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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

ladders. They knew where to look in the tree’s deepmost center,

pushed aside the golden bark to reach within. The kimchi gleamed

like buried rubies, and the Boldhearts drove wanting hands inside.

They brought out flavors by the fistful, lightcrisp, deeprooted. Crammed

them into their mouths– gutteral ancient pleasures that sparked each to

liveliness as the juices dripped down gleeful chins. Yess- the Boldhearts

quenched and whole, ready to rejoin the worldly river on hollowed

cabbage boats, in slender carrots bobbing gently in the brine.

We’re in Plum Markets in three locations: Ann Arbor, West Bloomfield, and Bloomfield!

We’re still at both the Ann Arbor Farmers’ Market and Detroit’s Eastern Market each Saturday. If you have not yet been to the Detroit market, we encourage you to stop by Shed 2, Stall 11, the Brinery’s official winter spot.

The Brinery wants to encourage you to order our products online! We’re setting up a gleaming new system to make Brinery online orders a snap!

The Brinery is now officially interested in an upgraded, high performance vegetable shredder. We are mourning the loss of our old machine, who died in a smoke cloud while valiantly shredding its final load of cabbage for our product Juniper’s Orbit.

Finally, Chief Fermenting Officer David will be travelling to New York state/City on a Brinery fieldtrip! He’ll also be visiting fellow pickler Sauerkraut Seth at his homestead, Hawethorne Valley Farm.

Forever Yours,

The BrineTeam