Category : News

April Brinery Events!

April is an exciting month for the Brinery! 
We are a part of three events this month, and we want to see you! In addition to our usual appearance at the weekly markets, as always, we are going to participate in other upcoming (and amazing) aspects of the local foods movement. Each one is guaranteed to be a wonderful time, and we hope you’ll take part. Here they are, in order of occurence:
April 17th from 6:30 to 8:30 pm
Zingerman’s Deli

photo by Kristen Hogue

Join David and the Zingerman’s Team on Tuesday April 17th to hear about how David started the Brinery and what he’s learned along the way. We’ll taste his fermented veggies on their own and in a few different recipes. And, because they taste so good with Michigan beers, there will be a cash bar that evening. It’s guaranteed to be a fun evening of ‘stimulating your inner economy’ while celebrating one of our native sons that is contributing to our local food economy. Call to reserve yourself a seat at the table, or reserve a spot online!

Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars
April 21st at 6:00 pm
Barton Hills Country Club

David will be kicking up his brineheels at a wonderful benefit event, Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars, which supports two local non-profits, the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor and the Wild Swan Theater.  Tickets include a strolling dinner with drinks and dessert, an opportunity to watch David foxtrot with his partner, and a chance to dance yourself. If you want to see some great entertainment and support two Ann Arbor non-profits, you can purchase tickets or buy a vote for 2012 Dancing with the Ann Arbor Stars.

From Doctrine to Dirt: An Evening with Joel Salatin
April 24th from 4:00 to 6:00 pm
Washtenaw County Food Hub

Joel Salatin, a leading voice in the modern move toward food sustainability, will be visiting our hometown, and the Brinery will be a part of his visit for the evening.  The occasion, in addition to allowing you the opportunity to meet and listen to Joel Salatin and in an intimate setting, will also feature a feast of local foods from businesses in our community. Participants include the People’s Food Co-opThe Grange Kitchen and BarThe Raven’s ClubSilvio’s Organic Pizza, and The Brinery. There will also be an optional tour of the Washtenaw Food Hub beforehand. Buy tickets online! 

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Weekly Brinery News!

After a long and productive week, brinefriend and charcuterist tutor Aaron Gilliam departed for his homeland, Napa Valley, leaving many blissfully curing meats in his wake. The Brinery is proud to report that Aaron and Greg completed the butchering and preparation of an entire pig, swine supplied by Dave of Steinhouser Farm, and we have a variety of preserved sausages to prove it! One thousand thanks to Aaron for his teaching, assistance at the Brinery, and the overall warmth of his presence. He was wondeful in all respects. We eagerly await his return to the Mitten this summer!
The Brinery recently took part in the fourth annual Homegrown Local Food Summit, an event that focused on many aspects of the local foods movement in Washtenaw County. Between sessions about the past and future successes of the movement, attendees snacked on donated Jape Kin Cod and Root-31 pickles, foods guarenteed to spark their innovative impulses. CFO David spoke in a session entitled “Lesson learned on starting up your local food business”, along with fellow entrepreneurs Mary Wessel Walker ofHarvest Kitchen and Stefanie Stauffer of Nightshade Army Industries. The day was an enormous success, yet another breeze of the mighty briney wind that gently pulls at our hair and that of the white stag, standing in the wilderness.
                                                     (photo by Dave Brenner)
And, finally, a Featured Brinery Product: BRINE. Can be found for sale at both Ann Arbor Farmers’ Market and Detroit Eastern Market.
The Brinery has recently jarred up several types of Brine from our products, including the spicy JKC pickles and Oh Gee kimchi. In addition to their use as a daily sipping drink, we recommend using the brine as a marinade for another one of our products, Brinery tempeh made with Michigan soybeans!
Simply pour a little brine onto your tempeh loaf as it sautees innocently in your pan! The addition of the liquid will add to the nutty flavor already inherent to the tempeh, providing a saltiness that reduces to a lovely, syrupy consistency as its water evaporates. Certain brines, such as that of the Storm Cloud Zapper sauerkraut (used at Zingerman’s Deli!), also add a beautiful color to the tempeh. With Brinery brine, you’ll paint a springtime sunset onto your plate in a matter of seconds!
Have a great week,
The Brinery

P.S. Please enjoy this short poem about kimchi:

Lo! The blessing of
a jar, lid, seal–
the sparkling fruits

from the caves
of Liberty Street
to a bright, bright

world of hands and
forks–palates, sandwiches,
unbound textures–
a great sea of surfaces,
potential in briney waves.

Let us not weep
but snatch–
these possiblities,
all these seed beds
on which to plant– eat–
grow– rootstock
for yumcrop,
great tastes
for the masses.

Your Brinery News Update for the Week

The Brinery is thrilled to have a visitor from San Fransisco here in Ann Arbor this week, Aaron, from Fatted Calf Charcuterie! Aaron’s time at the Brinery will focus on the ancient art of meat curing, a process of preservation that also uses salt, similar to fermentation. Meat curing results in products such as chorizo and pancetta, and the Brinery is very interested in learning about this process!

