent trip led us from a walk-through in Red Hook to a brownstone basement in Park Slope to finally a Greenpoint row house. (We took two buses and the G train.)
There are plenty of beer crawls, beer tastings and walking tours in this town, but Bernsteins’ trips go them all one better. Yes, the beers themselves are often excellent, wacky little numbers with flavors that push the boundaries of what you usually find in the bottle, but it’s the chance to to meet a crowd of new people, to peek inside the lives of your fellow New Yorkers, to ask questions up close and personal of a geeky group of food and drink enthusiasts, yourselves included, that make these trips so cool.
For a taste of what it’s like, check the story Julia Botero, a producer at WNYC’s show Studio 360, filed recently on WNYC.com. She gives us a report on the growing home brew movement in the city and also an audio report of one of Bernstein’s recent tours.
