Brooklyn Brewery’s Brooklyn Mash kicked off with a bang last night at the Brooklyn Limited event with Barley’s Angels Chicago. We got to share some special beers with the Barley’s Angels and hear from Brooklyn Brewery’s chef Andrew Gersen.
I pulled Brooklyn Brewery’s copywriter, Tim Rozmus aside for a quick chat about the brewery, the beer and the Mash tour.
Matt Tanaka: We’re on day two of Brooklyn Brewery’s Chicago Mash, can you tell us what that is and what makes it such a special time?
Tim Rozmus: Mash is a kind of cultural tour – we visit 8 cities and focus on what’s awesome in those cities. We want people to understand the awesome culinary stuff, the people that are putting on the cools shows, the clips, the music – everything that’s going on and kind of give it a little of our own Brooklyn funk. We focus on the local scenes because we like to celebrate what makes each city awesome.
This is the third time we’ve been to Chicago and it’s the third time we’ve done the tour so it’s kind of an “Original Six” sort of thing. It’s pretty awesome to see everything come together.
Matt Tanaka: What are we doing here tonight?
Tim Rozmus: We’re hanging out with the Barley’s Angels for a sampling of some of our core beers and specialties. The big kicker is that the last beer is going to be Black Chocolate Stout. It’s a seasonal that’s usually pretty limited so it’s pretty cool to not only get that out of season but to get it at all really. It’s pretty tricky to track down.
We’re also going to have some of our bigger bottles floating around.
Matt Tanaka: What bottles can we expect?
Tim Rozmus: We’ll have K is for Kriek, which is one of our Brooklyn Quarterly Experiments. Quintaceratops and a certain beer that I can’t confirm the existence of…
Matt Tanaka: Like a Black Ops kind of thing?
Tim Rozmus: I will neither confirm nor deny… but I am going to nod at you.
Matt Tanaka: What are we drinking right now?
Tim Rozmus: We’re drinking Black Chocolate Stout which is an American Imperial Stout. It’s not often that you hear “American” appended to an Imperial Stout, usually people talk about Russian Imperial Stouts, but our Brewmaster Garret Oliver likes to say that our version is the first version that really made it an American style. It uses local ingredients and puts an American spin on the style.
It’s a 10% imperial stout that’s real big on the chocolate, real big on the coffee despite the fact that of course neither of those ingredients are actually in there, it’s all to do with the malts. It also cellars very well. Tonight we’re drinking last year’s release and it’s just as good if not better than it was when it came out.
We can’t say enough how excited we all are to be in Chicago. As a beer company, it’s a great beer town, as a bunch of cultural nerds, it’s a very cultural town. And personally, as an out of place Blackhawks fan, I’m very happy to be here.
We’ll be following Brooklyn Brewery Mash around Chicago all week and we highly suggest you do the same. Check out all the events happening this week, including an exclusive podcast & BBQ with Good Beer Hunting’s Michael Kiser on Friday and a free concert on Saturday!