In fact, we’re so interested that we’ll be heading to Tantre Farm in the next few days to butcher and preserve a hog using the ways of our forefathers and foremothers. Briner Greg Hart, under the gentle tutelage of Aaron, will hone his skills as a charcuterist……This means that somewhere, deep in the Michigan woods, the white stag will meet our hog. They will delicately sniff each other, curious, before being startled by the sharp knife of charcuterists with prosciutto on their minds. The white stag will gallop off into the maples, leaving the hog to its noble fate. It will be a beautiful moment of old meeting new, of soft before salt.

In other news, the Brinery is honored to be a part of the menu at Inn Season Cafe, an amazing restaurant in Royal Oak. The Inn Season Cafe utlilizes local ingredients in their (solely) vegetarian and vegan dishes, including the Brinery tempeh! We are proud to have our product featured in their tempeh breakfast sausage; please stop by for an un unforgettable lunch, dinner, or brunch experience!
Our favorite product this week is a highly specialized type of kimchi we have named Negative Napa. This white kimchi was made without Napa cabbage, an ingredient usually featured in our kimchis. Without the cabbage, Negative Napa Kimchi is a product that is chock full of Big Flavor, bearing strong notes of the carrot, garlic, green onion, and apple that are primary components in Brinery kimchis. This product is similar to a relish, with a boldness like a bunch of springtime daffodils that glorifies the palate. Look for the Negative Napa Kimchi at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market, as well as Detroit’s Eastern Market, this Saturday!

Brinery news!

Your Brinery news update for the week:
The Brinery is proud to announce some great news! We are now the official saurkraut of Zingerman’s Deli! This means that our product is featured in all of the delicious sandwiches offered at the deli, particularly the reuben. Now you can enjoy classic lunches made with locally-fermented sauerkraut! Here at the Brinery, our hearts swell with pride at the honor of being a part of Zingerman’s, a prime example of the long-cultivated relationship between local artisan food and one of Zingerman’s many facets.
#2 Zingerman’s Reuben: Zingerman’s corned beef, Switzerland Swiss cheese, sauerkraut & Russian dressing on grilled, hand-sliced Jewish rye bread.
Speaking of sandwiches, eat is currently using Brinery tempeh in their sandwiches! Located at their new Packard location, Helen Harding and Blake Reetz have crafted beauty with our product: two slices of bread, Brinery tempeh made with Michigan soybeans, and some extra-special eat magic! Please stop by and give this sandwich a try– your sails will fill with the power of lovingly-prepared soybeans held together with Rhizopus oligospous!
Finally, the Brinery would like to give a special shout out to two new businesses that carry our product, the East Lansing Food Co-Op and Nourish, an organic market that recently opened in Grand Rapids. The Brinery is thankful for the opportunity to expand throughout Michigan, and we love to form lasting partnerships with community stores that spatter the mitten with their local goodness!
  
We’ve had a wondeful past couple of weeks, and we hope you have too! Stay tuned for future Brinery news, keep eating our product of live culture (in the spirit of Spring!), and stop every once in a while to rub the tender neck of the white stag, despite his fleetingness.

Brinery news!

Your Brinery news update for the week:

We have had a busy week planning upcoming events, catering, and following our routine production schedule. The Brinery certainly has a full schedule for the next few weeks!

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First and foremost, the Brinery will be chefing SELMA Cafe this Friday, February 10th from 6:30 – 10:00. We’ll be working closely with our friends from Flint Crepe Company to make some beautifully-crafted savory crepes, made with Flint-milled flour and featuring Brinery sauerkraut! Join us for a relaxing breakfast, meet the faces behind the frying pans and kraut crocks, and check out the tee shirts and fermented products that we’ll be bringing with us. We cannot wait to hang out!

Another primary area of focus is our fermentation workshop, a day-long event that will occur on the 26th of February at the Washtenaw County Food Hub. Please sign up if you would like to attend, as spaces are going fast. This is a great opportunity for hands-on learning with CFO David Klingenberger, and you’ll go home with some fermented goodies!

As we mentioned in last week’s newsletter, the Brinery is holding an official, exclusive tasting event on the 13th of February.  We’re still very open to anyone with a chef’s vernacular or a journalist’s pen to attend this event, which will be held at the Washtenaw County Food Hub. We’re working hard to ensure that it will be an evening of great tastes and beautiful sights! Please email david@thebrinery.com if you’d like to attend.

Finally, the Brinery’s mail order nearly up on its newlY formed legs! All of your favorite fermented foods, as well as Brinery tee shirts, will soon be available for order via our website!Stay tuned!

The Brinery news!

