“There was a time not long ago when the idea of whiskey or gin that came from Brooklyn would have been nothing more than a punch line.”
This hilariously true sentence opens the new Brooklyn Spirits: Craft Cocktails and Stories from the World’s Hippest Borough. Just published by DUMBO’s own Powerhouse, the book profiles 11 BK-based distilleries from Sunset Park’s Industry City to Red Hook’s Cacao Prieto to Greenpoint’s Greenhook Ginsmiths. Interspersed are tales of the best bartenders shaking and stirring at the likes of Clover Club, Tooker Alley, Huckleberry and Fort Defiance.
Longtime Edible readers may already know that Kings County Distillery’s founder grew up in Kentucky’s moonshine country, that Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liqueur was born at a computer consultant’s dinner parties and that Industry City Distilling might be called “the boy band” of Brooklyn booze. But this book also includes 100 recipes by spirit makers and the cocktail shakers who love them — drinks like the Ebbets Field, the Kickstarter and the Crown Heights Negroni, as well as riffs on the eponymous Brooklyn Cocktail, of course.
It’s finished with a dash of bitters recipes, no punch line needed.
Photo courtesy of Powerhouse Books