The Brinery had a wonderful time catering for an art reception at the Gallery Project on Thursday, January 26th. Our selection of our flavorful krauts and kimchis, paired with Brinery-made tempeh and a light spread, made for some popular snacking! This Brinery-style reuben pleased all who attended, including the starving artists among the crowd. As always, we enjoyed ourselves immensely, and we would love to cater any events for our faithful fans!

CFO (Chief Fermenting Officer) David discoursed with local artists about their work, as well as the merits of eating fermented foods! The two go hand in hand, and the Brinery would like to continue this relationship. We feel that we are artists ourselves, crafting batches of carefully-pondered product, just as an artist creates pieces. As we move toward the Brinefuture, we want to nourish artists with Brinery goods, in the hopes that we stimulate their inner economies as well as their imaginations.
The Brinery at work, proof of the amazing synergy of a partnership between art and food. Please note the dashing young man in the green jacket, Gary Mazzeo of Tantre Farm. Gary is gracefully perpetuating the symbiotic relationship between the Brinery and Tantre, the rootstock from which the Brinery grew. We are very thankful for Gary’s hard work!

Speaking of hard work, the Brinery brined two batches of hand-chopped product this week, Oh-Gee Kimchi batch 116 and Fair N’ By batch 111. Keep an eye open for these batches— they’re really something special. The great effort that went into the processing of these vegetables was a great way for the Brinery to get in touch with the deep roots of the fermentation tradition, reminding our hands of the work done in olden days. With our shredder out of commission, we came in contact with the toil of the ancients, and we are grateful for the experience.

Additionally, the Brinery would love to hear about any special recipes you have created with our products! The photo above is a great example of the beautiful simplicity of a Brinery lunch, Storm Cloud Zapper, baguette, and hummus! Please email us any ideas or inspirations you might have.

On a final note, the Brinery will be holding an official, exclusive tasting event on the 13th of February. On this evening, we will be generating the language for our official tasting notes. We are looking for chefs and connoiseurs to contribute their vernacular to our literature. If you (or anyone you know) is interested in either covering the event or evaluating our products on their fine palate, please email david@thebrinery.com for an invitation to this private event!

Brinery news!

The Brinery had a great week kimchiwise! Although our shredder is broken, we made some handmade kimchi, getting in touch with the old style workmanship that is valuable to out artisinal process! Look out for that batch in the future– we really put a lot of love into the hand-chopped ingredients, and that special touch will definately be apparent in the taste.

Many thanks to our pals Corridor Sausage! The Brinery has had a great time with these local meat specialists at Detroit’s Eastern Market. Their products pair amazingly with our products, specifically our sauerkrauts, a very traditional, old-world German style. We recommend you stop by shed two for a visit or a taste to both of our stands!

As more and more people find out about its availibility, our tempeh is becoming increasingly popular. The Brinery catered an art show called American Dream last night at Gallery Project, serving vegan tempeh reubens made with our sauerkraut varieties, tempeh, and baguette from Cafe Japon! Art an local business go great together, and we were proud  as pie to serve our products to such creative people. We love to do catering projects, and we would love to be invited to any potential events in the future.

Finally, SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:  Sunday, January 29 there will be an open house for the Washtenaw County Food Hub! Running from 10 AM to Noon on the property on Whitmore Lake Road, this event is designed to show the public the future magic of the Hub, a property that will be used to “coordinate food production, farmer services, food distribution, agricultural training, and community”. You can read about it in a couple of local papers:

http://www.concentratemedia.com/features/washtenawfoodhub0178.aspx

http://www.movecommunications.com/blog/post/2012/01/23/A-Food-Hub-Sprouts-in-Washtenaw.aspx

This thing is blowing up, and the Brinery is going to be a part of it! We are actively seeking investors to help us update space at the Hub as the potential home of the Brinery of the Future! Help us make our dreams come true, and please let us know if you know of anyone who could help us out.

Brinery demonstrations at Plum Market!

Avid snacker? Avid shopper? If you are both or neither, come visit us at the Maple Road Plum Market in Ann Arbor! Saturday afternoon at one p.m… Your wildest dreams WILL COME TRUE

Brinery news! Right NOW

The Brinery lost its Brinemaster for a few days this week as Chief Fermenting Officer David went on a faraway trip to the great state of New York! He spent some time at Camphill Village in Copake, NY,  home to 250 people, some of whom have developmental disabilities,  that operates workshops, a bakery, and a dairy according to the principles of Rudolph Steiner.

Our shredder is in the process of resurrection by the hands of a contracted Shredder Genius, and it should be up and running sometime soon. Although the Brinery rejoices at this wonderful second life for our machine, even we know that the shredder is not immortal. With this sad understanding, we are still searching for a new shredder…..preferably an IFP 5000 or a Hobart FP 400……

And, finally: if you or your friends have a recipe you want immortalized on the Brinery website, let us know! We are now accepting any recipes that involve Brinery ingredients! Send us your ideas– we’d love to hear them!